About a month or so ago I downloaded a movie called C.O.R.N. that, in my dumbness, I thought might be a part of the Children of the Corn bunch but, as is common, I was wrong and it turned out to be about a bunch of people who live near a cornfield and like to turn humans into scarecrows. You can only imagine that it was really stupid and I actually didn’t finish it but instead, what I did do is compile some thoughts on the first eight (or more!) (?) movies in this cornucopia of fun. See – “corn”? I’m so fucking clever. I know there’s at least two more (maybe not!) that I haven’t seen yet but I’ll get to them at some point. I won’t let you down because I know you’re all depending on me. I know it – right? RIGHT?

*Acknowledges only the creaks and scratches of the corn beetles and boll weevils*

*and the ghost of that one guy who’s been out there shucking corn from beyond the grave since the territory days*

CHILDREN OF THE CORN (1984) WELL – I DIDN’T THINK THIS WAS THAT GOOD…

I remember, when I was a kid, reading a Fangoria magazine and they had a big article in that issue about this movie with a still from the set of some kids holding down a grown man, running his arm through an automated meat slicer and I thought something like – oh gawd that’s gross – because I was 13 and wasn’t dropping the fuck bomb here and there like i tend to do these days, even when I’m feeling pleasant – because that type of shit scared me back then. So, I never watched this (or read the book) until a few years ago and then again relatively recently and I have to say that I didn’t love it. One of the main things that stood out as sucky for me was the synthesized background music; think 80s Doctor Who or, for those of you not trained in the Scientific Studies and Sound Complexes of Who – a very slow and boringly lazy Tangerine Dream.

But… hey… ! Sarah Connor! SMOOCH SMOOCH HUG HUG SMOOCH

But then –

WOMP WOMP WOOOOOOOOooooooooMP SAD TROMBONE SOUND

Even though I was alive and kicking during the 80s, I found the special effects in this to be especially bad and it even looked like the lead dude broheim guy swinging dick wasn’t having any fun or believing in this thing. Even smooch smooch Linda Hamilton’s pouty lips didn’t really do it for me either, much less a bunch of ugly kids running around in stupid costumes. The story? A bunch of kids in a small town in Nebraska kill all of the adults and worship the devil who lives in a cornfield. Hamilton and swinging-dick-Horton play lovers who don’t make love and get caught up with those ungrateful fucking Gen Ys. This wasn’t very good and looked terribly dated. Good thing this was a one shot horror movie!

*Also a good thing – that’s real nice that I misspelled trombone the first time and just now noticed it*

CHILDREN OF THE CORN 2: THE FINAL SACRIFICE (1992) UMMMM ERMMMM WELL….

What the fuck? This movie was totally stupid. Do you think this is good and I missed everything? That wouldn’t surprise me but – boy – shitsuck. Anyway, this didn’t have anything too fun to offer. Some kids get possessed by the evil corn god and kill the adults.

One kid: We have to kill the adults!!

Another kid: Why??

First kid: Because they’re adults!!!!

Other kid: But they’re our parents.

First kid: BUT THEY ARE ADULTS!!!!!!

Other kid: Oh, OK.

Only one person has ever acknowledged my ‘don’t nut yourself in the grain silo” thing that I say every now and then and for that I will always be grateful but – did anyone notice my header for this thing? I doubt it but I added “don’t nut in the cornfield” so—— ahem!

This really didn’t have anything going for it. I mean – some guys go into a basement in the town from the first one and find a bunch of decayed corpses. I guess Linda Hamilton and whatshisface didn’t report anything after they left town in the first one? They didn’t call the cops and tell them that everyone had been brutally butchered?? huh? So these dudes find these bodies and then the cops come in and suddenly some new broheim and his kid are driving around and head into town that’s suddenly empty – I guess the cops didn’t need to investigate anything? Straight up, crime scene clean!

*Somewhere, LL Cool J licks his lips for effect*

In that still, this individual just discovered a TON of corn in his poop. A TON!! There’s also something in here about an American Indian curse, some toxic corn and a death by nosebleed. This wasn’t so good. MM MM. Nope. Thank the gods of the corns that this is the final sacrifice and movie.

