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Review (Contains Spoilers)

It has to be said that in all honesty the endlessly vast array of Stephen King adaptations to hit both big and small screen, in terms of horror at least, have made for a largely shoddy bunch. If one were to group them all together for assessment only Brian De Palma’s classic Carrie (1976), Tobe Hooper’s flesh-crawling television adaptation of Salem’s Lot (1979) and Stanley Kubrik’s classic (if somewhat loose) take on The Shining (1980) would really qualify for the “classic” tag.

Outside of this mighty trio, perhaps the most famous horror film adapted from a King novel/story would have to be Children Of The Corn. Adapted from a short story which appeared in King’s diverse Night Shift anthology, Children Of The Corn upon its original theatrical release was largely panned by critics and performed disappointingly at the US box-office recouping a modest $14,6000,000 off of its estimated $3,000,000 budget, a figure considered a letdown at the time compared to the huge returns generated by other King adaptations. It is also worth noting that Stephen King loathes this film.

However, Children Of The Corn would become one of the first are foremost examples of a film which enjoyed a hugely successful second life through the burgeoning viewing medium of home video. Children Of The Corn would indeed become a hugely popular title on video striking a chord with an audience who had not caught it on its theatrical run. The film eventually garnered enough of a cult following to generate a sequel in 1993 and when that too proved popular on video a franchise was born! As of the time of writing there are a grand total of seven films in the series, marking the astonishing ascension of Children Of The Corn from a poorly reviewed, box-office failure to a minor cultural phenomenon.

The film takes place in and around the tiny religious community of Gatlin, Nebraska. Gatlin is an unremarkable, religiously inclined community in the heartland of America, that is until one fateful Sunday afternoon when the towns children, led by evil child preacher Isaac Chroner (Franklin) and his sadistic henchman Malachai (Gains) brutally massacre every single adult in town. With their parents and elders all dead the children of Gatlin, under Isaac’s leadership, form their own religious sect out if the cornfields paying worship and blood sacrifice to “He Who Walks Behind The Rows” – a mysterious deity said to inhabit the vast expanses of corn.

Into this nightmare venture a young doctor named Burt (Horton) and his girlfriend Vicky (Hamilton) who whilst riving along the highway near Gatlin run down a young child who staggers out unexpectedly into the middle of the road, his throat having been savagely cut by an unseen assailant only moments before. Burt and Vicky decide to report the boys murder to the authorities but soon become hopelessly lost in the areas maze of roads which all look identical due to the endless expanses of corn which surround them on all sides.

Fate eventually lends a hand by leading the couple to Gatlin where they are soon set upon by the demonic children. When Vicky is captured by Malachai and his cronies, Burt is forced into action. He himself narrowly avoids capture and strikes up a desperate alliance with an orphaned boy named Job (Kriger) and his apparently psychic sister Sarah (McEvoy) – two children who while not members of Isaac’s cult have been spared death due to Sarah’s clairvoyant gift. With their assistance Burt prepares for nightfall and a confrontation not only with the crazed adolescents but also the mysterious “He Who Walks Behind The Rows”.

Although its sizeable, ardent fan base would suggest Children Of The Corn to be a legitimate genre classic, this is not really the case. Children Of The Corn as with Joel Schumacher’s comparable teenybopper “horror” favourite The Lost Boys (1987) struck a chord with predominantly teen audiences who seemingly get a kick out of seeing their own age group depicted as fanatical killers and vampires. Meanwhile, in contrast there is a tendency amongst die hard horror fans to heap scorn upon this film, partly due to the proliferation of crap sequels t eventually spawned and also it would seem, because of its popularity with audiences who do not have any developed interest in the genre.

Given fair, balanced judgement Children Of The Corn really turns out to be a film of two distinct halves, the first one being considerably good and the latter by contrast proving to be depressingly poor. For the first fifty minutes or so Fritz Keirsch directs the proceedings with an assured hand. Right from the outset Children Of The Corn grabs the viewer by the throat with the famous opening coffee shop massacre of the Gatlin adults. This is an effective, startling and surprisingly brutal spectacle (for a mainstream horror film) as adults choke on poison, throats are cut and the unfortunate proprietor’s hand is sadistically fed into a meat slicer.

Having set an ominous tone with this barnstorming opener the film then slows down considerably, but maintains a steadily generated sense of foreboding as Burt and Vicky venture closer and closer to Gatlin and its terrible secret. The couple’s highway collision with the staggering form of the dying boy Joseph is a terrifically engineered jolt and a genuine air of apprehension is generated as the couple become hopelessly lost in the corn-surrounded roads which all strangely seem to lead towards Gatlin. Another ongoing touch that proves effective is young Sarah’s clairvoyance which is conveyed through her obsessive habit of drawing childish looking but macabre crayon drawings, which eerily foreshadow future events. Additionally Jonathan Elias contributes an effective if somewhat repetitive score which makes appropriate and sometimes chilling use of a children’s choir.

Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton make a good effort in the lead roles and have a convincing chemistry as a screen couple no doubt stemming from the fact that they were at one time an item, having been briefly wed (they married in 1979 but divorced in 1980). R.G Armstrong (B-list cinema’s master of the cantankerous) crops up briefly and is typically gruff and bullish as a gas station who knows more about Gatlin than he lets on (and winds up paying for it). The real stars of the show however are John Franklin and Courtney Gains who both give superb if one-dimensional performances as Isaac and Malachai respectively. As Isaac the distinctive, creepy Franklin (who looks far younger than his years due to his suffering from Growth Hormone Deficiency) exudes a chilling, understated air of devout menace. By contrast the ginger-mopped Gains, despite being a dead ringer for Megadeth front man Dave Mustaine, makes a very strong impression, nicely conveying the sadistic relish Malachai takes in carrying out his duties as the cults executioner. Not only are the characters nicely defined, the ongoing internal conflict between the two is also well realised as Isaac’s skewed sense of religious duty and unwavering spiritual devotion to “He Who Walks Behind The Rows” eventually sets him at odds with Malachai’s more simplistic and blatant bloodlust. Neither young actor would go on to anything significant afterwards although Franklin later suffered the indignity of being turned into a human hairball for his role as “Cousin IT” in the big budget The Addams Family (1991) and its sequel Addams Family Values (1993).

It is a pity that having gone to such pains to develop and maintain suspense that Keirsch and company then seem to go all out to destroy the film in its second half. Regrettably once Burt and Vicky finally succeed in blundering their way into Gatlin the film begins to flounder horribly. Vicky is quickly captured and spends most of the remaining screen time tied to a giant corn crucifix screaming hysterically. Meanwhile an inordinate amount of screen time is given over to endless, maddeningly repetitive scenes of Burt being chased around the town by a horde of screaming kids who seem to have stepped out of a Mark Twain novel. It soon becomes apparent that Keirsch has already played his hand by this point and has nothing else worthwhile up his sleeve to offer. Revealing the Gatlin children to be homicidal religious nuts from the outset may well be a solid attention grabbing device but the lack of traditional suspense it brings with it sure does hurt the film in the long run. By the time Burt and Vicky arrive in Gatlin Children Of The Corn has no new surprises to offer and loses whatever semblance interest it had generated up to that point.

The makers seem to be aware of this too and therefore in a desperate flight of folly shift the emphasis away from the killer kiddies almost entirely and instead move it onto a series of silly grandstand special effects set-pieces, which are not only stupid, lame and illogical but also beyond the films budgetary limitations. For its last half hour Children Of The Corn subscribes firmly to the all too familiar philosophy of chucking everything at the camera and hoping some of it sticks. Predictably none of it does. Firstly we have the death and resurrection of Isaac which is B-movie tackiness at its most laughable – the supposedly undead Isaac looks more like he has just been egged and floured. Following that we veer off into a brief bit of ludicrous, holier-than-thou religious pretension as Burt gives the devilish kids a pious, impromptu sermon about the true nature of religion. Unbelievably this is enough to make every single one of the children recant their evil ways. Are we really to believe that children who had enough faith in “He Who Walks Behind The Rows” to all kill their own parents would all be instantly cured of their homicidal insanity by a few impassioned words from a complete stranger? To top it all off we then have the eventual appearance of “He Who Walks Behind The Rows” as an unseen entity burrowing beneath the soil of the cornfield. This looks goofy, pathetic and ridiculous and has been often compared by some crueller critics to the burrowing hijinx of that troublesome gopher in the hit golfing comedy Caddyshack. It must be said that there is a similarity! After having finally expended the budget with a big but oddly anti-climactic explosion Keirsch and his cronies really do have nowhere else to go and the film doesn’t so much conclude as just fizzle out and come to a weirdly abrupt halt.

For all its failings Children Of The Corn is not overall a dreadful film by any means. Given that screenwriter George Goldsmith had the daunting task of turning a twenty page short story that wouldn’t amount to a thirty minute short into a full ninety plus minute screenplay the finished results could have been A LOT worse. Lets face it, any film that spawns six sequels (even if they are all rubbish) must have something going in its favour and while no classic by any stretch of the imagination Children Of The Corn has its moments and also has a curious tendency to stick in the mind of its viewers, as evidenced by its big cult following. The first fifty minutes are that of a superior horror picture with a fine, apprehensive build up and memorably etched chief villains. A pity then that the desperate, inane concluding scenes born out of desperation as opposed to invention relegate this from a rather good modern horror film to a merely satisfactory one. Perhaps if the makers had bit the bullet and followed the more gruesome and fatalistic conclusion of King’s original story the result would have been more satisfying? This is merely speculation however, and as it stands Children Of The Corn although hardly poor (even its sillier moments are not without some unintentional amusement) is and will remain a missed opportunity.

Also Try… Children Of The Corn II: The Final Sacrifice / Children Of The Corn III: Urban Harvest / Children Of The Corn 666: Isaac’s Return / Village Of The Damned (1995, John Carpenter) / The Children Of Ravensback / Devil Times Five.

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Piczo