Semiquincentennial Movie Project #38: Children of the Corn

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

 

Week #38: Nebraska -

 

 

 

The state of Nebraska was established on March 1, 1867 

Details about Nebraska:

State bird: Western meadowlark

State flower: goldenrod

State tree: cottonwood

Additional historical trivia:

Locking pliers, also known as "Vice-Grips", were invented in Nebraska.

March 14 is celebrated as Reuben Sandwich Day because one legend has it that the sandwich was invented in Omaha. (It's my favorite sandwich, even over a good hamburger).

Nebraska is also the home of the inventors of ranch dressing, Swanson dinners and Kool-Aid.

It is the only "triply land-locked" state, meaning it's the only state that you have to travel through at least three other states to get to a bay, ocean or gulf.

The nation's smallest city hall (10' x 12') is in Maskell.

Famous people born in Nebraska: A huge number of famous actors, like Marlon Brando, Nick Nolte, Fred Astaire, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Montgomery Clift, Harold Lloyd and Ward Bond, as well as Malcolm X,  L. Ron Hubbard, Warren Buffett, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and U.S. President Gerald Ford.

 

 

 

Children of the Corn (1984):

Those evil kids in Nebraska! Children of the Corn, quite possibly, is in contention for having spawned the most sequels in movie history. Note: I don't include such icons as Dracula and Sherlock Holmes in that because, after all, the many films featuring those characters are not, per se, all sequels to prior movies. As of this writing there are 10 movies in the series, and probably no end in sight. But, to be honest, the sequels have different children in them, so maybe you would not agree with the term "sequel"...

In his phenomenally entertaining book Showgirls, Teen Wolves and Astro Zombies, Mark Adams devoted an entire chapter to the series. I personally have never delved into the many sequels, some of which I hear are just the kind of "bad movie" fare that I have covered over the years. 

But the original may possibly be a preview to the whole bad movie vibe. 

Question: What's worse than a bunch of kids, inspired by some demonic creature they THINK is living in the cornfields, killing off all the adults in town to appease said "He Who Walks Behind the Rows"? How about a movie that has a bunch of kids, inspired by some demonic creature that IS living in the cornfield, doing this nefarious killing for "He Who Walks Behind the Rows". Or, at least maybe it's "demonic"... For all I know, it could be an alien from the 8th dimension. (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension hit theaters that same year...)

Stephen King movies are notoriously hit or miss. Especially when it comes to adaptations of his horror output. Assuming they even bother to stick closely to the source material, this can be problematic. Sometimes you get a genuine gem, such as The Shawshank Redemption or Stand by Me (neither of which are horror movies, per se). The 1976 version of Carrie and Misery both are genuinely good, and qualify as horror.

But on the other hand, sometimes you get such drivel as The Lawnmower Man which has virtually no connection to the original story. Neither do, (need I say it?), the many sequels to previously filmed stories that may or may not have been faithful themselves. In the middle of the pack are such films that somehow maintain a connection to the King original, although several of them had to be expanded from the story to make them work as a full-fledged movie. Children of the Corn is one of these.

In the original King short story our main characters are a married couple who, at the time of the setting, don't particularly like each other. That was changed for the movie into a couple who, though not yet married at the time, were hopelessly in love with each other. Whether that changed the dynamic of the story is probably up to the reader/viewer. 

The movie opens 3 years earlier when Isaac (John Franklin) and his acolytes/followers, all children ritually slaughter all the adults of the town of Gatlin, Nebraska.

 

Three years late (the present), a couple, Burt (Peter Horton ) and his girlfriend/future wife, Vicky (Linda Hamilton) are en route to Seattle where Burt is going to do his intern work as a doctor to be. Along the way they are traveling through a seemingly deserted section of Nebraska, where the only thing around seems to be the miles and miles of corn. (And if you like corn, you might not anymore after watching this movie. That corn is about as scary as a horde of rats descending upon you in a basement... At least it was to me.)