CHILDREN OF THE CORN (3): URBAN HARVEST (1995) I GUESS THIS WASN’T TOO BAD BUT THE ENDING SHOULD COME WITH A PUNISHMENT

Unrelated to the first two (that I can tell), this tells the tale of two brothers who wear old timey Amish clothes. Well wait, they both do at the beginning and then one of them gets 1995 gangsta hip with the soundtrack featuring Ice-T and such. Stepping back a minute, back in Nebraska, a drunk hillbilly stumbles out of his trailer intent on murdering his older son out in the cornfields. Older son runs and runs through the stalks and finds his little brother by a scarecrow. “He’s gonna kill me!!” yells older son for reasons we will never know (maybe he was going out in the corn to give his dong a good pounding??) (or maybe, I guess, he was trying to hide or something) and runs off. Younger son summons the spirit of the corn deity and promptly turns the dad into a scarecrow with sewn up lips. Um, ok?

Since these three live off in Nebraska – in a desolate corn field – in a trailer with no one around for 70 miles in any direction, they manage to get get adopted by a couple from Chicago and move to the big city. Nice writing! There, the older one gets assimilated into modern society, gets a chick and is schooled on what second base is and is somehow good at basketball even though he lived in a desolate cornfield, in a trailer, with no basketball goal and no one around for 70 miles. The younger one manages to grow some evil corn in a dirty alley and starts to kill everyone in the name of his god and his blue, bejeweled-with-blue-corn bible. Sorry if this one’s going a little long, I’m bored and restless.

If you can somehow manage to get over the terrible hairdos, fashion, plot holes and soundtrack (sorry, I’ve never been a rap guy) the majority of this movie isn’t too bad and kind of gory. But that’s all gonna change for you in the last 20 minutes when a giant mutated worm-corn-thing-with-at-least-three-eyes comes out of the ground and starts to kill all of the adults who are supposed to be teenage high school students (up to and including Furiosa getting a tentacle up the skirt). I’ve rarely seen anything so fucking stupid and fucky. At one point the worm-thing – which is seemingly two or more stories tall, reaches out and grabs our Lisa Bonet / Cosby inspired character and – for tension – shows her in it’s grasp and it’s a fucking little, plastic doll.

Oh – and there’s the Bonet / Cosby character (who gets eaten) going through the worm-thing’s intestines or gastropods or whatever they are called screaming and moaning until she gets cut out by the older brother using his gangsta stiletto. So dumb. Reminds me of Feast 2 when Honey Pie’s head gets bitten off and eaten and the miserable director made the decision to follow her head through the stomach, bowels and pooped out on the street from a first person POV. What a stupid, fucking director! I hope he never works again! Boo! Piss! I hope he never shows his face around any of these movies!

CHILDREN OF THE CORN IV: THE GATHERING (1996) SUCKY

This is the one with Naomi Watts – and it’s terrible. So far this franchise has scored Theron, Watts and Eva Mendes is in the next one – what the hell were they doing right? So, at the end of the last one, the adopted father of the two orphaned Amish kids turned out to be a corn salesman. Before he met his untimely demise he had brokered some sort of illegal transaction to ship his kid’s alley corn across the globe. That last stupid thing ended with some guys in Japan opening a crate of corn that we luckily know is blessed with evil. Oh fuck. Empire of the Rising Sun, watch your ass!

This one aborts any sort of tie in to that and starts off with Watts driving around in a car – back to Nebraska we go. Fuck Chicago! Yankees! Anyway, Watts comes home to her agoraphobic mom, a dude named Doc who doesn’t mind crawling under some sort of hay bailer to get a dropped bottle of booze, a little girl we’re supposed to care about and an uptight teenage boy who probably needs to go nut in the cornfield like I mentioned so long ago. I honestly don’t give a fuck about racial this or that, but I found it weird that this Charles Manson Collector’s Card collecting teen in the middle of nowhere Nebraska was a black fellow, son to two very white older people, but OK.

