Movie Review: The Scar Crow (2009)

Directed by Pete Benson, Andy Thompson
Starring Kevyn Connet, Tim Major and Michael Walker
Run Time: 87 minutes

For 300 years, European communities panic with the fear of witches living among them. The witch-hunts seek out, torture and murder tens of thousands of women. The three Tanner sisters live in fear after their mother is hanged for witchcraft. In her absence, their incestuous father is making their lives miserable and eventually takes a kitchen knife to the face as the three witches in training exact revenge for his naughty behavior. They tie him to the scare crow pole in their field but before he dies he places a curse on them all, trapping them for eternity on the farm.



In the year 2009 the three girls devise a plan to release themselves from the curse but in order for it to work they must first re-animate their rotting father and use him as a weapon of slaughter in order to gain 4 souls to replace their own, trapped within the curse.

As fate would have it, four insurance salesmen show up at the farm, lost while out on a team-building exercise. Seeing the three ultra-hot wenches in corsets, these guys figure they are going to score big-time, but little do they know the murderous father lies in wait in full scare crow garb, ready to rip their souls from their bodies in the most heinous of fashion and use their body parts to build a new scare crow to watch over the cursed farm.

This was actually a pretty decent little movie, not great but it did have a few things going for it that a lot of horror fans will like. On the positive side, there’s plenty of eye-candy provided by Gabriella Douglas, Marysia Kay and Anna Tolputt, playing the roles of the three desperate and devious witches, (some very nice, although brief, frontal nudity is provided by two of the three actresses as well). Along with the eye-candy, The Scar Crow delivers in one department that is crucial to many horror fans, and that’s The Gore. As there is no shortage of blood-splattered dismemberment’s, disembowelment's and beheadings. All of which were done quite well, with 100% practical FX and no CGI, (bonus points right there).

On the negative side, the story-line was pretty ho-hum and uninspired. And the ending was disappointingly weak and predictable. This was a movie that had the feel of a story that was fleshed-out as an afterthought to compliment the kill scenes. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you, it just missed a golden opportunity to be a great movie by not putting as much thought into the story as was put into the sticky red stuff.

With that being said, I would still recommend you check this one out. Pretty girls and buckets of gore are a tough combination to beat, even if you have to yawn a few times along the way.
Here’s how I break it down-
Story: 5 out of 10
Gore-Level: 7.8 out of 10
Eye-Candy: 6.5 out of 10
Factor in one bonus point for no CGI nonsense and my overall score is a fairly respectable:
6.8 out of 10