 

Into the road stumbles a boy. Burt and Vicky think they hit and killed him, but it turns out that his throat had been cut before he ever got into the road. So they pack him into the trunk of their car and head to the nearby town of Gatlin to report it. But upon arriving in Gatlin, they find the town deserted. They can find no one, not one single person. 

 

It takes about 45 minutes of this movie before our intrepid couple find anything resembling humanity. The kids, who obviously have it in their best interests, or at least in the best interests of the monster living in the cornfield, do anything. For the most part, they just argue amongst themselves. This may be due in part because their leader, Isaac, is obviously a nutjob Pat Robertson wannabe. Isaac spouts apocalyptic scriptures about the fact that he Who Walks Behind the Rows must be appeased. His second in command, Malachai (Courtney Gains), is much more vindictive, but not quite as evil as the street preacher Isaac.

 

Eventually Burt and Vicky find Sarah and Job, two kids who are not beholden to Isaac and his ilk. Sarah is, as often happens in a King story, a psychic with visions. And both of them are playing a game that could get them into serious trouble if Isaac found out; to wit, having independent thought.

 

The ultimate conflict ends up after Vicky is captured. There is a revolt, and it turns out that Malachai may be even more demented in his religious zealotry than Isaac. He thinks that Isaac has failed He Who Walks Behind the Rows, and takes over. 

 

And our intrepid duo of adults are the only ones that seem to be able to come up with a plan.

 

Children of the Corn was originally scripted by King himself, but the director chucked that script and had it re-written. The scriptwriter, George Goldsmith, came up with something that more or less appealed to the director, but it fails on several stages. For one, it adds way too much extraneous stuff that had nothing to do with the movie. For one thing, the couple find an old man (R. G. Armstrong) whom the kids have allowed to live, obviously because he could get things the kids would need, such as tools. But since those same kids kill him off before the movie is halfway over, they must not have needed his help THAT bad...

 

At least the movie kept the fact in the film that their is SOMETHING out there in that cornfield. Although whatever it is, it pales in comparison in it's fright value to the kids themselves. Someone, I think it was King himself, called it a "gopher from Hell", because most of it's scenes on screen are just scenes of something burrowing underneath the soil of the cornfield. Even when it finally foes come up out of the ground, it looks more like left over special effects from Tron. (A demon from a computer world...? Maybe it's really an early invasion of the Borg...)

As cheaply as this movie was made, with a budget of only $3 million, and with King's name attached, it was probably a foregone conclusion that it would make a profit. And it did. Sort of... It mad $!4 million in ticket sales. But word of mouth probably hurt it. I think Roger Ebert, who was probably not a big fan of King in the first place, put it best: "By the end of Children of the Corn, the only thing moving behind the rows is the audience, fleeing to the exits." 

The seemingly never ending raft of sequels that the movie spawned, I think, says more about the audience's willingness to dive into this "evil children" trope than it does about how well the story flows into a fluid tale. Given that probably 75-80% of the potential audience for these sequels are probably parents themselves, it would seem to me that they might be deriving a satisfaction of seeing their own "little monsters" in the roles of those kids. (Not having any of my own, I may not be the right person to judge, but be that as it may...)

Personally, I think the story would have been better served if it had been made as part of an anthology, sort of like Creepshow or Creepshow II. (Replacing that segment in Creepshow II with the India would have been a better choice.  The film suffers a lot from the fact that it takes way too long for anything interesting to happen. It feels exactly like what it essentially is, a 40 minute film that was padded to fill an hour and a half slot.

Interesting note: Goldsmith has later claimed that the script was a metaphor for the Iranian Revolution of 1979, with the kids being the Muslims and the couple being the American hostages. Not sure how I feel about that. Is he saying that the revolutionaries were basically just kids?  

OK, so this is not exactly one of the greatest King films, it's not even one of the better 80's King films, but for a brief break from some of the other films I have reviewed over the years, it's not entirely bad. Just be sure to take a good shot of your Red Bull or Monster before cuing it up, or you may doze off during the lulls between action scenes. And  try not to laugh too hard when the demon shows up at the end.

Until next week, drive safely, folks. And stick to the highways. Those detours through the backwoods burgs are a little risky.

Quiggy