Customer Reviews

Dark Harvest 3: Scarecrow

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1 star:		(7)

 

 

This season he takes his final bounty...

...And pray to God that neither he nor this series ever comes back!

In 1921, a voodoo-practicing witch stuffs a scarecrow with a brain, heart, and possibly other organs. The James brothers and their gang of moonlighters decide to take over the witch's territory and kill her in front of the scarecrow. As we may be able to assume from the back cover and un-dramatic flashbacks throughout the film, the scarecrow then goes on a brutal rampage and butchers the entire gang. The farm then peacefully gets passed down generation to generation within the James clan.

Fast-forward to 1981. A group of friends (who don't at all act like friends) is getting together for their yearly "hangout", a tradition they've maintained since high school (I'm going to assume these people didn't go to college) in order to keep in touch. This year, the "protagonist" Brett James (Clay Brocker) has decided that the group will spend the weekend at the aforementioned farm. And thus the dubiously similar setup to Dark Harvest (I) leads to the action...

Admittedly, the third installment boasts a few improvements over the first two films. Though the shoddy camerawork ranks somewhere between the absolute nadir seen in "The Maize" and that of the original, the "special effects" are grossly improved over the first two. The scarecrow killer is convincing enough as a horror-movie monster, and though certain scenes (such as one in which a victim is being "disemboweled" and she is clearly wearing a cardboard box full of organs that only vaguely look like human viscera under her shirt) are laughably bad, the effects are on the whole believable.

The direction is also superior to the crapfest work we saw in the first two films; the atmosphere is much more suspenseful (keep in mind, though, that on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most suspenseful, this still ranks in at a solid 1).

Unfortunately, the "few" improvements mentioned above end here. Only one of the actors are competent (the blind preacher) - one even smiles while she is supposedly having a seizure/blackout! The dialogue, and indeed the whole plot, is woefully full of holes. For example, a man barges into the cabin to tell the others that his (Wife? Girlfriend?) has been taken by the scarecrow; a minute later, at the scene of the crime, he says "Where did the body go!? It was just here!!!" In another instance, a man declares that he and another person go look for a missing woman. Two seconds later, he and the person begin discussing escaping the farm. A detective that falls prey to the James brothers at the outset of the film earns the award of being the worst actor of all time, managing to not show emotion as he is ambushed and taken hostage by the group of thugs.

The final conclusion? This movie is the best of the trilogy, which makes it only the third worst movie of all time. If you've watched the first two and are interested in this, you obviously either have a flair for the morbid (in this sense, for morbidly bad movies, not for horror) or actually enjoyed them. In either case, this turd installment will definitely sate your palate. If you haven't dabbled in the steaming pile of feces that is the "Dark Harvest" series, don't start. Turn, walk away, and never look back.

Lions Gate movie and not something Asylum did. The acting was extremely bad. A nasty young man inherits a cabin in the woods that is cursed by the voodoo woman who they ejected. While he is arguing with his gf by a scarecrow he punches/slaps her to the ground and spills some blood, I think. The movie isn't too coherent in anything. At one point they go into the basement and get a book. This is apparently some voodoo book. There are still animal bones (and a dog's skull) hanging from the basement ceiling which no one seemed to notice or care. They carried the leather bound book upstairs, but when one of the girls touches the book she passes out. Why? What was in the book? It seems to disappear from the story, possibly having to go back to the set of The Evil Dead. There is some nudity in the movie for the sake of nudity. The first nude shot was of a female torso which had no face attached to it and clearly didn't belong to the woman it was supposed to be connected to. And the scarecrow that comes to life, is missing half his right arm before he becomes animated, then suddenly has a whole one. What was really sad was that the POS movie was dedicated to the loving memory of Ben Dixon's (director/writer/producer) father. Of course I really don't know what kind of relationship they had.

this movie is so bad you would have to watch Plane 9 from Outer space to see one that is worse. Acting is horrible, writing is horrible, camera work is horrible....the entire movie is horrible. Best use for this DVD is as a coaster.

