Children of the Corn (1984) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 13

297

In the Army of the Corn, everyone’s a kernel.

Children of the Corn was released, promoting its connection to horror author Stephen King. But as a horror film, it fails to live up to King’s literary legacy. Though it contains some good performances by several actors who would go on to more notable roles, and provides a suitable amount of scariness around cornfields and creepy kids, it falls flat more often than it shocks.

Before Viewing

The trailer’s stilted narrator reminds audiences that children are afraid of the dark, the unknown, and nightmares. In the film, the nightmare is in the cornfields of Nebraska. Imagery of groups of children chanting and running through otherwise empty streets offsets the narrator repeating Stephen King’s name multiple times. It’s obviously a horror film, as it shows a woman getting hoisted on a crucifix made of corn. Just who are the Children of the Corn, and what do they want in this “adult nightmare?”

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

---

After Viewing

Three years ago, in Gatlin, Nebraska, teenager Malachi (Courtney Gains), with other teens and children, murdered all the adults in town. A voice-over from young Job (Robby Kiger) describes the events from his point of view in the diner. His sister, Sarah (Anne Marie McEvoy), suffers from a fever that gives her The Sight, clairvoyance, which she uses to draw pictures of the murders. In the present day, Vicky (Linda Hamilton) celebrates her boyfriend, Burt’s (Peter Horton), birthday by giving him an engraved lighter. They are traveling from Illinois to Seattle so Burt can start his medical practice. Outside Gatlin, they hit a boy, Joseph (Jonas Marlowe), with their car, who has stumbled onto the highway after having his throat slashed.

Joseph was running away from Gatlin with the help of Job and Sarah and was killed by Malachi for his transgressions. Vicky freaks out, but Burt tells her to go back to the car, and he’ll take care of it. He checks out the cornfield and finds Joseph’s bloody suitcase, which he takes with him. Vicky immediately falls asleep in the car and dreams that the dead body rises up and attacks her. Burt returns and calms her before putting the dead boy in the truck, without Vicky noticing. They continue their drive, now looking for a phone to call the police. Opening the suitcase, they find a creepy crucifix made from corn.

Malachi finds Job and Sarah listening to records and playing games in a forbidden house, so he takes them to Isaac (John Franklin), a charismatic preacher boy, and the group’s leader. Isaac chastises Malachi, saying he will not punish them, as he acts on the will of He Who Walks Behind The Rows. Burt and Vicky stop at a gas station run by Old Man Diehl (RG Armstrong). He says he has no phone or gas and tells the two to drive past Gatlin to Hemingford as quickly as possible. After the couple leaves, both he and his dog, Sarge, are killed by Malachi and his gang. Following signs to Hemingford, Burt is continuously directed back to Gatlin, ending up in a cornfield, and finally on a deserted downtown Main Street.

Burt is desperate to find somebody in town, or a phone. Yet he complains he’s tired of wasting time. Finally, after deciding to leave town, he sees a door close on a home outside town, and stops. Investigating, they find Sarah drawing a picture of Vicky being sacrificed in a cornfield. Burt walks into town to start looking for a phone again and finds children undergoing a ritual in the church. Amos (John Philbin) has a pentagram carved onto his chest by Rachel (Julie Maddalena) in preparation for his 19th Birthday sacrifice to the corn. Burt is stabbed and runs from the kids, who all carry sharpened knives or farming tools. Vicky is captured by Malachi and taken to a field where she is placed on a cornhusk crucifix.

Burt is rescued by Job, who takes him into a hidden cellar that no one knows about. Isaac says He is displeased with Malachi for killing without making an offering (referring to the old man). But Malachi takes the opportunity to usurp Isaac’s power and has his followers put the young preacher up on the crucifix in place of Vicky. As night falls, something comes out of the corn and consumes Isaac. Burt arrives to rescue Vicky, who is still alive, but is being held captive by Malachi and his group. He explains that real religion is about love and compassion, not killing and sacrifices. A demonic and very much alive, Isaac walks out of the corn and kills Malachi as everyone else scatters.

In the nearby barn, Burt takes charge and has Job help him hook up the grain alcohol silo to a firehose, which he runs to the field’s sprinkler system. He Who Walks Behind The Rows manifests as a fiery cloud rolling over the corn. Burt turns on the sprinklers and hefts a Molotov cocktail into the field, which eventually ignites the corn in a massive explosion, sending He Who Walks Behind The Rows back to wherever it came from. Burt and Vicky walk Job and Sarah back to the kids’ house, checking on their damaged car out front. Rachel pops up in the back seat, trying to kill Vicky with a small scythe, but Burt slams the car door in her face. The four then begin the long walk to Hemingford.

