Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981) on Netflix
Bubba Ritter, a gentle man with a developmental disability, befriends Marylee Williams in a Southern town. After a dog mauls her, postman Otis Hazelrigg blames Bubba and raises a lynch mob.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.7/1010,217 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes63%
Trailer
Plot summary
The friendship between Marylee Williams, a ten-year-old girl, and Bubba Ritter, a grown man with a developmental disability, unsettles people in their small Southern town. The postman Otis Hazelrigg resents it most. When a vicious dog mauls Marylee and Bubba saves her, Otis decides that Bubba attacked her. He brings in the gas station attendant Skeeter Norris and the farmer cousins Philby and Harliss Hocker, and the four search for Bubba. Mrs. Ritter dresses her son as a scarecrow and stands him in a field, but the bloodhounds find him. Otis plants a pitchfork in the dead man's hands so the men can claim self-defense. The district attorney, Sam Willock, cannot hold them without witnesses, and the four are released.
Cast
- James Tartanas Mr. Williams
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad, credits a scene in Dark Night of the Scarecrow with inspiring a visual transition in the Season 4 episode "Box Cutter."
- HorrorHound Magazine's Aaron Crowell called Dark Night of the Scarecrow the first feature-length horror film with a scarecrow at its center, crediting writer J. D. Feigelson as creator of the "Killer Scarecrow" subgenre.
- A fire cost Dark Night of the Scarecrow one shooting day, so the film was shot in 17 days instead of the scheduled 18, and every nocturnal scene was actually filmed at night.