This thing had all sorts of problems, aside from Watts early-career acting.  Scythes were flying around all over the place, test tubes filled with blood were exploding, I didn’t really get why the ghost kid was smoking a human or something, I’ve had some beers waiting for the wife to get home and really can’t get why the Doc dude didn’t just walk around the farming equipment to pick up his perfume bottle of Rye Whisky. I don’t really drink the good stuff any more but even when I did I had more sense than that. Even if I was as loaded as they get.

Pennsylvania? What do they fucking know about corn or whiskey? I call BULLSHIT.

I don’t think anyone’s gonna have to think to hard to figure out how this movie goes. SPOILERS: A bunch of people get killed in death scenes that may have seemed novel at the time but are actually stupid, there are no boobs, butts or dongs if that’s what you’re in the mood for, the acting is terrible, the plot is stretched and it ends with a corny one liner.  I suppose you could do worse in your life than watching this, like maybe if you were suffering from a urinary tract infection but this one was no good. Who keeps financing this shit? This came out in 1996 so I’m guessing AOL maybe? Do you remember the first time you ever looked at boobs or dongs on the internet? Probably when you thought your first wife or husband or significant other was asleep and you thought you’d sneak a peek at Cindy Crawford topless or maybe, back then, Brad Pitt’s buttocks but it took fifteen to thirty minutes or so and by the time it was paydirt he or she was out of bed and you were in trouble to the tune of that credit card subscription you just signed up for to look at some low-res tits?

Also, remember that time the internet was more widespread and computers were affordable and you got the wise idea to look up “Tegan Jovanka Nude” and you found a picture of her completely naked and all nudey and you knew it had to be a fake because Tegan would never do that or pose like that but you clicked it anyway because she was the girl of your dreams for a long time and surely it couldn’t be true but just what if really and no way man but maybe and then you got your first ever computer virus?

CHILDREN OF THE CORN 5: FIELDS OF TERROR (1998) HAVE YOU EVER SMELLED FRESH MANURE?

This one has Eva Mendes, David Carradine and some weird looking woman that we’ve all seen in something but I can’t remember what and my desire to care is waning. This movie opens up to some ugly kid walking around in a corn field. He comes across some burning corn and badly drawn electricity shoots up from the fire and his ugly body starts to glow – it looks like they were using the same special effects that used to be drawn in by interns – you know what I’m talking about.

They totally suck, much worse than that GIF. TOTES. Next up these fucking kids kill some poor couple because the cornfield is rightfully theirs and then two douches are driving around lost. The male is giving a blow up doll a Rim Job and the female is all “Like, don’t do that, you’re so gross, y’all. WAY.” and he says “I’m goin’ back to Cali” and she says “gawd, uh, like hump things much, hosebeast?” even though that style of white people talk went out 13 years ago before the date of this movie.

Before long, those two are thankfully murdered by the newest batch of the Children of the Corn but I guess these Cornies aren’t too picky because these victims weren’t adults. I mean, they were adults acting like teenagers but they weren’t “adults”.  Or, at least, they were the youngest adults killed yet. Cut to some more douchebags driving around in a shitty looking car and they get lost and yawn they go to town and this movie is stupid and yawn I need some fresh air and my cat is staring at me and David Carradine is some sort of adult who no one has killed for some reason (RIP Carradine but –> that was no way to go, brother) and something, something, somebody with a terrible hairdo is leaving and he’s a fucking dick and someone inscribed something about something in this fucking book and Mendes says or does something this or thats and the taxi driver from Pulp Fiction is in this and so is the black fellow from From Dusk Til Dawn and just, this movie really stunk.

You might have to be from a small town or frequent your county fairs but the smell of fresh dung is gnarly, like totes, and I couldn’t really think of another good analogy since I already blew my nut in the cornfield with ‘urinary tract infection’.

