Horrors of October - Children of the Corn

Children of the Corn (1984)

A young couple driving through the endless cornfields of Nebraska suddenly and hilariously plow through a dying kid that has run on to the road. They head towards the small town of Gatlin to seek help, only to find that it is now lorded over by weapon wielding children, who have killed all of the adults three years ago and pray to an demonic deity known as "He Who Walks Among The Rows". CHILDREN OF THE CORN is a great example of a delectable horror plot that is ravaged and ruined by a bunch of makers that have no idea what they're doing. It takes nearly half of the running time until the kid bleeding like a stuck pig is turned into roadkill, thus finally kicking off the main action. We get some backstory about the kids and their new fangled religious order but we barely scratch the surface on the two main antagonists, preacher boy Issac and older enforcer Malachi, and it's never explained why they need to make gasoline. There's also the huge plot hole everyone can spot of how no one has reported this uprising in Gatlin already. The film is partly narrated by the sole cute boy of the cult, who just states what is obviously on screen and intrudes several times until being completely dropped. Director Fritz Kiersch thinks its wise to constantly cut between two parallel events, with one event featuring someone in immediate peril while the other event has a character doing something banal. Linda Hamilton is utterly wasted as a walking doormat while Peter Horton constantly aggravates the viewer with his naive demeanor, inability to not run like a dork, refusal to disarm or beat up a kid, and his amazing non-selling of a deep knife wound to the chest. However, it is the finale that takes the cake, where the Big Evil being revealed to be an underground creature one minute and a dreadful special effect the next. And what better way to end your horror film with the hero hooking up hoses to fight off a mild windstorm and then lamely knocking out someone while "The End" is placed over him? Stephen King had the right mind to disown this bad produce.


FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5