Children of the Corn

*½ / *****

When I think of Children of the Corn (the story), I think of a road trip to hell. I read Stephen King’s story in 2012, and the way the author just creates the sense of pervasive doom the estranged soon-supposedly-to-be-divorced married couple drive into just left its mark with me. The perspective way he allows us to follow the voice of the damned as the couple inhabits evil children and “he who walks behind the rows” gave me chills. Could the film elaborate what worked so well in the story?

The cover that left quite an impression on me as a youth.

I have a VHS copy of the film, but I haven’t watched Children of the Corn (the movie) in a few decades. There have been so many sequels that the potential impact of the 1984 film perhaps withers. I was looking forward to seeing if the film still resonated or sucked as so many critical of it since its debut have proclaimed. I do remember passing by the video box on occasion. It's a grabber. The premise of evil children attacking adults seems to often grab a horror audience with its "corrupted innocence" and the difficulty of grown ups to use violence against the young even though there seems to be no choice.

I do think the kids are well cast. They need to appear totally overcome with evil. Almost soulless and completely subservient to an evil that has consumed them. No conscience or guilt in killing anyone over a particular age, before adulthood. Rendering the town they inhabit a ghost of what it once was—active, Norman Rockwell, church-going, and seemingly hospitable—the kids have become a cult that follows an ancient “corn demon”. Will we actually see the evil behind the rows manifest itself?

In the opening minutes we see how the town of Gatlin becomes under siege by its own children. In a diner, mostly elderly folks drinking coffee and having a piece of pie after church service are poisoned or sliced/stabbed with a scythe, knife, and hatchet. It is a sudden, swift, heartless attack with the victims having not a chance to survive. It does occur off screen so the impact might be slightly disappointing but the action of the kids establishes their mania. It also tells us what the lead couple will be up against. The blood spatter on a kid after his father is killed and a man's hand is pressed into a slicer really sets off the vicious nature of the kids and what they are capable of.

The film allows us to see the film’s married couple (Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton) during a happy moment when she presents him with a gift (lighter) celebrating graduating medical school and their drive to an internship takes an unfortunate stop through Gatlin. Horton is nervous about his internship, stressing to Hamilton who tries to keep the peace. This is one of those films which tells us that people have plans, unknowingly driving straight into peril.

Also established is that if you are a child that is “part of the fold” the decision to leave is a huge no-no. In fact, if you are a child and decide to flee from Gatlin (particularly through the corn field), the result is not only dangerous but life-threatening. One such kid leaves behind family and a chance to get out of Gatlin (the corn field seems like the only exit passage), promising to help them eventually escape as well, and he encounters the blade. It is a firm statement that kids wanting to break free from the cult will meet certain death. This scene also illustrates the seemingly inescapable confines of the cornfields. A veritable sea stretching to infinity, the cornfields are a labyrinthine maze of maize.

The film coalesces both the kid taking the blade to the throat with Horton and Hamilton driving down the road towards Gatlin (a sign tells us they are seven miles to the town). The two threads converge as Horton hits the kid (holding a bloody wound right in the middle of the road) with his car by accident. The is where the film brings the couple to those who follow He Who Walks Behind The Rows.

While the film may’ve eventually fell victim to the cheese, I did like how the field seems like the perfect hiding place for the cult. Such a moment comes when Horton covers the victimized runaway with a sheet from his trunk and (perhaps the killer) someone spies on him from within the rows, peeling back ears of corn to take a peek.

Children of the Corn is located smack dab in the middle of the burgeoning slasher era which is why you see such an emphasis on the stylistics of the knife. In once particular scene, Malachi emerges from the cornfield, bloody butcher knife in hand, as Hamilton slightly naps (then awakens) in the front passenger seat of her car. You see the knife’s reflection in the back of the door mirror and its silhouette on the car door. The knife itself (like in Halloween or a Friday the 13^th film) looks “larger than life” as if it were made to slice up a boar instead of a turkey. Hamilton, it first appears, is to be another victim of the knife, but the film has a Carrie jump scare in store for her in the use of the killed kid.

 

As much as people lament Glen Ford’s decision to appear in the slasher flick, Happy Birthday to Me, seeing a fine character actor like RG Armstrong totally wasted in Children of the Corn could be a greater sin. This part is a whole lot of nothing and he deserved better. With health seeming to fail him, a rather painful gait, and a slight twinkle that accompanies his desperate need to shoo away Horton and Hamilton to the town 19 miles ahead (doing all he could, in some arrangement with cult leader Jacob), Armstrong is pissed when he learns that the killer children done in his dog, Sarge. A wrench clinched in hand, and a venomous anger, Armstrong heads to a losing effort to confront the kids who outnumber him. It is about five/ten minutes tops and did the actor no favors. One plus is the atmosphere change in the weather as the clouds darken and seem to have a speed indicating activity of a supernatural kind. The rows sway back and forward as the wind intensifies.

Trying to drive to the next town seems impossible as this supernatural “barrier” seems to disrupt Horton and Hamilton’s attempts to get there without passing through Gatlin. The fork in the road should lead them away from Gatlin, yet sign after sign appears before the two find themselves driving dirt roads with cornfields on each side. Gatlin will be their destination. Horton and Hamilton will have to defend themselves not just against both Jacob and Malachi but He Who Walks Behind The Rows.