CHILDREN OF THE CORN 666: ISAAC’S RETURN (1999) TERRIBLE THINGS

This one has Stacy Keach and Nancy Allen in it, bless their poor souls. This one is also all kinds of stupid and I guarantee you won’t like it. From terrible sound to terrible acting and miserable storytelling, this movie is full of shit. One of my biggest Grievances and Taints in movie watching is when some douche is talking on a cell phone to someone else on a cell phone and they disconnect and there’s a fucking click or even a goddammed dial tone. Well – this came out before cells were getting popular so we don’t have to worry about that one but here’s number two on the Fucking Pisses Me Off List: car tires that screech on dirt roads. For real. Come on. There’s a lot of that in this dumb thing. And motorcycles riding around in cornfields. And way too much of this guy:

So, Isaac – the bad kid from the first one that got crucified and killed in the original is back around as a bad guy who got killed by crucifixion but managed to stay alive in a coma. Some girl rolls into town, goes to the hospital and touches him and he comes back to life. After 19 years in a coma with muscles that surely would have atrophied into decay, he’s soon up and back at it again. And he also has a teenage kid. They never say who the mom is but someone must have bopped his Sleepy Little Isaac while he lay there sleeping. Also – since the kid is of driving age, if he and his Sleepy Little Weenie were in a coma for 19 years, someone would have had to bebopaloobop with him 16 years ago. He looked like he was nine in the original so he must have been producing some good coma semen around the age of twelve. Blah, blah, blah, cornstalks this and cornholes (you know that was coming eventually) that and the girl who rolled into town earlier in this paragraph is also knocked up with The Cornfield’s God’s baby. I hate to go back to it but: someone’s been nutting in those cornfields.

#somuchnut

CHILDREN OF THE CORN (7): REVELATION (2001) OK, I GUESS, COMPARATIVELY

You know, I almost liked this one… almost. The sound is pitiful and the story is stupid but, this one looked good (for once) had some reasonable acting. some good looking people in it and wasn’t abhorrent. I think it’s funny that, being a franchise, NONE of these (aside from 1 and 6) had anything to do with each other, other than having some fucking corn stalks and some kids hanging around. There’s no continuity whatsoever and even the 6th one made no fucking sense regarding Isaac and his stupid coma. And his kid. Maybe the sound storyline and significant filmmaking is lost on me somehow…? I don’t know for sure but I only have two more of these fuckers to go! WOO HOO! I FARTED! “Don’t nut yourself in the grain silo, never nut in the cornfield and never fart in church,” says my mom.

This time around some good looking broad goes to Nebraska (I think) (again) to see her grandma but her ole gran’s gone missing. So she decides to stay in her grandma’s decrepit apartment and she has some bad dreams and sees those two stupid kids above and Michael Ironside comes around and some chick takes off her clothes and her tits are everywhere and those kids kill a bunch of people and there’s something about some church revival tent fire and this and that and what else – oh not much. This one was the best looking of the bunch so far and had some boobs but it still wasn’t very good.

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again but I’ve never watched a porn but this one time I did and this guys was, of course, some sort of casting guy and, of course, he had to ball the lady that wanted to be in the pictures so he and his monster weenus start giving it to her really good for around 30 minutes. Aside from the fact that he was able to give it to her really good for 30 minutes, depending on what angle the camera guy was using to capture this true and lifelike phenomenon, on the wall was a movie poster for Scanners and every time I ever see Ironside in anything that’s all I can really think about.

Looking at that poster again for this post, one can only imagine that the director of the porn was really getting into symbolic imagery considering the position Ironside’s in and the fact that he’s on fire and screaming, compared to the natural act being portrayed on that VHS tape for 30 minutes – or, that’s just something some dude had in his garage when they built the set for that nature documentary I was or was not looking at.

10 seconds, the pain begins
15 seconds, you can’t breathe
20 seconds, you explode
30 minutes, hereitisbabyohgodherecomestheloadtakeittakeitohgodohgodchristeweeeeeweeee

CHILDREN OF THE CORN (8): GENESIS (2011)  NOT TOO BAD

I guess, maybe, like I might have mentioned ten hours ago when this post began, if you saw the original back when you were a kid, it probably scared the shit out of you and you have fond memories of it. Well, I didn’t see it until 2013 and it didn’t do much for me so when I come out and say that I think this is the best of the bunch, that’s not saying too much because I thought they were all pretty crappy. This one didn’t rely on a bunch of idiotic kids dressed Amish style slicing people up with handmade scythes or ridiculous corn stalks growing into your body cavities and killing you. The ending was a little iffy but overall, I thought this was a decent movie and I stand by that this is probably the best of the group. I still have a couple more to get to but I want to put this out while it’s still corn season and not full on winter and snow and sleet and hail and blueballs.

