An A-Maize-Ing Journey

Year: 1984

Director: Fritz Kiersch

Cast: Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton, R.G. Armstrong

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Happy Halloween month, everybody! You know I can't resist me a good franchise marathon when the spooky season rolls around, but what's a boy to do when he's already covered Freddy, Jason, Michael, Leatherface, Chucky, Pazuzu, and 112 Ocean Avenue? Well, luckily (or probably unluckily) for me, the horror genre can't resist pumping out a coterie of sequels for any old random title that makes money, which brings us to Children of the Corn and its legendary, decades-spanning run of 10 films. That's the franchise that'll be providing my suffering for your entertainment this year, so let's start with good ol' number one and see if it's gonna be a trick or a treat to kick off the season.

Trick question. Linda Hamilton is always a treat.

Loosely based on the Stephen King short story of the same name, Children of the Corn tells the tale of young med school graduate Burt (Peter Horton) and his girlfriend Vicky (Linda Hamilton, ever-so slightly pre-Terminator). They are traveling to a small Nebraska town where he has gotten a job, but through a series of increasingly eerie circumstances, they wind up stopped over in the ghost town of Gatlin, where the children have murdered all the adults and worship the mysterious entity known as He Who Walks Behind the Rows. The cult of tykes is led by the charismatic despot Isaac (John Franklin) and his right-hand man, pubescent enforcer Malachai (Courtney Gains).

They investigate the town, and over the next 45 minutes Burt conclusively proves that you don't need to have a brain to graduate med school. 

And you don't need a hat to be a creepy child cult leader. But it helps.

The thing that boggles the mind about Children of the Corn is exactly how it became a classic in the first place. I think the name "Stephen King" has the a lot to do with it, and eventually the name "Linda Hamilton," but by all measures CotC is a very slight film. It's split roughly into halves: First we see the origin of the mayhem in Gatlin and establish the relationship between Vicki and Burt. Then they arrive in the town, discover its secret, and set out to vanquish a demon, all over the course of a single eventful day. When the credits roll, it feels like you've watched about 70 minutes of a movie that was supposed to be quite a bit longer. Now, being brisk is hardly a sin for a movie (especially in my eyes), but the narrative is malnourished in a few important ways.

For one thing, the central relationship is unusually well-established for a movie of this ilk, but only in the first twenty minutes or so. Hamilton and Horton have a warm, lived-in chemistry that is satisfying to bask in, and they feint at subplots about Burt being afraid of commitment and both of them maybe being resentful of having to move to such a small town, but all of this is forgotten by the time they reach Gatlin. There, our heroes are split up for pretty much the rest of the movie and never get any actual conflict resolved beyond the immediate physical threat to their persons. 

We also don't get to see enough of the inner workings of the cult of children to really understand how dreadful life has been for them since the change. This is largely because we spend the most time with Joby (Robby Kiger) and Sarah (Anne Marie McEvoy), two children who are specifically separate from the rest of the pack. There are occasional cuts to dissension brewing between Isaac and Malachai, but this subplot is painted in strokes so broad you could fly a crop-duster through them.

Curse these little moppets for getting their Spielberg all over my King!

But speaking of Isaac and Malachai, therein lies my biggest theory why this film has made any sort of lasting impression on the culture at large. Isaac is played by John Franklin, who was in his early twenties at the time of filming, although he retained a childlike appearance due to a growth hormone deficiency. His performance is incredibly satisfying, physically highlighting Isaac's childlike features, but retaining every nanosecond of his adulthood in the boy's eyes and voice. Isaac is a character that seems wise beyond his years (for good reason), haunted by a look that no child should ever have. Franklin's performance is incredibly creepy, and iconic for good reason.

Malachai is iconic in his own way, too, though probably because he reminds everyone of their childhood bully. His pubescent squeak and gangly limbs combined with his physical menace are another rough juxtaposition, this time of a child clearly trying to act beyond his years, instead of the other way around.

Beyond that, Children of the Corn is truly valuable for one scene alone, and it is the introductory sequence where we get to see the children murdering all the adults in a diner. It's the goriest moment in the film (later, most of the blood is tempera paint red and thrown in splashes from offscreen) and by far the most brutal and creepy. It's also the Stephen Kingiest, not shying away from the taboo, stomach-churning topics like, oh... children murdering the sh*t out of their parents.

