Season 1 Episode 4
One thing that will always be creepy is a scarecrow. Sure, there can be cute ones at times that folks love to look at or even singing ones who wished they had a brain. But if you even took those cute ones and placed them in the middle of an old field at midnight, they will be just as creepy. Since creepy is Creepshow’s primary objective here (I mean, it’s in the name), it makes sense that they would have an episode centered around a terrifying scarecrow.
The episode opens with a boy named Harold, Harry, to his friends (Logan Allen) sitting beside a creek fishing when his friend rolls up on a bicycle. The friend, Smitty (Dylan Gage), comes down to the creek to join Harold. When Smitty walks up to Harold, he notices his face is bruised and battered. Instantly he knows it was Harold’s older brother Billy that did it to him. Harold assures Smitty, however, that he got Billy (Voltair Colin Council) back, maybe even gave him a black eye.
Smitty, after offering Harry a place to stay and Harry declining, leaves to get back to tending his grandmothers’ feet…gross. Before he leaves, he hands Harry a box of treats and tells him not to eat them all, but maybe they will make him feel better. Now all alone, Harry starts snacking on the chocolate. His solitude does not last long, however. While he is sitting beside the creek, listening to the gentle sounds of the water, he hears footsteps on the bridge above. He thinks maybe his friend has come back, so he calls out, “Smitty?” His bike is then thrown over the edge of the bridge, and his older brother appears. Fear grips Harry as he stands to his feet, apologizing to his brother. He promises he will “fix the dent,” giving some insight into how the fight started. His brother starts pushing him around and forces Harry to run away. It is pretty apparent that Billy is a complete psycho.
Harry runs across the creek and takes off through the woods. Billy, screaming that he is going to kill his little brother, gives chase. In his escape, Harry comes to a locked gate and decides to enter. It is now dark, and he is running through a small graveyard. One of the newer-looking headstones reads, “Mavis Brenner, beloved wife. A true companion.” As Harry is making his way to a house beyond the graveyard, he passes through an old field. In the center is one of the scariest looking scarecrows I have ever seen. It towers over harry with a top hat and what appears to be broken ribs. As he examines the hideous thing, Harry sees it has fang-like teeth and some kind of man-made heart in its chest with a stick piercing it. Billy is now closing in on him as he screams, “Harold, I’m going to find you,” and leaps the locked gate at the cemetery. Harry reaches up and grabs the stick, pulling it free from the beast’s chest.
Harry runs past the old farmhouse and hides behind a tractor. While hiding, he sees the giant shadow of some kind of monster lurking in the trees. Not knowing if it is his brother or perhaps something more sinister, he races up the steps and bangs on the door of the house, begging to be let in. He turns the knob and races inside, slamming the door behind him just as something significant crashes into it and begins banging on the now locked door. Harry cries, begging his brother to please stop and that he is sorry. The banging stops, and the knob begins to turn. Harry looks up at the window at the top of the door and sees the giant scarecrow standing there.
Billy, unaware of the monster lurking in the field with him, passes the house screaming for Harry. As he turns to look at the door again, Harry sees tree branches coming in under the door and reaching for the door lock. Now gripped with fear, he drops the stick that once stabbed the scarecrow and flees upstairs. However, as he is racing up them, Harry falls through the stairs and lands in the basement, where he finds a corpse. The body is in an old chair and is completely engulfed in cobwebs. The face is missing, and the shotgun lying between the dead man’s legs gives a pretty big clue as to where the face went.
Harry finds a letter on the floor, slowly approaching the body, a suicide letter explaining everything that happened. The letter says that a year after Mavis had died, the man became incredibly lonely. The man was consumed by the loneliness. He was so lonely that he decided to create himself a companion. So, he went to work on the scarecrow. He built the body out of straw and used bones he found in the field. The bones are a large jawbone of some animal and the rib cages of another. He put a suit on the companion, but something was still missing. He then found an old paper heart that mavis had made and placed it in the chest of his new companion.
One day as the farmer walked onto the front porch, he noticed the scarecrow was breathing and rocking in a chair. The sight started the farmer, and he dropped his cup. The scarecrow used his branches to pick up the cup and hand it back to the farmer. A short while later, a girl scout came to the house to sell cookies. The scarecrow climbed down off its roost and killed the little girl. Knowing that he created a monster, the farmer decided to end the nightmare he made. As the scarecrow climbed back onto its roost, the farmer stabbed it through its heart with his walking stick. He then came back to the house, wrote the letter, and kissed the end of a shotgun goodnight.
Now understanding what is going on, Harry finds himself trapped in this basement with the monster slowly coming down the stairs. He takes up the shotgun and hides behind the corpse. When the beast sees the dead farmer, he pauses for a moment, and that’s when Harry jumps out from behind the body and attempts to shoot the monster. The gun jams and harry can run past him up the stairs but is caught once he gets upstairs. With the monster standing over him, Harry reaches out and grabs the stick he earlier dropped about to kill him. The scarecrow lets him go and kneels before him. Understanding the power this stick holds, Harry plunges it into the creature ending its life once again.
What would Creepshow be without a bit of revenge? Harry goes back home and sews his sleeping brother up in his sheets. Once he is finished, he taps Billy on the chest with the stick and wakes him up. Billy, thinking that Harry has come to get his beating, wakes up laughing at first. It isn’t long, however, before he realizes that the is sewed shut in his sheets. Now screaming, Billy asks what’s going on, and Harry replies, “Just collecting what I’m owed.” The light flashes, and now visible is the scarecrow in the corner of the room stretching its branches out to silent Billy for good.
Creepshow is always good at a revenge story, and this one is no different. The acting on Logan Allen’s part is terrific, but the older brother played by Voltair Colin Council is really bad. So bad that it almost takes away from the great story. Luckily, he is not shown on camera that often, so the tale is still good.
Written exclusively for TheLastPicture.Show by Jacob Ruble
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