Dark Harvest 3: Scarecrow (Skarecrow): 1 out of 10: In Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity there is the Theory of Time Dilation... Light travels at a constant speed regardless of the speed of its source. Since the movie itself moves at the speed of an arthritic sloth, the light emitted seems to actually slow time. (Reports of a Fermi Liquid emitting from the DVD player are to this date unconfirmed.) As a result this movie feels a lot longer that an hour and change. Even on fast-forward (And you will be reaching for that fast forward button) it clocks in somewhere around eternity.

If you are familiar with Lionsgate's own version of Project Greenlight (This is where they buy a home movie, put a fancy cover on it and sneak it into the horror section of your local Wal-Mart), you will not be surprised by the complete and utter lack of entertainment value contained within. To make matters worse this is marketed as part of the Dark Harvest series though the film was made years before and has nothing to do with that lame movie. It is as if you bought an unreleased Mighty Ducks sequel and tried to pass it off as a Friday The 13th film.

The line reading (I refuse to call it acting) is uniformly awful. This is a collection of deadbeat dads and strippers pretending to be in a movie between cans of Schlitz. The camera work is of drunken father shooting vacation film quality. In addition, while the special effects are okay; the most freighting moment is the breast augmentation scars in the nude scene.

The story is awful, the sets are from a Haunted Halloween put on by ADHD middle school students and once again the line reading (remember this is not acting anymore than sinking to the bottom of a pool is swimming) is distracting beyond mere words. Avoid at all costs, lest you find yourself ageing faster than your loved ones.


Lord knows you wouldn't want to see even still shots of the film so here is some art.

Unwaveringly abysmal acting and a truly lame screenplay relegate this straw-headed clunker to the back fields of lucky-to-be straight-to-video obscurity. If there's any good news here, it's that DARK HARVEST 3 manages to be better than DH2, but then, nearly anything would - even this sloppy, frightless, and amateurish excursion into tropeville. It isn't just derivative, it's *awfully* derivative, in the most literal sense; the dedicated horror fan will easily recognize the influence of several better films that have been ruthlessly pillaged for ideas, which are then shamelessly fumbled. I won't say "don't watch this" outright, because the aforementioned (and astoundingly terrible) performances by everyone might qualify the movie for a certain "so bad it's good" notoriety in some circles. To wit, in lieu of actually emoting, the actors either shout their lines repeatedly, emit bizarre sounds, or engage in behavior so odd that it's distracting (one character, when frightened, begins audibly sniffing the air and the coat she's hiding behind; another offers a shaken woman an obviously empty cup, which she pretends to sip). This one irrevocably confirms the long-held suspicion of many that Lionsgate will put their name on anything.

yeah...duh!!! you see i sit here looking up titles for my collection of horror movies .i would prefer that they are great horror movies,good horror at the least.heck ,i have my share of bad horror movies.i do get some sick enjoyment in watching a bad one from time to time,just to remind myself i could do better.i bought the first dark harvest some time back in a bargain basket at some store.really it was bad but a good kind of bad.then i find it had two sequels.well....to fill out the collection.....bad idea.dark harvest 2 was a trainwreck without the blood and guts.dark harvest3 ,now this is a whole different level of bad.all of this movie is just wrong .could have been so much better even with a small budget.to boil it down all i had to do was read the damn reviews,BUT NO!!!!!!!i had to fill my collection.i ordered this piece of crap for 11 cents and im seriously thinking or getting my lawyer to sue to recoop my losses there.please folks,if you bought the very first one,for the love of all you hold holy ,count that as a wake up call and just forget the series name and the sequels.you will be okay.just concentrate on pleasant thoughts,then watch silver bullet or american werewolf for your horror jones

As you can plainly see from the other reviewers they all think this is a terrible movie. They were being kind.

This third entry in the DARK HARVEST series is absolutely one of the worst movies to come around since PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE. This one's not even campy though. The scarecrow changes its hood numerous times throughout the movie, and the threadbare plot has so many holes, it's like swiss cheese. A total waste of time...don't bother.