That's not ALL strawberry milkshake.

Everything else in the movie is just kind of... fine, or at least good thing that is undercut by something slightly nefarious and - is it hacky to use the word "corny?" For example, the creepiness of the children being interrupted by Joby's weirdly chipper, entirely unnecessary voiceover narration. I do like the score, which utilizes a choir of children to good effect, but it's counterbalanced by the hilariously low-grade effect that bring to life [sic] He Who Walks Behind the Rows. It looks like somebody drew a demon in an Etch-a-Sketch and shook it up halfway, which in turn undermines the actually almost creepy effect of the entity moving under the soil like the groundhog from Caddyshack.

All in all, I enjoy myself during Children of the Corn, and it might not always be for the best reasons, but who's to turn down a movie that's enjoyable? It doesn't have a whole lot of meat on its bones, but I suppose that's what you can expect from a corn-based diet anyway.

TL;DR: Children of the Corn is a classic for no real reason I can discern, but there is some stuff that is at least halfway worthy of longevity.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1109
Reviews In This Series
Children of the Corn (Kiersch, 1984)
Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (Price, 1992)
Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (Hickox, 1995)
Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (Spence, 1996)
Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (Wiley, 1998)
Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return (Skogland, 1999)
Children of the Corn: Revelation (Magar, 2001)
Children of the Corn (Borchers, 2009)
Children of the Corn: Genesis (Soisson, 2011)
Children of the Corn: Runaway (Gulager, 2018)

Thy Will Be Done

Year: 2013

Director: Kimberly Peirce

Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Gabriella Wilde

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

There is, of course, only one question that any review of Carrie needs to answer: Is it as good as the 1976 Brian De Palma classic?

The answer is of course not, but the film itself is nothing to scoff at.

I'm just as shocked as you.

Let's switch things up and start with the problems for once so I can actually end this review on a good note. And there are a number of them, but they aren't nearly so critical as all that.

1) Chloë Grace Moretz is not an outsider.

This girl's a superstar and she can't entirely shake that charisma, which I suppose isn't a bad thing for Chloë. But occasionally it's hard to watch this amazing girl cowering in the corner without thinking "Stand up straight and take charge, you got this girl." Also her shower scene was way more sensual than the story called for. Sorry girl, you're awesome. But Carrie White... isn't.

2) The film is a little too eager to punch those early moments.

We get it. She's discovering her powers. When she gets angry, things start to move. We figured that out with the tampon hurricane in the locker room. And the water cooler exploding. And the mirror shattering. And the door cracking. And the fact that we've all already seen Carrie. It's just like Twilight drawing out the part where Bella discovers that Edward is a vampire. Yeah, you're your own story, but calm down. American audiences aren't as dumb as the Zac Efron trailer before the film would have you believe.

3) Really? This is high school?

This is Carrie's friend Sue.

This is Carrie's enemy, Billy.

If those two are high school aged, I really missed out.

4) The film relies too much on creaky CGI.

How hard is it to unspool some fishing line and go to town? The visual effects really show their seams and it all ends up feeling too glossy and sharp, like licking a page of a magazine.

That last flaw is the most evident and comes closest to dampening the movie's effect but where Carrie has strengths, Carrie has strengths.

Pictured: Strengths.

Now that we have those out of the way, we can talk about nice things and plot! If you are one of the few people who doesn't know this story (And they're out there. There are tens of them!), Carrie is about a young woman named Carrie White (Moretz) who lives under the iron fist of her devoutly religious mother Margaret (Julianne Moore).

One day when she gets her first period in the locker room, she is mercilessly mocked by a gang of girls led by Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday), a Regina George if there ever was one. In her anger, Carrie discovers that along with her period has come a mysterious power to make things move with her mind.

Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) has extreme guilt about having been part of the group that made fun of Carrie and she talks her boyfriend Tommy (Ansel Elgort) into asking Carrie to prom to make her feel better. Meanwhile, Chris and her hot boyfriend Billy (Alex Russell) make a plan to ruin Carrie's special night via a lovely pig's blood facial.

High school is like being pelted with bloody tampons every single second of your waking existence. My grandfather claims it was the best time of his life. He must have been really hot back then.

