“Kmart’s new blue-light special mascot wasn’t very well received. He kept scaring away the customers.”

I know I would make a poor survivalist. When the zombie apocalypse comes don’t expect to find me living off the land in the high hills at my makeshift campsite. No my idea of roughing it  is more in line with a cheap roadside hotel that has hard beds and that don’t have those mini-fridge stocked with those neat little wine bottles. Just for fun I like to pretend I’m a freakish giant when I drink them. Give me a microwave over rubbing two sticks together anyday but mainly going camping is a flash back to those days of being crammed into a leaky tent with my cousin Ted whose uncontrollable flatulence could only be drowned out by his bear like snoaring. It seems everytime we did the family camping trip a terrential downpour would happen in the middle of the night creating a nice mudslide into our tent…mostly towards my side making a wading pool for me and my sleeping bag. I’d awake from my dreams of a buffet breakfast truck coming to save me in to being both soaked and hungry. My dad being the great outdoorsmen wouldn’t pack much food supplies instead opting to be  ”living off the land” by fishing or eating potentially poisonous berries along the way. The lack of fish in the nearby weeded lake didn’t seem to sway his determination either, so after a fine meal of saltines and blue gill we’d take a short hike in the to burn off all those extra calories. Now with as many horror movies as I’ve seen I’d  always halfway expect a masked psycho to jump out from behind a tree or a family of cannibals carrying us away to make us their next meal, but I figured I could just trip Teddy and buy myself some time. The camping trip would usually end with me desperately needing a shower and having a case of poison oak on my butt when I used those leaves for toilet paper. Ahhh those were good times.

Speaking of grizzled survivalist, Jack Palance is living off the land and is out to kick some alien butt in “It Came Without Warning.” This little 80’s made for TV sci-fi homage pits humanity against flying fanged frisbees that look like like vomit novelty props. A camouflaged dad and his hippy son are out hunting in the woods one day when suddenly super suction alien discs attache to their backs tossed at them from an unseen alien disc golfer. This particular part of the woods seems to be pretty popular for both disc golfing and camping as later that day a group of boy scouts and their troop leader also show up. The super trooper gets a dose of alien frisbee-fu and all the kids run away screaming from a shadowy lurking figure…well except for one kid who sort of just mosseys along instead. Just about that time a mystery van of college co-eds driven by Tom, a young David Curroso in mini shorts are heading towards the same wooded area for a relaxing camping trip. Beth (Lynn Theele), Greg (Christopher S. Nelson) and Sandy (Tarah Nutter) are along for this CSI miami camping trip of terror. If only Tom had some sunglasses he could cooly take off to indicate his disdained interest in this Camping Scene Investigation.

Once at the campsite Beth and Tom go off into the woods to perform their own “body frensics” leaving Greg and Sandy to better get to know each other. The couple mysterously doesn’t return so Greg and Sandy go off in search for the missing lover and their feathered hair. They eventually find them strung up in an old water shed along with the puss filled hunters and gooey camp scout trooper. High tailing it out there as fast as their wood-paneled van can carry them and wiping off aliens on their windshield along the way, they stop at a redneck bar for some help. The bar dwellers are already used to plenty of southern tales of alien abductions and don’t believe their story but then the crazy vet Sarge (Martin Landua) starts spouting off about the impending alien invasion and in his paranoid outburst shoots the Sherriff at the door (luckily he didn’t shoot the deputy.) Taylor played by Jack “my skin is 100% real leather” Palance shows up at the bar and tells the two about his own encounter with the alien years before and thankfully leaves out any of the alien probing stories. So they all head back to the alien love shack so Taylor can try to put a shot-gun slug in the predator wanna-be and add it to his trophies of alien kills in pickle jars. Taylor gets a vomit-disc to the knee and Sandy and Greg say asta-la-vista Taylor and run away screamin’ like little girls. Fleeing down the highway they get picked up by the crazy Sarge whose stolen the dead sheriff’s Police car and believes that they’re aliens too. The guy is definitely off his prozac. They go along with his delusions just long to  escape by a quick jump into the river and hide out in someone’ abandoned  house, post foreclosure. After a nap and a light snack Sandy wakes up to find Gary has been disced to death in a barcolounger with a little alien suction disc still sucking on his face. Sandy’s so jealous, oh and there’s a horrifying bubble headed alien hanging out in the living room too. The house party is just is getting started as Taylor shows up again limping but more grizzled then ever to help Beth escape. He then takes her back to the shed, the obvious safest place to go, where’s he’s rigged up the building with dynamite for his own fireworks display and a chance to yell “ALLLIEEEEN!!!” at the top of his lungs. Hey Jack Palance won oscar, who knows why he does these things.

This movie is a great example of b-movie cult 80’s TV. The tension ramps up towards the end and having Landua and Palance both in this type of b-movie is a rare treat. Retroman Steve says check it out but watch out for flying fake vomit.

-Alien disc golf
-Windshield wiper-fu
-Cat lynchings
-David Curros in 80’s shorts (more horrifying than the alien)
-Landua looniness
-Extreme Palance grizzliness
-Kill and store watersheds
-Fanged frisbees fake vomit

rated 8.6 out of 10

as Jack Palance would say “I crap movies better than this.”

