Vicious Vigilantes: Bubba’s attackers (left to right) Otis P. Hazelrigg (Charles Durning), Philby (Claude Earl Jones), Harless Hocker (Lane Smith) and Skeeter Norris (Robert F. Lyons).
“Some years before Scarecrow, a mutual friend told him about a
film I had made [based on] an Ambrose Bierce Civil War tale titled ‘One of the Missing,’” says Feigelson. “Being a Bierce fan, he asked to see it, so I arranged a screening at his home and he loved it. I told him I felt my weakest area as a filmmaker was in writing, as are most [filmmakers]. He told me that he had several young filmmakers that he was mentoring and would I like to do likewise? I pounced on it.” As valuable as Bradbury’s input would eventually prove to be, how-
ever, Feigelson was so unenthused with his own initial draft of Scare- crow that he didn’t even bother submitting it for an appraisal. “It was terrible,” he admits. “The usual stuff: a young couple buys
a farm with a ghostly killer scarecrow. Ugh! Stinko! You’d think I’d ask Bradbury to help out, but the thing was so awful I just couldn’t let him see it. Time goes by. I contemplate, meditate, postulate and finally a new direction – the present one – took shape. I completed a draft, I sent it and within a week I got it back. It was slashed un- mercifully with red pencil. I called Ray and said I didn’t know what else to do. He said, ‘Look at the notes, figure it out and rewrite.’ I did. This gut-wrenching back-and-forth went on seven more times! Finally, the last draft arrived with only one simple line: ‘Now, leave it alone.’” In retrospect, Feigelson appreciates Bradbury’s “tough love.” As is frequently the case, this was only the beginning of a tortuous
trip to Development Hell. Feigelson and his two partners initially tried to make the movie in Houston as an independent feature, but, as Feigelson puts it, “Hollywood needs to make pictures to survive; Texas oilmen don’t,” so the script went to LA, where Elmo Williams’ (famous editor of the film High Noon) company Gaylord Productions optioned it and took it to CBS. The network turned the project down twice. Feigelson then
floated the idea of mounting it as a theatrical feature, but by that point Williams had lost faith. Undaunted, Feigelson decided that bold steps were required. “I was not satisfied so I went to CBS myself,” he recalls. “I made
probably the most eloquent, and desperate, pitch of my career. I sug- gested to them that only a ‘reader’ had looked at it and did a one- sentence coverage that read something like: ‘Small-town bigots get their just rewards from a killer scarecrow.’ I told them that the movie
was much, much more than that. It was a morality play with a strong message about universal justice and innocent love. I also had the temerity to say that if we didn’t make this picture it would be lose-lose for both of us. J.D. Feigelson and CBS! That got their attention. They did read it and the rest is history.” One remarkable quality most fans of the film agree upon is that it’s
very easy to forget that you’re watching a made-for-TV movie, let alone one from 30 years ago. The violence isn’t wildly graphic, and the lan- guage is prime-time sanitary, but Scarecrow has an undercurrent of nastiness rarely found in even the best network fodder of the ’70s and ’80s, including the milieu of Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson. Despite the supernatural elements, much of that tone derives from the film’s underlying themes of cruelty and bigotry. “The question of television network parameters is an interesting one,”
Feigelson muses. “On the one hand, it is said that the movie is rather vi- olent and suggestive for its time and, on the other, there’s not much vi- olence at all. Unlike the mythology that’s been built up around Dark Night of the Scarecrow, the script was shot virtually as written. We did not soft-pedal anything. Yes, CBS did go a little farther than they normally would have on a TV movie, but they felt it was justified by the moral message of the film. As the fans know, it is much more than bloodlet- ting.” One point on which Feigelson is particularly adamant is that the cut
of the film being released on DVD is the one that the filmmakers in- tended us to see. Some are reporting that we shot more footage for the ending or
changed something,” he says. “As Nixon said, ‘Let me make my- self perfectly clear...’ The movie is intact! A single shot of two sec- onds’ duration was added for clarification, a clarification missing in the original cut. Unless someone told you, you’d never know it. But it is pointed out in the commentary track.” Three decades after Dark Night of the Scarecrow first aired,
Feigelson is clearly more appreciative than ever of the film’s loyal fan base, and his excitement over the reissue is palpable. “As I tell my filmmaker friends, without the fans we don’t exist,” he con- cludes. “And it’s at the conventions that I get to meet, shake hands and rap with Scarecrow lovers. It really is the high point for me. Love you guys!”
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