One of the most exciting things about Carrie is its old fashioned approach to horror. There's no jump scares here, just plain old nerve wracking creepiness. Now, a lot of the tension is lost because you know exactly what's going to happen (The Statute of Spoiler Limitations has long since run out on a 1976 film based on a 1974 novella), but the film still packs plenty of punch, mostly in the scenes where Julianne Moore and Chloë Grace get to square off.

The decisions to cast Moore and Moretz were the first and third most effective choices for the film, the second being Judy Greer as Ms. Desjardin, the gym teacher who just wants to see Carrie succeed. Greer (whose career highlight thus far has been as the inimitable Kitty Sanchez on Arrested Development) works in a pitch perfect comic register that balances out the film quite nicely and her motherly affection toward Carrie is utterly compelling.

Between that, Moore's gut-wrenchingly terrifying and zealous histrionics, and Moretz's naïve charm (her nervous smile put me in the mind of Boris Karloff in Bride of Frankenstein more than a few times), Carrie has more than enough legs to stand on.

Two. You only need two.

And frankly this is a story that, although simple, deserves to be retold. Openly lesbian director Kimberly Peirce (whose biggest feature by far is her debut film Boys Don't Cry) updates the timeless themes (namely: teenagers suck) and pulls them into a new world pervaded with social media and cyberbullying.

This past decade, the dangers of bullying have been receiving a lot more press and activist groups are becoming much more numerous and involved with high schools across the country. People are beginning to stand up for themselves and fight against something that has up until now merely been seen as an unpleasant but expected institution in the lives of young men and women.

Essentially, the time has never been riper for a reinvention of Stephen King's fabulous freshman debut, and although the film feels somewhat insubstantial when held to the light of his masterwork of exploring a young woman's development, at the end of the day it has something to say, it's disturbing when it wants to be, and it never slows down.

Carrie is enjoyable to the very end, no matter how many times this story has been reworked.

The devil never dies, it just keeps coming back. And this devil of a tale is unstoppable.

TL;DR: Carrie is perhaps unnecessary, but not even remotely unenjoyable.

Rating: 8/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Yes, especially considering this is the only wide release horror film of this year (gag me with a spoon). Support horror! Happy Halloween!

Word Count: 1053

Comic Relief

Year: 1982

Director: George A. Romero

Run Time: 2 hours

MPAA Rating: R

A five part horror anthology series based on the old EC comics like Tales From the Crypt directed by George Romero, written by Stephen King, and made up by Tom Savini, Creepshow is a classic horror fan's wet dream.

EC horror comics used to be all the rage in the 1950s, but declined in popularity due to a moral panic (gee, where have I head that one before?). Naturally, fans were outraged and Creepshow is at heart an enormous middle finger to the people who hoped those tales would never see the light of day again. These five stories and their overarching connecting story are all original stories (well, two of them were adapted from previously published shorts by Stephen King), but not a one of them would be out of place in the popular issues of yore.

Even more direct of a callback than the stories is the format itself. The editing, acting, framing, color design, opening titles, and even the poster are all deliberate homages to that lost style of storytelling. Think what Scott Pilgrim vs. the World did for classic video games, but twenty years earlier.

But let's let this clever, campy, and imaginative film speak for itself as we dive on into the individual stories.

"Prologue/Epilogue"

Cast: Joe Hill, Tom Atkins, Tom Savini

In this brief setup story, Billy, a young boy (Hill, Stephen King's son), is harangued by his father (Atkins) for reading filth like those daggum horror comics. He tosses his son's beloved entertainment in the trash, but a nighttime visit from The Creep allows Billy (and us) to revisit his favorite stories, and when his mail order voodoo doll comes in the mail, he puts it to good use.

As if the entire nature of the film wasn't enough, this segment fully drives in the "screw you, comics-haters" vibe.

"Father's Day"

Cast: Carrie Nye, Viveca Lindfors, Ed Harris

A fairly straightforward piece, this segment details the story of a murdered man returning from the grave on the anniversary of his death to wreak havoc on a party thrown in his honor by his killer and the family members that benefitted from his will. This sequence is the most similar to the slasher craze that had begun but two years before.

