YMMV / Dark Night of the Scarecrow

• Cult Classic: The film isn't very well-known today despite being the progenitor of the Scary Scarecrows trope in film, but is appreciated by those who have seen it for being a genuinely effective horror movie that delivers most of its chills by setting mood and building tension, rather than through cheap jump scares and bucketloads of gore.
• Epileptic Trees: Some fans of the film theorize that there was no ghost, it was really Marylee who was taking revenge on Bubba's killers, and she had gone crazy and hallucinated the Scarecrow who appears at the end. This does require the viewer to overlook several things in the film that a young girl simply could not have arranged on her own with no outside assistance, but it's at least food for thought. Other theories are that it was the D.A. or a random citizen behind the killings, but the film itself provides very little evidence for the former and none at all for the latter. Being a horror film, the story seems to go with the idea that it's Bubba's ghost taking vengeance from beyond the grave.
• Narm: Arliss cackling the words "FRIIIIED CHICKEN!!" over and over while the boys celebrate beating the murder rap, with the timing of them fitting into the background music to the point it almost seems like he's about to break into song.
• Nightmare Fuel: Philby's demise in the silo. Notably The overhead shot of the silo full of grain with only a waving arm holding a torch unburied. Until the arm stops and slumps onto the grain and letting go of the torch as the grain stops falling.
• Tear Jerker: Bubba's murder. His terrified blue eyes peering out through the scarecrow disguise and his final whispered plea that "Bubba didn't do it!" both have a very haunting effect.
• The Woobie: Bubba's the most tragic woobie of them all.
• Sequelitis: In 2022, an unnecessary Direct to Video sequel, Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2, was released.