"Children of the Corn" (1984)

Movies from the '80s that spawned a terrible amount of sequels are not uncommon, but looking at franchises like Halloween and Friday the 13th, the first often merits viewing and praise. My hope was that the same would be true of Children of the Corn, a series that has a sequel with the subtitle "Urban Harvest".

Overall, I liked the movie, although it was frsutratingly stereotypical for a horror movie. I don't know how stereotypical it was at the time it came out, but the late '70s and early '80s produced a glut of horror movies with similar themes and motifs.

I enjoyed the beginning a lot. The violence was unexpected and intense and very '80s in the way that all the viewer saw was the movement of a blade across a throat or in a slashing or stabbing motion without any actual violence and only a faint trace of blood left. I loved how there was just a glance exchanged between Issac and Malachai and suddenly all of the kids had weapons and were killing all of the adults.

In many ways, the idea of a small town in which the children follow a crazy religious-zealot-kid in killing all of the adults is intriguing. Could it really work? Could a town be small enough that no one would notice or acknowledge the abscense of the adults? They had control of the gas station attendant and had made the town extremely hard to find by putting up contradictory road signs and growing the expansive fields of corn, so I think that it would be possible to hide this small town in the middle of nowhere. The presence of the "blue man" was problematic for me. His finding the town and trying to intervene there is realistic and helps so that the town is not wholly undiscovered, but the fact that they kids killed him and that brought no other police presence is a little too unrealistic.

My least favorite part of the movie was the douchey male lead. He smoked the kid with the car, found the suitcase with the blood still fresh and was insistant upon going to Gatlin when there is another, much more populated town only 20 or so miles away. Once the corn maze kept leading me away from the town and eventually back to where I started, I would have moved on, but especially once I got through the deserted town unscathed. He just had to stop at that last house and fuck it up for him and the girlfriend.

I liked the two kids who weren't a part of the cult. It was cool that the little girl could draw the future and I liked that they were resisting Issac by playing Monopoly and listening to music.

Also, it was cool to see that "He Who Walked Behind the Rows" was real. I am still not sure exactly what "He" was, but I liked the ground moving like something was currowing underneath it and I loved that the corn both moved to show the douche the way and also tried to smother him and take him into the cornfield. Also, the craziness with the sky was cool, even with the '80s-tastic special effects. Also, I liked that after Issac was rocketed into the air as a sacrifice, he came back and killed Malachai, who deserved it.

I was glad to see the kids and the couple escape to safety, something that I feel is rare in most horror movies. Especially since the girl attacked him at the end, which I thought was going to surprise kill him for sure. I loved that the girlfriend slammed the acr door into her head and they all just walked away as "The End" appeared on the screen.

Good to have this one under my belt. Looking forward to potentially check out some of the sequels.