"Father's Day" features some of the loopiest comic strip sequences, especially during the flashback to the father's murder in which a car zooms in and out of two panels and images slash across the screen diagonally while framed by vibrant colors. In addition, the night is lit by a sheer blue glow that is reminiscent of the overwhelmingly technicolor masterpiece Suspiria.

The zombie makeup is pretty cheesy, as should be expected of a movie from this time period, but Savini is not one to mess around and details like the gooey tendrils holding the monster's skeletal jaws together are masterful.

"The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill"

Cast: Stephen King, Bingo O'Malley

Verrill (King), a young hermit who presumably lives in the Deep South, discovers a meteor that has crashed into his back field and accidentally cracks it open, getting himself covered in a milky secretion. When he imagines the possible outcomes of his discovery, his wacky fantasy life is reminiscent of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. 

Unfortunately, the goo appears to have the adverse effect of turning him into a living plant and he is driven to madness by his transformation and the reappearance of his late father. King proves himself to be a strangely reliable actor, hamming it up in a role that reminds one of Jim Carrey in his prime.

Not to be outdone, this segment is also awash in bright technicolor light, this time green to represent, you know, the plants.

"Something to Tide You Over"

Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson, Gaylen Ross

Whereas "Father's Day" was more of a slasher riff and "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" had a determinedly sci-fi bent, "Something To Tide You Over" definitely feels more like a precursor to psycho trap movies like Cube, Nine Dead, or the Saw franchise.

This segment is easily the most star-studded with Nielsen (Airplane!, Prom Night, The Naked Gun) playing a madman torturing his cheating wife (Gaylen Ross, who appeared four years earlier in Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead) and her young lover, played by Ted Danson (Cheers, Bored to Death) by burying them up to their necks in the sand and letting the tide wash in.

Naturally, the story doesn't end there as things take a turn for the supernatural, mostly lit in a vivid shade of aquamarine.

"The Crate"

Cast: Adrienne Barbeau, Hal Holbrook, Fritz Weaver

A janitor discovers an old crate sealed with chains tucked beneath an old staircase at the university. Its label would imply that it's over 170 years old and may contain artifacts from the Arctic Expedition. When he and a stuffy old professor open it and release the beast inside, his friend Henry (Holbrook) catches wind and must decided whether to detain the beast or utilize its frenzy to get rid of his overbearing wife (Barbeau).

This segment with it's "monster from the arctic" theme would seem to be an homage to John Carpenter's The Thing, released earlier that same year. This idea is cemented in by the crate's label - "via Julia Carpenter" - and the presence of Adrienne Barbeau who had previously worked with the director on 1980's The Fog, 1981's Escape From New York, even appearing The Thing itself in a small cameo.

This segment is the most thematically resonant, with the monster representing Henry's internal desires and rage, augmented by the garish red light that accompanies his dark fantasies and the monster's evil doings.

Tom Savini gets his best work in this segment with a fabulous clawing of a young student's face.

"They're Creeping Up on You!"

Cast: E. G Marshall, David Early

Wow, they really saved all their F-bombs for this one. E. G. Marshall (12 Angry Men) plays a callous businessman whose latest buyout led a rival to suicide. Not at all haunted by this, he is rather more worried about the vermin problem in his pristine penthouse apartment.

Cockroaches appears in larger and larger numbers as he does all he can to squash and spray in between shouting matches with his super. After a citywide blackout, the bugs swarm and overwhelm him in what is, at least to me, the most truly terrifying moment in the film.

Absolutely skin crawling.

Some of Creepshow's segments are more complex than others, but they all maintain the relative simplicity common to comics narratives as they parade a variety of horrors, blaring colors, and talented actors eating it up in supremely over the top campy roles.

Creepshow is horror distilled, perfectly capturing the essence of the childlike wonder of experiencing those EC spooky stories for the first time. The true definition of a cult classic, it's just a whole lot of fun, and the people working on this project were the best and brightest the genre had to offer at the time.

Segment Ranking:

#5 "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill"

#4 "Father's Day"

#3 "They're Creeping Up on You!"

#2 "Something to Tide You Over"

#1 "The Crate"

TL;DR: Creepshow is a living comic book and a rowdy and campy horror classic.
Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 1236