Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981) - Starts off well

I really enjoyed the first act of 'Dark Night of the Scarecrow' - it's about a quartet of not particularly nice rednecks who gun down an innocent man with learning difficulties in a case of misunderstanding.  What follows - in the short term, at least - is quite a tense stand-off involving townsfolk, social commentary and courtroom drama.  However, what has quite a decent start, sort of descends into something a bit more formulaic and predictable.

Naturally, supernatural shenanigans start to follow as some - fatally - creepy happenings start occurring in the aftermath of the town.  Now, this could have been good, but it's all a bit samey.  Once you've seen one supernatural act of revenge, you basically have seen them all.

It kind of held my interest until the end, but that's largely due to the primary antagonist who is hardly a sympathetic character, but he's played so well you'll enjoy waiting to see that he gets what's coming to him!

I've seen a fair few 'supernatural revenge' films over the years.  In fact 'The Crow' happens to be one of my favourite movies of all time.  One of the great things about that - and others - is that the 'wronged' individual is front and centre when it comes to meeting out punishment to those who had caused his demise.  However, here the original victim was never destined to be 'leading man material' therefore he's not really seen throughout the rest of the film and, instead, you get a kind of 'Final Destination' feel where karma meets out revenge on his behalf.

Like I say, I don't want to be too harsh on it, as it help my interest and I don't regret sitting down to watch it.  My main gripe was that for a film with such a strong start, it just didn't keep its momentum in my opinion.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights