Written and Directed by:
Pete Benson and Andy Thompson
Starring: Kevyn Connett, Tim Major & Michael Walker
Review by Fettdog
PLOT:
Four guys from a big city insurance company are sent on a countryside team
building exercise, but they would much rather be watching football, drinking
beer and chasing anything in a skirt. Their luck seems to change when they meet
three attractive sisters who appear to live and work alone on a farm close to a
small village with a pub. Before long, however, it becomes apparent that rather
than lay them, the sisters are more intent on laying them to rest to break an
old family curse.
REVIEW:
The Scar Crow is the latest in the recent line of independent British horror
movies, and comes across as an entertaining hybrid of lost in the woods Brit
flicks like Severance and Wilderness (both 2006) and the old supernatural Hammer
Horror bodice rippers.
The movie kicks off with a brief
prologue in the year 1709, in which a young lady is ducked in a pond to see if
she is a witch before being strung up from the nearest tree by the local lynch
mob after surviving this somewhat unfair test. Watching the fun are three girls
into whose world we are then drawn, as we are witness to the incestuous abuse
that is dealt out by their father. When he decides that it’s time for the
youngest to become the object of his affections they murder him and hide his
body in plain sight in the cornfield, hanging it from a scarecrow’s perch but
not before he curses them, condemning them to remain on the farm for all
eternity.
We then jump forward three hundred
years to find our quartet of highflying horny protagonists, all of whom manage
to pull off obnoxious without straying into unlikeable, setting out on an
outward bound expedition that none of them wants to do. Thinking they’ll be
smart and hole up at the nearest pub until a friend they’ve rung on a concealed
cell phone arrives to pick them up, they chance across the farm that is home to
the three voluptuous sisters who haven’t aged a day since they offed their
father.
To the sisters – Vanessa, Prim and
Proper, played by Marysia Kay, Anna Tolputt and Gabrielle Douglas – the arrival
of the four unsuspecting guys at the farm is an unmissable opportunity to break
their eternal curse, having discovered that they can do so by resurrecting their
dead father using a scarecrow assembled from the parts of five fresh bodies.
Thus the scene is set for an entertaining riot of blood, breasts and butchery
that put a king sized smile on my face.
Written and directed by the first time
duo of Andy Thompson and Pete Benson, The Scar Crow feels like a much bigger
movie than its £100,000 ($150,000) budget would suggest. The script is tight and
gives the actors plenty of opportunity to shine while acknowledging its
influences, such as the pub’s locals who could easily have been regulars in The
Slaughtered Lamb, bypassing advice about staying off the moors in favour of
warning the lads to keep away from the farm.
As you’d (hopefully) expect from a
horror movie, The Scar Crow boasts some very impressive gore gags (courtesy of
Mike Peel, who also plays the barman in the local pub), including the first on
screen penis removal since Hostel II and a particularly bloody chest bursting
scene that’s a million miles away from the Nostromo but every bit as effective.
The Scar Crow himself is your common or
garden burlap hooded straw man, but is no less menacing for it. He doesn’t get
much screen time, but as with the best villains less is more and so when he does
show up it’s shocking and works well. In between his appearances the movie
rattles along at a decent pace, never slacking but never feeling rushed, and
despite the supernatural leanings of the tale the script never feels
unbelievable.
Clocking in at a shade under ninety
minutes, The Scar Crow looks great, drenched in bold, primary colors, and has
the feel of a superior b-movie or an extended episode of the old Hammer House Of
Horror anthology series (and I mean that as a compliment).
With a decent story, superb effects
(particularly given the very low budget), and a heady mix of blood, breasts and
black humor, The Scar Crow ticks all the boxes that make this horror fan happy
and kept me entertained right up until the satisfying, if a little sudden and
predictable, finale. Well worth a look.
RATING: 7/10