Being Film #5 for Hooptober 2024
I remember the marketing for Children Of The Corn when I was a kid. The commercials were absolutely terrifying, and at 11 all I knew about Stephen King was that he was “The Master of Horror”. I don’t think I started reading his work yet, but when I did I was hooked and had my chance to see this when it arrived on cable a few years later. Back then the story of child cults and murder were so fresh and creepy it made an indelible impression on my young mind. Rewatching it now, I can see many of the seams and problems (man this is a dull movie) but I’d be lying if I said it was a complete failure.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: There’s something wrong with the children in Gatlin, a town with a very weird, very dark religion. Vicki and Burt are traveling to Seattle to start their professional lives when they hit a young man in the middle of the road…BUT HE’S ALREADY DEAD! What’s happening? Where are all the adults? How did the casting director get a hold of so many creep children? And ultimately, who or what is “He Who Walks Behinds The Rows”? There’s plenty of corn – both the literal and metaphorical kind – in this very 80s Stephen King adaptation that will have you wondering just what happened to the kid Vicki and Burt stuffed inside their trunk?
It’s hard to believe that an okay short story with this good a hook (I love the basic idea and the weird, Lovecraftian overtones of the cult) not only became such a mediocre movie, but spawned so many sequels and prequels that were likewise mediocre at best. This was director Fritz Kiersch’s first film, and it feels like it, from the frantic close ups of corn to the frankly terrible narration that I didn’t even remember was a part of the film. As the leads Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton are fine, although Horton just seems to be stumbling around without any real conviction.
If there’s a coup in the film, it’s the casting of the two main villains. Courtney Gains would go on to do a lot of work with his very unique look, and as the willful, older lieutenant Malachai he has some of the juiciest moments, and feels embedded in the film in a way almost no one else is. But if you remember anything from Children Of The Corn, it’s John Franklin as Isaac, the de facto leader of the child cult and one of the most sinister presences I’ve ever seen. It’s a hammy, overwrought performance but it needs to be in order to bring a little life to an otherwise very, very dull film.
And that’s Children Of The Corn’s greatest sin: being dull. There is so much driving and walking around, things don’t really heat up until the last 20 minutes or so, meaning the majority of the movie is spent building a dull atmosphere punctuated bay small moments that work. Despite that awful narration the prelude scene with the initial killings is pretty effective. Likewise the initial meeting of the congregation in the cornfield, which reminded me a little of the way George Miller would mythologize in the Mad Max films. Or the shot of the kids approaching the house where Vicki is with Sarah drawing pictures – Kiersch shoots at an extremely low angle, emphasizing the sickle in a shot that recalls the classic “walk to the house” sequence in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
If only this films had taken a few more lessons from the greats, we might have really had something to talk about, rather than a spike of 80s nostalgia when movies like Children Of The Corn were a little more fresh.
Cinema Dual 
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