It seems that guy didn’t like my last sentence either.

Aside from a dream sequence, we don’t have to deal with a bunch of corn as this takes place mostly in a house out in the middle of nowhere where a preacher and his foreign wife have their kid holed up in a barn. A couple of decent acting characters end up there after their car breaks down and tensions mount as the kid in the barn wants the female’s unborn baby. Everything looks modern since this was made in 2011 and there’s decent special effects so nothing looks like it’s drawn on a piece of film by an unpaid intern and there’s a cool looking sequence towards the end involving a series of car wrecks. One of the things I’ve always tried to teach people in my travels and adventures is to keep things in perspective so, let’s be honest, forget your memories and go sit through all of these over the course of a weekend and tell me which one you like best.

CHILDREN OF THE CORN: RUNAWAY (2018) LET’S BE OBJECTIVE

Oh boy. How do we do this? Since we are fair and objective here at Film Miasma, we all know that sometimes a shitty film needs a good rogering. That’s why I like to file things under “At Least They Tried” if I think they gave it a decent effort. I also use “Crap” and “Worse Than The Draft Beer Shits” when it’s painfully obvious no one gave a shit and we can all tell, thanks buddy. The purpose of this particular section is to make some remarks about film number 9 in this franchise. As someone who has just or recently seen all of them, to my shameful dismay, as an objective remarker on movies I watch, I have to say this is the best one of them, despite if you hold IMDB ratings holy and in high regard. Like I said in my last full paragraph, go watch all of these and tell me which one you think is best; I will only listen to you after you’ve signed an agreement stating under oath and in a court of law, maritime or otherwise, that you’ve indeed watched all of these motherfuckers over a recent period of time and not remembering something you saw 30 or 40 years ago, probably before your current manager at your workplace was conceived.

Another thing to effect objectivity: as a man who watches end credits, I confirmed my suspicions that some of this was filmed in the state of the united states that I live in. This does not affect my judgement as I have never been to that particular town and one of the cities they cite in the ‘special thanks to’ portions of the credits is actually a real crap hole that I hate and even had the misopportunity to go to a wedding in earlier this summer. Eat shit, El Reno. nevertheless and even though no one in their right minds would come to Film Miasma for recommendations and / or no one will have made it to the bottom of this post, this is still the best one of these fuckers.

We should also take into account in our (OMG foreshadwoing!!) assessment that this was made by the same guy who made the decision to do a first person point of view of a head rolling through a monster’s guts and being pooped out on the street in Feast 3. I think I mentioned that two weeks ago when you first started reading this piece of shit work. I gave up all hope on him after that (despite Feast {1} being one of my good times) but here he is again and – well – good job, amigo. There are actually some really cool – uh – hmmm – ‘reverse deaths’ in this thing that I wish we could have seen more of. And some cool slo-mo. And some believable actors and acting. And even something relatively really cool in the very, very last seconds at the end of the credits. So there, IMDB raters! Up yours!

I mean, this is no great movie but it’s surprisingly not that bad. I don’t want to go watching it again or anything but I’d rather do that than look at any of the others. Ever. Eh. *shrugs* If you’ve just got that itch to watch a movie about something like this, I’d say just watch this one and forget all of those others were ever out there.

CHILDREN OF THE CORN (2020) ……………….

Well, shit. I can’t seem to find this one anywhere that I don’t have to pay for so we’ll keep this slot open for sometime in the future! I honestly can’t imagine I’m missing much. This is a still from a search for it. It doesn’t fill me with promising enthusiasm.

And there we go! Man, what a long post. Sorry! Let’s close down fall and head into winter. Cornfields and sickles and scythes and nutting your pants can go rest until spring.

FILED UNDER: RETROSPECTIVES