“Folks in Gatlin’s got religion. They don’t cotton to outsiders and probably won’t have a phone either.” – Old Man Diehl

Children of the Corn was the eighth film adapted from a Stephen King story within only eight years, and definitely not the last. At this point, King has had over 50 theatrical movies based on his stories, along with multiple television series and TV films. His first adaptation released was for Carrie (1976). This was soon followed by Salem’s Lot (1979), The Shining (1980), Creepshow (1982), & Cujo, Christine, and The Dead Zone (all 1983). King’s brand of horror, which is so well done in prose form, often falls flat when it is attempted in cinema. This is due to so much of his horror being character-driven psychological horror, which is hard to showcase without voice-overs of the character’s inner monologue. The adaptations have gotten better as time has gone on and technology has improved, but many of the early films do not create the same sense of dread or foreboding that is on the page. His best early adaptations are usually from non-supernatural related films, such as Cujo, or the non-horror films Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption. Children of the Corn falls squarely into the former category and fails on several fronts.

One of the reasons Children of the Corn fails is that it is an adaptation of a short story, stretched out to fit a feature-length film. Originally published in the March 1977 issue of the adult-oriented magazine Penthouse, it was collected the following year with 19 other short stories in the book Night Shift. The premise of the short story is amazingly similar. In the story, Burt and Vicky are married, which doesn’t appear to be the case in the film. Neither actor seems to be wearing a wedding band, and in the opening scene where Vicky presents Burt with his piece of birthday cake, he says he wishes to “live happily ever after,” to which Vicky asks if that’s “a proposal.” He says it’s not yet. So, already a minor change, but nothing that should change anything dramatically. The story continues with them hitting the boy (who was already dying) and entering the deserted town of Gatlin. In the short story, the children killed their parents a dozen years ago, but practice the same pseudo-religion towards a demon in the cornfield. Vicky is captured and killed by the children, having her eyes plucked out. Burt finds his wife and takes off deeper into the cornfield, where He Who Walks Behind the Rows kills Burt as well. The ending has the creature displeased with the youths for being unable to kill Burt, and he demands they lower their age of sacrifice from 19 to 18. That’s a pretty dramatic departure from the film where both protagonists survive and can walk away, mostly unscathed, having defeated (for this film at least) the entity in the corn.

Technically, short stories that run 40-50 pages long might best be adapted into an hour-long project. Children of the Corn runs 92 minutes and feels like it has at least 30 minutes of padding in it. This padding consists of Burt wanting to find a phone but becoming distracted by investigating, getting upset at Vicky for wanting to leave, and then looking for a phone again. It makes for halting storytelling and characters that are unlikeably dumb. The film does have its share of jump scares (Vicky’s dream of the dead Joseph popping up, the couple accidentally backing into each other inside the house), but it’s light on horrific moments. That doesn’t mean it’s not creepy, as it provides a little bit of tension as audiences try to figure out what is going on with the kids, and (possibly) are worried for Burt and Vicky. The use of a group of creepy children is not new and has been used in film before, with the 1960 and 1964 British films Village of the Damned and Children of the Damned, respectively. These films feature creepy young kids with psionic abilities, who force adults to do their bidding. Those films are somewhat similar to the classic episode of The Twilight Zone, “It’s A Good Life,” where a young boy has the unnerving ability to alter reality, as he “wishes people into the cornfield.” Star Trek, the Original Series, also had an episode in its first season called “Miri” where the Enterprise investigates a planet where a plague has killed all the adults, and the world is run by scary children. Franklin’s introduction as the charismatic Isaac is a perfect example of the scary child trope. He is seen in a dark suit and wide-brimmed Amish-style hat, with his head tilted down and peering through partially closed eyes. It’s a seminal image from the film and one that is often used in promotion. Gains, who was appearing in his first film role, also sets the tone as a gangly ginger psychopath, who screams “Outlander,” as he searches the town for Burt. Other films with children as antagonists, often with supernatural powers, have proved popular, such as The Omen, Firestarter, and The Children (2008), having terrified audiences for decades.

The main theme of Children of the Corn is religion, and is obviously stated by Burt several times. It opens with Job and his father leaving a church, where he is the only child in service that day, due to the rest of the kids being with “Isaac out in the cornfield.” The film is unclear on the instigation of the children’s cult, but at some point, Isaac was picked to be the spokesperson for He Who Walks Behind The Rows because, as Job says, he was a child preacher and “everyone thought he had a great spirit.” Who or what He Who Walks Behind The Rows actually is is up for debate, but the creature is a stand-in for the faith of religion. A religion that dictates adults must be killed, allowing the children to lead. The majority of the children seem happy to follow Isaac, though they may do so because of fear. Job and Sarah become the outliers, mostly doing their own thing, which is fine for Isaac.  He uses Sarah’s gift of The Sight, allowing her to help predict when outsiders may enter the town, as a way of keeping his control. Malachi instigates a schism when he feels that the group is not doing enough killing, something he easily takes to. As an older and physically larger youth, he literally forces Isaac into the corn. But what has been promised to these kids that would make them agree to all murder the adults? And did they all agree? It may not have been all of them doing the killing, as the opening sequence appears to show only Malachi with his posse doing the killing at the diner. Yet, Isaac becomes the true believer, and Malachi follows because he really likes “a bit of the old ultra-violence,” as Alex from A Clockwork Orange might say. All it takes to snap most of the kids out of their fantasy world, where they are free to do what they want when they want, is Burt telling them that murder is not part of religion. Love and compassion are all that’s required. Burt doesn’t really know what’s going on either, but is reacting to the radio programs he heard driving in, which were all hell and brimstone Bible-thumping preachers. This is the Bible-belt area of the country, of course. In the end, it’s a good lesson to remember: don’t kill your parents because a giant, nebulous creature living in the cornfield tells you to. That will probably benefit the creature more than it will you.

