The Scarecrow

The Scarecrow is far from slick: instead of rolling smoothly it is like a cogwheel, engaging our feelings at every turn.

The Scarecrow, New Zealand, 1982

Director: Sam Pillsbury
Production co: National Film Unit, Oasis Films
Producer: Rob Whitehouse
Director of photography: James Bartle
Production designer: Neil Angwin
Screenplay: Michael Heath, Sam Pillsbury
Adapted from the novel by Ronald Hugh Morrieson
Production manager: Grahame McLean
Sound editors: Jamie Selkirk, David Keene
Music: Andrew Hagan, Morton Wilson, Phil Broadhurst
Editor: Ian John

With: John Carradine (Salter), Tracey Mann (Prudence), Johnathan Smith (Ned), Daniel McLaren (Les), Anne Flannery (Ma), Des Kelly (Pa), Bruce Allpress (Uncle Athol), Johnathan Hardy (Charlie Dabney), Phillip Holder (Constable Ramsbottom), Denise O’Connell (Angela), Greer Robson (Lynette), Mark Hadlow (Sam Finn), Elizabeth Moody (Mabel Collinson)

35mm, 88 minutes, PG

Watch The Scarecrow trailer (7.59MB; 2.08 minutes)

The story is centred around Ned Poindexter and his 16 year old sister Prudence. The setting is the fictitious town of Klynham, in the early fifties. The crimes are chicken stealing and murder. Herbert Salter is the Scarecrow. Magician and murderer, hypnotist and sex maniac, he arrives late one moonlit night, swilling brandies and looking for victims. He insinuates himself into the heart of the town, somewhere between the pub and the funeral parlour. As Salter calculatingly eliminates interim victims in order to get to the object of his lust, the beautiful and ripening Prudence; her brother Ned sets out to find the chicken thief. Slowly but inevitably the two stories come together and brother and sister must recognise absolute evil for what it is when everyone around them embraces it.

“Praised for its fresh approach at Cannes and Edinburgh, The Scarecrow now stands out among the new releases in London. A brief outline – a sex maniac terrorizes a little town in New Zealand – may disguise it as a fashionable exploitation, while to talk of the charm of its small-town atmosphere may make it sound like Clochemerle; but either is unfair. Crime enters the life of fourteen-year old Ned when his chickens are stolen. With his friend and business partner, thirteen-year old Les, he takes his revenge, but steals the wrong hens. The same night, a stranger arrives in town: a drunken old conman, down on his luck, played by John Carradine with minimal action but with a Hollywood veteran’s talent for projecting a powerful presence. His aged courtesy and magicianship bemuse the grown-ups, only young Ned suspects his evil madness. The Scarecrow is faithful to RH Morrieson’s novel in showing the quirks of individuals, not a ‘typical’ family or ‘typical’ teenagers. Director Sam Pillsbury is disarmingly modest about making his first feature: when they staged a fire without special effects experts they nearly burnt down the street; when an actor playing the inexperienced, lovelorn policeman broke a glass door, he speared himself with a six-inch splinter. The Scarecrow is far from slick: instead of rolling smoothly it is like a cogwheel, engaging our feelings at every turn.” — Mari Kuttna, The Lady, 21 October 1982

“They call Ronald Hugh Morrieson’s stories ‘small-town Gothic’, which is a difficult definition for New Zealand – we lack creepy castles and ancestral tombs. But put it this way: when evil deeds are in the making in Morrieson’s stories the whole town shudders. Lights dim, shadows lengthen, the moon goes crooked In that moonlight, or in the daybreak of a party which has gone on too long, we meet the nocturnal people the Morrieson draws so well: the bookies, pool-hall sharks, drifters, publicans, undertakers. They come high-stepping down the main street in the light gravities of too much booze. Or they may be acting out roles from whatever movie is showing at the local bughouse, or dreaming on the clouds of adolescent sexuality. Morrieson stories usually have two distinct elements – comedy alongside plots of murder and arson. They’re put together with the verve and slapdash construction of a New Zealand outdoor dunny. The lives of their characters are roughly conjoined, hammered together amid fun and foolishness. But at the same time, beware the long drop, the evil nemesis which may claim the unwary. That conjunction of small-town dramas and a more deadly nastiness is presented, impeccably in the opening sentence of Morrieson’s novel The Scarecrow: “The same week our fowls were stolen, Daphne Moran had her throaty cut.” Director Sam Pillsbury’s film of the book starts at about the same point... Pillsbury’s atmospheres of small-town Gothic – a difficult feat with a lot of night shooting – are successful. The music too adds nicely to the film’s spooky moods. I think Morrieson, a musician himself, would have approved...” — Geoff Chapple, NZ Listener, 17 April 1982

Screenings: The Scarecrow screened on 6 August 2009 as part of a series of RH Morrieson adaptations; and on 7 February 2007 as part of the Adapted: NZ Literature into Film series