Gene Wilder's Satanic Scarecrow Flick from the 70s

Okay, I get why today's entry isn't going to appeal to the average Blumhouse fan.  It's self-evidently artsy-fartsy.  But I'm surprised it doesn't seem to have been embraced by the horror community at all, and allowed to become surprisingly obscure.  I've seen plenty of threads in r/horror and similar asking for evil scarecrow flicks, yielding suggestions far inferior to this, and few with such star power.  Specifically, I'm talking about The Scarecrow, Boris Sagal (The Omega Man)'s Emmy Award winning 1972 adaptation of Percy Mackaye's 1908 play.  It's a Broadway Theatre Archive production, but to be clear, if you've never seen one, these aren't merely filmed staged performances.  This is a fully produced and edited movie with varied shots, edited takes, etc etc.  I wouldn't expect it to overshadow Dark Night Of the Scarecrow, Dark Harvest or Scarecrows, but it should at least be placed on the same page in the record books.

It's alive!

This one in particular is a sort of expansion of the Nathaniel Hawthorne story Feathertop.  It follows the same rough plot: a witch brings a scarecrow to life to seduce the daughter of a judge who wronged her.  But this one is much more dramatically complicated, creepier and thematically rich.  This time it isn't just a random scarecrow brought to life but the reincarnation of the witch and justice's long dead son, and the devil himself is his companion.  Comparing the Natalie Woods adaptation of Feathertop to this is like going from Disney's Beauty and the Beast to Cocteau's La Bete et la Bete, or from Alice In Wonderland to Dennis Potter's Alice.

Now I don't want to give the wrong impression.  This is not a body count horror; there's no blood and the supernatural special effects are rudimentary.  But not many modern horror flicks deliver like the scene where Lord Ravensbane agrees to sing for the minister, the mayor and his mistress.  Gene Wilder brings the intense eccentricity he displayed as Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  It's a wild, layered performance that initially appears broad and simplistic, but expands and twists to eventually cover all the human, and bizarrely inhuman, bases.  Blythe Danner is both winsome and sufficiently irritating with her maddeningly vacillating affections.  And you've got a wonderful supporting cast of 70s television stars, all delivering satirically punny, Shakespearian-style dialogue.

This 2003 DVD from Kultur, one in their long line of Broadway Theatre Archive releases, is unfortunately it our only option.  Why "unfortunately?"  Well...

2003 Kultur DVD.

For starters, the picture is extra fullscreen at 1.29:1 and very interlaced.  It looks like they've applied too much sharpening tool to out of focus footage.  The contrast is low and the colors are bland.  But, if you're used to old television on old single-layer DVDs, it's not worse than what you're probably used to trawling through.  This is clearly based on a tape master, but I'm not sure if these BTA programs were shot on film and just transferred to videotape for television, or if it's tape all the way down (I didn't catch any tell-tale signs of film damage or cigarette burns).  The DVD throws up a disclaimer saying that, "[t]he Broadway Theatre Archive has attempted to preserve, as closely as possible, the original audio and visual components of this classic program. Because the program is digitally remastered, its high resolution may reveal the limitations of the technology available at the time of production."  But if you look at what Kultur did to Bondarchuk's gorgeous War and Peace, it's clear these guys could make anything look like garbage.  I only own a handful of Kultur DVDs, but they all look like this, BTA or not.

For audio, we just have the original mono in Dolby Digital 2.0.  There's a bit of buzz to it, but it's clearer and stronger than you might expect based on the picture quality.  There are no subtitles and no extras, not even a trailer (though I doubt one was ever made, so you can't fault Kultur for that), except for a little 5-minute clip-show of other Broadway Theatre releases.  It also includes an insert with act/ chapter stops.

But at the end of the day, hell yeah I recommend this.  I'd love, love, love if a boutique label would restore this from the original negatives.  Or, if there's no such thing, maybe a label like TerrorVision could give us a blu-ray.  But I'm certainly not holding my breath, so this old DVD will have to do, alongside our dupey looking Tales From the Crypt boxed sets and Masterpiece Theater DVDs.  Unfortunately, this one is harder to find for a reasonable price than most of the BTA discs, I guess because it's a rare cult/ horror themed one (the only one?).  Still, you won't regret the trouble you take to track it down.  ...And, actually, it should overshadow Dark Harvest.