Anybody remember "Dark Night of the Scarecrow"?

[elperromagico]

It's a made-for-TV suspense movie from 1981 with Larry Drake and Charles Durning. Drake is a mentally challenged man, named Bubba, who has been blamed for an attack on a little girl. A group of vigilantes, let by Durning's character, take it upon themselves to kill Bubba as he hides in the field disguised as a scarecrow.

The vigilantes are acquitted of murder... but then, one after the next, they die under mysterious circumstances that all somehow involve (you guessed it) a scarecrow.

I saw this movie years ago and thought it was the spookiest made-for-TV movie I'd ever seen. It stuck with me for years but I could never recall its title.

Here's a webpage devoted to it: http://www.terrortrap.com/television/darknightofthescarecrow/

[Beware the Beast Man]

1. Yes!

I think that poor guys was typecast after that role. Very spooky film, if I recall.

[Connie_Corleone]

2. That movie scared the crap out of me...

but then again, I was a kid and I was a scaredy cat back then. I used to hate horror movies.

[Ladyhawk]

3. Yes! I definitely remember it...very scary!

Or maybe I thought it was scary and it wasn't all that. I think I was in high school at the time. Then again, any TV movie that is remembered for that long was probably pretty good.

[hfojvt]

4. I was 19 at the time

I do not remember "dark" in the title. My dad and I were sorta making fun about how predictable it was.
If I remember correctly, the leader of the vigilantes, the postal carrier, was the one who actually attacked the little girl.

[elperromagico]

5. It was a dog that attacked the little girl. n/t

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

7. I thought it was the mailman (Charles Durning) character, who was

actually a pedophile and had attacked the girl but put the blame on the mentally handicapped guy to take the heat off himself... Of course the scarecrow paid him a visit at the end...

[Lilith Velkor]

6. "Bubba didn't do it!"

My whole seventh grade class was shouting that for the rest of the school year.

[skygazer]

8. I remember that one

There was another one around the same time called "Bad Ronald" about yet another mentally challenged young man who accidentally killed the neighbor girl and his mother hid him in the house - they walled up one room for him. Then his mother ended up dying and the house got sold and he terrorized the family that moved in for a while and now I can't really remember the end.....

Must have been a popular motif at the time.