Scarecrow Gone Wild
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Scarecrow Gone Wild is a low budget film released in 2004 about a group of college co-eds who are hunted down by a killer Scarecrow after a hazing ritual sends one male student -- a diabetic -- into a coma. The film is the third in a series of films about Scarecrows who kill people. The film was directed and written by Brian Katkin. Ken Shamrock, former NWA World Heavyweight Champion, stars in the film as the coach. The MPAA rated the film 'R' and it is 90 minutes long.
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[edit] Plot
The title of the film is clearly a cinematic nod to the infamous Girls Gone Wild, and Guys Gone Wild DVDs for sale featuring college students acting outrageous under the influence of alcohol. In the film, the male college students take out their newest member of the baseball team for a hazing ritual. The catch is that the newest member is only on the team because he needs the scholarship and had to have his best friend -- who is also on the team -- give a urine sample so that no one would know that he is a diabetic. The hazing ritual comes to a bitter end in haunted cornfield where the baseball players mistake a diabetic attack for his desire to play it rough. They tie him up to the scarecrow post and leave him for dead. The young man becomes the evil Scarecrow who decides to seek bloody revenge on his tormenters and pretty much everyone else in the film. The only hope of the film's heroes is to get their friend out of his coma. Yet the only hospital in the area is abandonded -- during Spring break because the rest of the students are too busy partying to get hurt -- and the Scarecrow does not seem to discriminate between friend and foe.
[edit] Reviews
Scarecrow Gone Wild has better production values than Scarecrow and Scarecrow Slayer. However, it still a low-budget horror film with very little gore and a level of tension that is akin to some old 1950s or 1960s horror films. The evil Scarecrow moves like 'Jason' in the Friday the 13th slasher series, but is clearly a guy in a mask. The 'surprise' ending should not surprise any seasoned audience member, and it is never terribly clear why we should root for characters that would engage in such a cruel hazing ritual or why no one ever thought to involve anyone else, such as the police or the military.
The one thing that makes the film stand out beyond the other low budget horror films that exist is that it seems to have a homosexual subtext to it.
[edit] Gay subtext
The intention of the film may have been to demonstrate the heterosexual male bonding that occurs with a fraternity of mostly white, middle class students. True, there is one mild joke about 'backside boy' and the constant displays of female breasts suggest that the film is targeted at a twenty-something men who are sexually attracted to women. Yet, events of the film seem to suggest that a strong sexual tension exists between all the male characters, with the exception of the coach who only plays for keeps.
Much like in A Nightmare On Elm Street 2, the homoeroticism in Scarecrow Gone Wild is a far cry from pornography, but the looks, and touches that the male actors give each other has a twinge of homoeroticism that is akin to something you might see in a Abercrombie & Fitch advertisement. There is nothing wrong with having this homoerotic sexual tension among male characters in a horror film. It widens the possible audience and gives a low-budget slasher-horror film and its characters great depth.
