Since it's release in 1988, William Wesley's Scarecrows has garnered quite the cult following amongst genre-philes and now, thanks to our pals at MGM, it is finally available in an uncut form on disc. If you happened to see the R-rated version at some point, like I did in my early teenage years, then you're missing out on quite a bit of close quarters grue. This is a bloody movie. It's just too bad that when all is said and done it's not quite as good as movie as I'd of hoped.

The set-up here is quite simple, as a group of armed commandos have just stolen 3.5 million dollars from military base Camp Pendleton. They're making their getaway on a plane after they've kidnapped the pilot and his teenage daughter. News reports are playing in the background telling us all about their daring heist.

But things are about to get a new wrinkle when one of the thieves, Bert (B.J. Turner) decides he wants the money all to himself and after putting on a parachute and dropping a smoke grenade, he leaps out of the plane with money in tow. When his cohorts go after him they all end-up in the middle of a cornfield surrounded by scarecrows, a graveyard, and a rundown farmhouse. To make matters even worse for our gaggle of un-likeable baddies, they're not alone in the fields, which is proven when Bert is stabbed in the chest by a reanimated scarecrow.

For the rest of Scarecrows our baddies bicker amongst each other while they're slowly picked-off by our straw-filled murderers. And that's perhaps where the script by Richard Jefferies and Wesley stumbles because, while there are a few pretty good moments of bloodiness and the effects by Norman Cabrera (who once was part o Rick Baker's team and has since worked on Hellboy, From Dusk Till Dawn and Brainscan, to name a few), things are bit slow to get rolling and the only reason explanation we get for the scarecrows being alive is that the former owners of the farm were into sorcery. On top of this, there really isn't one likeable character here or even a real hero, as even the kidnapped Kellie (Victoria Christian) is annoying - if anyone could be considered a "sympathetic" character it would be Corbin (Ted Vernon).

It's quite obvious that Wesley knows how to stage things to help build mood but his story is too slight to really capture your imagination. There is some excitement to be had, however, when a quite possessed Bert returns with inhuman strength and most of their heist money stuffed into his body cavity - this also gives us the pretty gross moment where our robbers decide to cut his newly dead body open, and also pry bills from his decapitated head with a switchblade, to get some of their loot back. However, scenes where they have Curry (Michael Simms) going loony tunes are nothing more than a poor attempt to add in some surreal moments.

Considering that this was a fairly low-budget movie, what's displayed on screen really isn't that bad. Wesley's direction is pretty solid and he gets fairly decent performances from his cast (making the fact that only this and Route 666, which he made thirteen years later, are his only times behind the camera quite curious) and the pretty basic tale of man's greed backfiring on him works to an extent, but for most of the film's running time I wasn't sure whether I was entertained or if I was a tiny bit bored, which works against this as it only runs a mere 83 minutes.

Still, I can see the reason why this has a battery of fans out there, but for myself personally it just didn't resonate enough with me to eventually add it to my collection. But if you're curious to see why this was a highly requested title to come out on DVD for some time then by all means check it out, you might get more out of it than I did. (Chris Hartley, 2/6/08)

Directed By: William Wesley.
Written By: Richard Jefferies, William Wesley.

Starring: Ted Vernon, Victoria Christian, Richard Vidan, B.J. Turner.