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Children of the Corn (1984)

All right, I'll admit it -- I like this movie a lot more than it merits. It was the first contemporary horror movie I saw; back in junior high, we had a day in the week before Christmas when the teacher let one of the kids run across the road to the little mom-n-pop store with about a hundred movies for rent, and this is what we came back with (and somehow we managed to watch the whole thing without Mrs. Gillis turning it off). Freaked the bejeezus out of me. I saw it again a couple of years later, after I'd absorbed a lot more of the genre, and it was like, "Yeah, sure, cool, no willies." It's been so long since then, though, that this last weekend was the first time I've seen it and known conclusively that I was older than Malachi. (And Burt and Vicki too, probably.)

Anyway. Plot overview:
Burt (Peter Horton) and Vicki (Linda Hamilton, just before Terminator made her famous) are driving to Seattle for Burt's medical internship and, in a fit of temporary insanity, decide to drive cross-country on the back roads. Said roads take them into Gatlin, Nebraska, a town where three years previously, all the kids massacred the grownups under the guidance of Isaac the boy prophet (the creepiest little homegrown preacher you ever did see) and his chief enforcer Malachi (the meanest Huck Finn lookalike you ever did see), worshippers of He Who Walks Behind the Rows.
Now, this is all based on a Stephen King short story, and given some of the other cinematic atrocities committed in King's name, I think he got off okay in this one. The movie at least tries to stay true to the spirit of the short story, though the length and conventions of the genre force some changes.
Still, if you've read the short story, the movie is always disappointing. The scene with the most impact in the original is when Burt walks into the empty church and discovers a primitively-painted mural of Jesus, with cornleaf hair, smiling. With sharp teeth. It's the single most chilling part of the short story, and really the point of the entire exercise. In the movie, that image is glossed over; a green Jesus picture is in the background of a couple of shots, but no attention is ever called to it. Now, it may be that the full-on shot had originally been included, and either the producers or the distributors had yanked it from the final edit for being too offensive to too many people (and they would have been right), so I don't fault the director for that. But I still wish it were there. (And maybe killing the goofy "happy ending" would have been a step in the right direction, too.)

Other thoughts:
The lawns in town still look well-kept. The kids all murder their parents, but still mow the lawns?
Burt did good to grab a tire iron when he ran across the first body (literally, hee hee). But then he spent too much of the remainder of the movie empty-handed. Am I the only person who would instinctively seek out a weapon in a dangerous situation (first choice something with bullets, second choice something sharp or pointy, third choice something blunt)?

Burt's little speech about "true religion" seemed like a little bit of pulpit-pounding on the director's part, and really annoys me. Does he actually think that a group of kids who offed their own parents really care what he thinks about their religion? At least they've got a god who makes himself known.
In case anyone was wondering, no, this wasn't shot in Nebraska. The closing credits thank the film (the best film essays on https://mcessay.com/buy-essay-papers/ website) commission of Iowa, and the city councils of Sioux City, Whiting, Salix and Hornick. So if you ever find yourself driving through Iowa and get a strange feeling of deja vu, roll up the windows, lock the doors and drive like hell!! (It'd be fun to watch this back to back with Field of Dreams. "Corn: Good or Evil?")