Sunday, April 17, 2011

BMC MOVIE OF THE WEEK: CHILDREN OF THE CORN

Children of the Corn
  • Children of the Corn
  • IN THIS PIC IS MALACHAI OFF OF CHILDREN OF THE CORN
Narrator Job (Robby Kiger) relates the tale of Gatlin, NE, where one day the children, led by a boy preacher named Isaac (John Franklin), rose up and slaughtered all the grown-ups. A few years later, Job and his sister, Sarah (Ammemarie McEvoy), help their friend, Joseph (Jonas Marlowe), try to escape through the cornfields of Gatlin. Meanwhile, Burt Stanton (Peter Horton), a commitment-phobic young doctor, and Vicky Baxter (Linda Hamilton), his frustrated girlfriend, travel through the cornfield-lined roads of Nebraska on their way to Burt's new internship in Omaha. Their car hits Joseph, who appears out of nowhere, but upon examining him, Burt realizes the child's throat was slit before he ever wandered out from the corn. Attempting to locate help, Burt and Vicky turn to gas-station owner Diehl (R.G. Armstrong), who urges the couple to go anywhere but nearby Gatlin to report the murder. Several contradictory street signs later, they arrive in Gatlin anyway, and, befriending Sarah and Joseph, attempt to uncover the mystery behind Isaac's cult and its mysterious deity, known only as He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Stephen King cash-ins flooded the market between the successes of Brian DePalma's Carrie (1976) and Rob Reiner's Misery (1990), many of them, like Children of the Corn, based only loosely on the author's fiction. The original short story appeared in the collection Night Shift. – AllMovie Guide
50% liked it

R, 1 hr. 33 min.

Director: Fritz Kiersch

April 17, 2011: Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion (Year A)

Let me explain. You see, I spent my teenage years in a relatively small town with only two public high schools, which meant that everyone of a similar age was pretty much familiar with each other. So it was no big deal to go to a movie on a Friday night and see 30 or 40 recognizable faces to sit with. That sounds nice, and it was really, but it could also cause problems. Take Children Of The Corn for example. The movie had barely started and it was working hard to amp up the creep factor. There were shots of desolate wind blown corn fields, and you could tell by the camera movements that something awful was in there, and the soundtrack was ratcheting up the volume of its spooky kids choir, and the guy on screen was nearing panic…

And then it showed some poor mutt running out into the fields and a nice girl named Holly who was sitting a few seats down from me yelled out, “Hey look everybody, it’s a corndog!” That was it, game over. For the next hour and a half it was a total pun war. In the years since I’ve sometimes wondered just how many people we ruined the movie for that evening. But in looking at the film again recently, I don’t know, maybe we did them a favor.

Let’s face it, Children Of The Corn is a stupid movie. Oh, it’s certainly entertaining enough, and even a little eerie at times. There’s no denying that the two guys playing the cult leader Isaac (I love it that he went on to play Cousin It in the Addams Family movies) and the sociopathic Malachai are perfect for their roles. And some scenes like the restaurant massacre and the sudden appearance of the dead boy on the highway work pretty well. But mostly it’s just stupid. At the end of the day, we’re still talking about corn. And no matter how many times you wave a stalk of corn in someone’s face, it’s never going to be that scary. Plus it doesn’t help that the special effects for the dreaded He Who Walks Behind The Rows amount to little more than the same ones they used for the gopher in Caddyshack. And even worse than that, when the child preacher Isaac becomes possessed by He Who Walks Behind The Rows, the only outward sign is the fact that the boy grows a Billy Idol hairdo. Stupid.

isaac

So why did something so silly spawn six sequels and a remake? Part of it is probably that these movies are so cheap to make. All you need are some unknown child actors (they don’t even have to be good ones), a corn field (one sequel had nothing but a few rows of corn outside an apartment complex), and a handful of butcher knives (if you can’t afford the knives, then just have the kids stare at people till they drop dead, that works too). But the other reason is that religion can sometimes be creepy, especially to those outside of it. Stephen King’s always been one to wet himself over anything that thumps a bible, and his Children Of The Corn does its best to play off of his, and some other people’s, irrational fear of evangelical Christians.

