Ummm scythe… never saw it.
For years I steered clear of some of the so-called ‘horror classics’. I had no interest in Halloween, The Exorcist, The Omen, Friday the 13th etc.
After a while though I ran out of contemporary horror films and decided to look back and examine some older titles. The results were mixed. For every legit Great Film (The Exorcist) there were some decent efforts (The Omen, A Nightmare on Elm Street), and dozens of, others… too numerous to mention.
Never Children of the Corn though, and now having watched it, I want my others back.
“Yeah I’m the str8 Pimp. All you bitches betta do my bidding!”
Somewhere in backroads Nebraska the kids have turned under the influence of one creepy, pasty kid who can compel others to do his bidding.
(This isn’t a spoiler, it’s the first scene.)
Unfortunately it’s the only semi-decent one in the entire film.
Into this now kid-ruled ghost town drives Burt and Vicky en route to their new home somewhere else.
They (literally) run into a freshly stabbed kid who for some reason is standing in the middle of the road just when Burt was distracted and looking elsewhere. Always the way.
Burt realises that he wasn’t responsible for the death, breathes deeply – never asks why a dead kid was standing in the highway – and throws the body in the boot of his car. He and Vicky decide they must report the incident to someone and head into town.
That’s the set-up. The rest of the film has Burt and Vicky wandering around a deserted town wondering where everyone is, opening and closing doors and calling out to each other, interspersed with short scenes in which the ringleaders of the children Isaac and his ‘muscle’ Malachi talk like pompous dicks and try to look more menacing than the pasty skinny kids they are.
There are a great many shots of kids lurking behind things and watching on as Burt and Vicky stumble about, but when nothing happens for over thirty minutes you are kind of obligated to cease describing proceedings as ‘building tension’, and start swearing at the TV demanding that something happen.
And when it finally does, oh boy. Let’s just say the finale, the climax, the crescendo of Children of the Corn involves more yelling, some strong winds and no apparent actual danger.
And they made how many fucking sequels to this spam?
Final Rating – 4.5 / 10. A sure-fire indicator that the horror film you just watched sucked; the best – and in this case only – scare came from a dream sequence.
