Horror Extreme Movie Catalog
Children of the Corn [UMD for PSP]
Theatrical Release Date: 03/09/1984
MPAA Rating: 
Studio: Anchor Bay
Editorial Review - Amazon.com
The murder rate is as high as an elephant's eye in this flaccid adaptation of Stephen King's short story. While driving through Nebraska en route to a new job, medico Burt (Peter Horton) and his wife Vicky (a pre-Terminator Linda Hamilton) nearly run over a mutilated boy who staggers from the cornfields. Seeking help, they enter the town of Gatlin, whose under-20 residents have butchered their parents per the decree of junior-grade holy roller Isaac (John Franklin), who preaches the word of a being called "He Who Walks Behind the Rows." King's original story (from his 1978 collection Night Shift) was a lean and brutal melange of Southern-gothic atmosphere and E.C. Comics-style gore, which scripter Greg Goldsmith effectively neutralizes by adding a youthful narrator (a grating Robbie Kiger) and putting an upbeat spin on the story's morbid conclusion. Fritz Kiersch's direction is TV-movie flat, with the sole inspired moment (hideous religious iconography glimpsed during a bloody "service") delivered as a throwaway. Aside from Horton and Courtney Gains (as Isaac's hatchet man Malachai), the performances are dreadful, and the depiction of the Lovecraftian monster-god as a sort of giant gopher inspires more laughter than terror. Amazingly, the film spawned six sequels; Franklin (Cousin Itt in the Addams Family films) later appeared in and wrote 1999's Children of the Corn 666. --Paul Gaita
Classic horror
A Customer Review by Movie Buff
This film is an absolute classic. I've seen this film numerous times and I never get tired of it. Both Courtney Gains (Malichi) and John Franklin (Issac) are great actors who should have won awards for their performances. On top of the acting, my copy of this film is autographed by the music composer, who is also my science teacher's husband. So that fact alone make this film extra special to watch.
It's only consider a Classic because it's one of Stephen Kings earlier works.....
A Customer Review by A New Yorker
I had a feeling I wasn't going to like this but I manage to get through it. Nearly everything that Stephen King has ever written seems to have been turned into a film or TV series; in fact, I'm surprised that no one has tried to make a mini-series from the guy's grocery list. Let's face it, if they did, it couldn't be any less interesting than 'Children of the Corn.'
Based on one of King's many short stories, this 1984 horror flick sees Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton playing a couple on a long car journey who run into a spot of bother when they chance upon the sleepy Nebraska town of Gatlin, where all of the adults have been murdered by children who worship an ancient evil that lurks in the corn fields.
Although director Fritz Kiersch does manage to build a fair amount of atmosphere at the beginning (after Hamilton's silly song and dance, but before we get to meet the freakish Isaac, leader of the killer kids), he completely blows it with endless unexciting scenes in which Hamilton and Horton are hunted down by the town's homicidal half-pints. Courtney Gains, as violent redhead Malachai, manages to appear genuinely menacing, but the rest of the children are not the least bit threatening; as a result, many of the film's 'scary' moments fail to work.
Towards the end of the film, when we finally get to see the malevolent force that inhabits the field surrounding Gatlin, the film descends into a glut of terrible 80s visual effects that probably looked pretty ropey almost 25 years ago, but look positively laughable nowadays.
'Children of the Corn' might be of interest to King fans keen to see how the writer's work has been translated to the big screen, but your average horror-film fan will be most unimpressed.
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