I love how Gatlin appears uninhabited, abandoned, and left to falter into deterioration. Yet there are habitants in Gatlin and Horton and Hamilton will be terrorized by them. Two innocent kids not bewitched by Jacob and the influence of He…. are the sole allies of Horton and Hamilton and the only adults available to them will try to help them get out of Gatlin. This will not be easy.

We see the kids gathered in a circle as Jacob and Malachi stir them up with a speech about how Horton and Hamilton, outlanders, should be sacrificed to appease He…. It is an example of how spellbound the kids are by their leader(s).

The film definitely emphasizes strength in numbers and how kids possessed, with sharp instruments ripe for slicing, are everywhere and anywhere. You simply don’t want to be an adult in Gatlin. Horton and Hamilton befriend a little girl “with the sight” who can see future events. Her drawings prove this, such as Hamilton being rushed away to the cornfield by Malachi and the cult kids to “be sacrificed” or, according to them, “be cleansed”. Hamilton is in a house with the little girl with sight when Malachi and his droogs seize upon her quickly. Taken off, placed upon a cross as the kids cheer for her murder, with Hamilton’s face featuring sheer terror at the present situation, it looks like she’s in a heap of trouble. Then Horton realizes too late that Hamilton has been removed from the house, retreats to the town to find a blood ceremony in a church with kids congregated in celebration for a 19 year old male’s “ascension” where he will be sacrificed to He…. Horton rightfully condemns their profane ceremony with the girl leading it calling him into question passionately. One thing we see is how dedicated and all in these kids are to their god. Horton, like Hamilton, tries to evade the influx of kids but he’s outnumbered in the town. At its best, Children of the Corn  provokes the sense of impending doom for its heroes due to how the kids, no matter how innocent and baby-faced they might appear, seem totally devoted to the entity they worship. The scenes like the church ceremony and Hamilton’s potential crucifixion parlay this to us. The kids cheer for violence and are so bloodthirsty for the murder of “interlopers” who intrude upon their home.

If a film falls apart at the end, it is this movie. Does it not get lousy…oh, Nelly! First we see this poor effect where this type of light just engulfs Jacob after Malachi shifts the balance of power in his favor. Yep, the kids just decide, after following Jacob and his teachings (because, as he is always willing to testify, Jacob communes with He….) for quite some time, that Malachi is the better way for them. Malachi is about blood and sacrifice. Jacob seemed to be, as well, but Malachi usurps him because he’s quick to lead kids towards butchering adults without much thought towards the consequences. Then Horton gets the only two kids among them that are decent and humane (the kid who narrates and saw his father killed in front of him while tending to an ice cream sundae, and the girl with the sight) to shelter him so he can tend to a wound thanks to the fiendish girl in the church stabbing him. He is able to rescue Hamilton in the cornfield after Jacob is “enveloped” by He… and then sermonize to the kids (after downing Malachi with a punt kick to the cojones) about following holly rolling rhetoric that has turned them savage (and murdering their parents, especially a big deal!). These kids abandon Jacob easily for Malachi then all of a sudden drop the religion they were so indebted to just because Horton preaches to them about being blind sheep. Then Jacob emerges dust-faced in a different voice, much darker than his feminine squeak we heard prior to his “convergence”, possessed and informing Malachi that He…. wants him as well. Then Horton discovers who the “blue man” hanging in a skeletal state on the cross in the clearing where Jacob planned to sacrifice their interlopers was: a police officer deciding to burn the cornfield because a scripture in Revelation supposed said so (He…. may actually be The Devil). So Horton will use gasohol, conveniently available to him in the barn, to set the cornfield on fire, but not before getting wrapped up by stalks (that come to life and cry when cut by his knife!). With help from Job (the good kid), Horton will shoot the fuel out into the fields and watch as He…. in a red active cloud moving towards them, tries to stop them. Also He…. moves like a giant earthworm under the ground. So He…. moves in a cloud, under the ground, and into human bodies. He…. turns out to be Ole Scratch…when all else fails, The Devil is the perfect patsy to use as THE EVIL FORCE. While it appears many of the brats decide to hit the bricks, we never see any of them again, except that church bitch. The director couldn’t resist one more jump scare…Hamilton pops her in the chops with the passenger side car door. Then the four--the good little kids, Hamilton and Horton--take the long walk to the next town….19 miles away!

This is sadly much ado about absolutely nothing. It wasn’t a total waste, but this film is just no great shakes. Loved the look of the town, with dead corn stalks popping up throughout as reminders of what took the adults from Gatlin. Pictures are defaced, buildings are disheveled, and the inactivity of what once was a thriving community speaks volumes. The sight of psychotic kids with farming tools and a design to use them for violent purpose left an impression on me. But the film doesn’t really ever offer any real scares or does a whole lot with the atmosphere of Gatlin. It ultimately all goes nowhere. That’s a shame. The special effects don’t help. The supernatural shenanigans at the end only sink the film further. This has lent itself to sequel after sequel (some actually fun on a Grade Z level), but the first film never truly deserved much more than a reminder of how King adaptations often were poorly made in the 80s (with the occasional Cujo & The Dead Zone actually serving the author justice). Its few positives will serve as a reason for viewers to come back to it, but the negatives will always leave a rather foul stench.