The draw for Children of the Corn is certainly Stephen King’s name, which is on display in the title. Unfortunately, this adaptation contains an overly long setup that turns boring, creates dumb characters, and has poor special effects. As a horror film, it contains very few deaths (other than the majority of the town, who were killed off-screen). Several of the deaths in the diner were shocking, but most of these deaths were of older people who were killed by drinking poisoned coffee. The attack on Joseph by Malachi is tragic, but because he is a child, it was not as graphic as it might have been. Just some fake blood splashed around. However, he was hit by the car, which seems like overkill (literally). Diehl was killed off-screen, as was his dog (can’t believe they killed the dog!), and Amos’s death is never actually shown. The attachment to any of these characters (except for Joseph) is never really formed with the audience. We don’t really care if they die, and so their deaths do not create any sort of emotional connection. The fact that Burt and Vicky survive is only due to their ineptitude. The kids are all set to sacrifice Vicky, but Malachi takes control, and he pulls her down as bait for Burt, rather than continuing with Isaac’s plan. She is oblivious to Burt putting a dead body in the trunk, and she never asserts herself enough against his dumb ideas. There’s no proof that Burt wasn’t just a bad driver and was getting lost, but the film seems to subtly imply that a magical force was making them head towards Gatlin. Honestly, it’s not their fault that the screenwriter, George Goldsmith, had them doing such dumb things, such as continuing to hang around, or never realizing that they could drive the opposite way and go back to the motel they started at. One of the producers was quoted as saying to Linda Hamilton that he wanted the audience to think she was dumb. Mission accomplished, buddy.

Out of all the films adapted from Stephen King’s stories, this franchise is the most successful. Maybe you were unaware, but this film spawned eight sequels (yup, a total of nine films in a decreasingly scary franchise) and two remakes (two!). Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice was released in 1992 and was the last film in the series to come out theatrically, as all the other sequels went on directly to video. These sequels include Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest, Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering, Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror, Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return (the best-named sequel), Children of the Corn: Revelation, Children of the Corn: Genesis, and Children of the Corn: Runaway. A remake for the cable channel SyFy was released in 2009, and a final theatrical remake was released in 2023 (having been completed three years prior). Having seen none of these, nor having heard anything positive about them either, I’m going to say that they all retread the same ground in more derivative ways than this original. For its time, Children of the Corn has some scary elements to it, some of which will still resonate today. The aspect of the out-of-control children is creepy, with the performances of two young actors being key. Aspects of the cult angle are also troubling, stemming from the growing resurgence of religious fundamentalism in the 80s, and still have some resonance today. The least scary thing in the film is the creature living in the corn. It’s unsettling, with the movement of “something” moving quickly under the dirt being the best effect (even though Tremors did it better later). But the limited special effects budget created a truly terrible finale. Still, it’s a great film to put on and talk back to the TV as the characters do dumb things and not get out of town while they can–but at least in this case, everyone survives. How many “horror films” keep all the protagonists alive?

Assorted Musings

• The book, which contains the original short story of Children of the Corn, Night Shift, can be seen on the car dashboard in front of Vicky during the first driving scenes.
• Stephen King wrote the first draft of the script, but he was replaced by George Goldsmith (Force: Five). Supposedly, King’s script focused too much on the characters and not enough on the action or horror.
• Linda Hamilton would appear in a much more popular horror (and sci-fi) film later the same year, The Terminator.
• The kids are shown having to sacrifice themselves to the Corn when they turn 19 (shades of Logan’s Run). None of the female characters appears pregnant, and the concept of teen birth is not brought up (as it was in the original story). Presumably, the filmmakers wanted to avoid the impropriety of discussing teen pregnancy, a hot, politically conservative topic at the time.
• The sign welcoming folks to Gatlin lists a population of 968 people in town. Since only a few dozen kids are seen in the film, that means that over 930 adults were killed, and yet no authorities, banks, utility companies, or delivery drivers have thought to check up on the place in three years.