And in a weird way, that’s okay, because it actually points to something true. Religion should be unnerving to people. Not in the freak show sense we see in the caricatures presented onscreen by the Children Of The Corn, of course, and damn sure not in the caricatures we see presented off screen by people like the Phelp’s clan from Westboro Baptist Church. But rather, religious people should be disturbing in the way we see in this week’s reading describing Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. As the Pope details it in his new book Jesus Of Nazareth: Holy Week, “People had heard of the prophet from Nazareth, but he did not appear to have any importance for Jerusalem, and the people there did not know him. The crowd that paid homage to Jesus at the gateway to the city was not the same crowd that later demanded his crucifixion… When he entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred… Now the people were ‘quaking’: the word that Matthew uses, eseisthe (seio), describes the vibration caused by an earthquake.” In other words, the one's cheering Jesus’ arrival and waving around those palm leaves are the ones who had already been traveling with him and believed in his messiahship, and their fervor is such that it unnerves the general populace who had little knowledge of the Lord.

It’s an image that should give us cause to examine our own Catholic faith. The Catechism tells us that Jesus, through the Eucharist, “is the sum and summary of our faith: "Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking.” Does such a radical way of thinking translate into a real excitement for God once communion is over? And is our faith so passionate that it actually causes tremors in the culture once we walk outside the doors of our churches ? Well, we all know what the answer should be, don’t we? It’s just a matter of making it happen.

Preferably without all the corn and butcher knives.

9 comments:

PaperSmyth said...

OMGooneZ! I totally laughed 'til I cried! Thank you so much!

"The crowd that paid homage to Jesus at the gateway to the city was not the same crowd that later demanded his crucifixion…"

Never heard that interpretation of the Gospel... totally new to me... I'll need to think on that one.

(Corn is frequently scary "in real life" where I live. In the old days, young children could get lost for hours in it. Sometimes days. Imagine that's why we weren't allowed to wander in the corn where the whole section was planted in it.

"Several contradictory street signs later..." What street signs? [She says after GPS-verifying house locations in a county in rural Nebraska with just one. Public. Bathroom.])

Gold!

EegahInc said...

"Never heard that interpretation of the Gospel"

The Pope makes it clear that the book is a personal work and does not fall under the charism of infallibility, so we're certainly free to disagree with his take on it. But there's something about it I like. It in no way takes away from the truth that we all put him on the cross, but it has a lot to say about how non-believers might react to our faith.

"Corn is frequently scary "in real life" where I live."

And now you've taught me something about the true horrors of corn, so all in all, this was a pretty fruitful movie watching experience.

Anonymous said...

Yes, the corn is scary--a bazillion rows of "genetic uniformity" will do that. Especially late in the summer, when there are little scurries just at the corner of your eye, which are weasels. I spent a year in very rural (not on the map) Iowa, and the corn creeped me out more than once. S. King's short stories are brilliant, ten times better than his novels.

oh, and tonight at Palm Sunday Mass, my bishop challenged all of us to spend more time praying during Holy Week than online. So if you hear off to the West, someone going "AAARrrrrgggh!", that's just me having, um, an occasion of grace.

Xena Catolica

EegahInc said...

Alright, so corn is scary, who knew?

And you'd be surprised how often I've found that "AAARrrrrgggh!" accompanies my own occasions of grace. I think it's one of the prerequisites.

PaperSmyth said...

"It in no way takes away from the truth that we all put him on the cross, but it has a lot to say about how non-believers might react to our faith."

Thanks for clearing that up; seems to sum up the direction that your whole post was headed.

You did well. I just don't like any of King's writing at all. (I'm more of a 18th/19th century monster person myself.) My husband, who is older than me and saw it in the theater, assures me that laughing at it was pretty much pervasive.

Xena, if you hear screaming off further west, that will be me trying to keep my kids off the internet. ;) Best of luck with your attempts and I'll pray for you.

Easter blessing to you all!

EegahInc said...

"Thanks for clearing that up"

Trust me, any confusion caused was all my doing, not the Pope's. I wonder if it's a sin to envy his writing style?

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

EegahInc, I was with you on corn until Xena Catolica brought up the bazillion rows of "genetic uniformity."

You see, I've just finished rereading Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Think of about 100 identical twins. Not fifty pairs of twins, mind you! A hundred absolutely identical people. As identical as corn!!!

(Someone call Hollywood. I think I just came with the premise for the next sequel. . . Or has a whole cult of identical child worshipers already been done? LOL!)

EegahInc said...

Again with the corn! I give up already! Corn is the most frightening thing on the planet!

Seriously, though, while it's only 12 identical children and not 100, I highly recommend the original 1960 version of Village Of The Damned.

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

LOL! Didn't mean to help them gang up on you there! ;-)

Oooh, I hadn't known that about the original Village of the Damned. Thanks!