Review of Children of the Corn (1984) by Steve S — 10 May 2016

Fritz Kiersch's classic Stephen King adaptation opens on a cowering coffee shop massacre, sheds lashings of spook-factor and credibility by the minute, then somehow descends into a 1950s comic book wetdream.

The film is a slow-burning disappointment of biblical proportions, taking a town plagued by pesky kids, crazy cults, corpse-robbing goodies and continuity errors, and reducing it to what might as well be called Dr GoodAdult Tackles the Titans from Outer Space. The fantastical elements of the film just don't fit - especially when they're not introduced until the final act in a story which has, up until that point, taken place within the realms of a gloriously jittery reality.

All potential is pissed away long before the film's cathartic moment: when alien-faced Isaac realises he's not playing a Shakespeare villain.