Review of Children of the Corn (1984) by Antwan J. J — 27 Sep 2009

If you take out Courtney Gains as the murderous Malachai and John Franklin as the evil Isaac, you have a mediocre slasher movie with bad special effects. How bad? An audio visual club using a Tandy or Commodore computer could have done better.

This movie starts off great with teens killing adults in a coffee shop diner but it's too much of Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton wandering around a small Nebraskan town repeatedly saying, where is everyone at? Indeed, obviously, many of the children would have had to drive all vehicles out of the downtown area to make it look desolate.

They would have made sure they killed adults with no out of town relatives or friends. And this is a town that is self contained in its own existence, i.e. it's own department of gas, water and electricity that involves no outside contact.

There's no livestock so these children don't eat anything but corn. I know I'm being nit-picky, but this is why this movie has always bothered me. Three years wouldn't have passed before some outlanders came.

More like three days. And the movie follows the same tired cliche of all horror movies in which a police officer is sent to check on a situation, gets killed, and radio dispatch by at headquarters just forgets about him.

No, not going to happen. Maybe, this story was scary when Stephen King wrote it in the early 1970's, but it just seems silly even for the mid-80's.