Check out the trailer from It Came without Warning

“His decision to fight crime as Chocolate Chip Cookie Man was not received well within the super hero community.”

I would have to say that hunting is my least favorite sport that I’ve experienced in my lifetime. Give me basketball or football or even the nerve wrenching tension of Canadian curling. Just as long as you don’t put me in camoflauge and drop me in the woods. I’m not quite sure why they even call hunting a sport. There’s no running involved, well unless a bear is chasing you up a tree. There’s no throwing things except maybe empty beer cans in the woods. In fact there’s no real physical activity at all. Mostly it’s just sitting on your hinder shivering in a tree blind with a rifle barrel freezing to your groin hoping for the unlikely chance of a deer crossing your path to your pile of apples. “Oh look a magic pile of food..what a lucky deer I am that someone left this here for….KAAAABLAAAAAAAAM!!!”

Lucky that you picked up that semi automatic at Kmart last week so if at any point a large semi-trailer gets between you in the deer well he’s still a goner. Though Dick Cheney would beg to differ, I don’t feel other hunters are competiting against me nor do I mistake rich lawyers faces as targets, well most of the time. Give the deer a gun too and now we’ve got a real competetive sport. I’ve sat in the tree stands, slept in the deer blinds, and caught headlice in rustic hunting cabins but never caught buck fever at least nothing a couple shots of  Nyquil wouldn’t fix. I know some people say “Well if we don’t kill the deer they’ll just destroy our crops!” If they were locusts and this was biblical times then it’s a maybe but you’ll see at most five deer darting across a big empty field once in a winter. That’s not really an infestation. But I respect the hunter. They’re truly committed to their craft. Anyone that can sit out in a deerblind in a middle of a field all day is a man of patience and perseverance. It builds character, just look at what it did for Ted Nugget.

Speaking of people standing out in the middle of a field with nothing to do. Night of the Scarecrow introduces us to a vengeful scarecrow that unleashes an unholy terror on a group of redneck vigilantes. Larry Drake plays Bubba, a mentally challenged middle aged man who is wrongly accused of killing a young child. They’re lead by one of the the most evil postman ever seen on TV since the dark days of Mr. McFeely. Charles Durning plays Otis P. Hazelrigg (not his maiden name) the town postman who convinces a group of his friends to track down Bubba now disguised as a scarecrow and  shoot him up like a pinata at a gansta party.

After a circus courtroom hearing that had all the lawful proceedings of a skit from He-Haw, the judge throws out the case claiming it was all in self defense. As if these upstanding members of society would ever harm a fly on purpose. I mean who’d ever believe a postman would go on a murderous killing spree? If Judge Judy was there she’d mop up the floor with them and their plaid shirts and bolo ties. Later than night a mighty wind blows through town bringing with it the vengful spirit of Bubba and the strong odor of fertilizer manure. Soon a possessed scarecrow starts showing up in empty fields near their homes to put the creeper jeepers on his murdering foes. It’s mostly an intimidation move but causes the guys to panic and start suspecting each other of breaking their secret.

What you gotta love  is throughout the film Otis never once changes his mailman uniform. I swear he must shower and slept in it. Impressive also is his ability to pack away the food like it’s a 99 cent buffet even after killing an innocent man. Buffet’s cower in his presence. Otis’s friends start showing up dead it what appears to be work related accidents. Falling into wood chippers, drownings in grain silos, typical farming mishaps. But Otis’s paranoia kicks into overdrive as his tiny pea brain theorizes that it’s Bubba’s grieving mother or the prosecuting attorney causing all the ruckus trying to get him to confess.

A stern warning from Otis accidentally gives Bubba’s mom a fatal heart attack and he then proceeds to off one of his buddies with a shovel to the back of the skull from fear he might tattle on him. This brings up the Ottis murder-meter total to 3, already beating out the scarecrow’s in just a few short days. That’s not to shabby for a middle aged government worker.

Later after a drab halloween party where he gets drunk on spiked apple cider, he ends up getting chased down in a corn field by a rusty John Deere and meets his much deserved and pointed ending. Serves him right for all that junk mail delivery. Oh and his stupid hat.

So go put the flag down on your mailbox, turn the lights down low and cuddle up with your favorite bag of hay. Retroman Steve says check it out and bring a pitchfork.

- Dorky postal jungle hats
- Scarecrow target practice
- Farmer mulchers
- Feed grain drowning
- Gratuitous pancake eating
- Fat guys running in fields
- Shovel to the head

Speaking of creepy scarecrows on TV, Scarecrow Spud on Bob the Builder is hands down the most frightening.

Dark Night of the ScareCrow T-shirts available from Fright Rags At Fright Rags you can get this high quality horror shirt you can’t find anywhere else. Fright Rags has the best selection of horror shirts based on your favorite cult classics, creature features, and slasher flicks! Check out the Dark Night of the Scarecrow T-shirts

Check out a scene from Dark Night of the Scarecrow