Day 8Reflections on: Children of the Corn (1983)I’ve been hearing references to this title my

Day 8

Reflections on: Children of the Corn(1983)

• I’ve been hearing references to this title my entire life, yet never really knew what it meant. It was exciting to finally watch it - I love corn! 
• As a child I think I conflated this film with Pumpkinhead(1988)andVillage of the Damned(1995). This is probably the worst of the 3 but it was still pretty entertaining.
• The protagonists drive a car with a book on the dashboard. The book is Night Shift - a collection of short stories by Stephen King. One of the stories in it is “Children of the Corn”. When a filmmaker adds these cute little winks and sly nods to their films they create a surreal logic vortex. These characters are fans of Stephen King’s writing? Have they got to the corn story in the book yet? Wouldn’t they react differently if that was the case? Linda Hamilton’s character would say something like “This is eerily similar to this story I’m reading right now”. I hate it. 
• Linda Hamilton made this the year before she starred in The Terminator (1984). Her character in this couldn’t be any different than Sarah Connor. She is repeatedly denied any agency despite being smart and capable. It almost feels like she couldn’t wait for the movie to be over so her career could start. I know I am projecting but she deserved better.
• Please forgive this long rant: the male protagonist (played by Peter Horton) is supposed to be a smart doctor but he consistently makes very bad decisions and has terrible instincts. He looks like a poor-man’s Steven Weber and dresses like a Jerry-Seinfeld-jeans-and-sneakers-wearing GOOF. He’s bossy, preachy, unlikable, and pathologically arrogant. He gets lost on the highway and instead of listening to a female character he decides the best solution is to DRIVE THROUGH A CORN FIELD. He sucks. It is unclear why Linda Hamilton’s character is with him at all. 
• My favourite part of the movie (besides all the corn of course) is when the main guy successfully evades a knife attack only to immediately ram his face into a pole. 
  
• A lot of corn was harmed during the making of this film. Linda Hamilton’s character asks “What is it with this corn?” as she walks through an abandoned diner full of corn on a street littered with corn. This is a good question. 
  
• Courntey Gains (AKA Hans Klopek from The Burbs (1989) - one of my favourites) is great as Malachai - a violent teen with beautiful feathered red hair. He plays this character as if he’s doing a bad impression of a D&D goon. His buddy Isaac is played perfectly creepy by John Franklin (AKA Cousin It from The Addams Family (1991) - another of my favourites!).
  
• Good basic fashion, except for Linda Hamilton’s long pleated dark beige shorts. Tons of denim. Nice quilt. Even the dog wears a yellow bandanna (which means he’s into watersports). 
• Lots of menacing shots of corn.
  
• Excellent arts (painting and collage) and corn-based crafts (see above).
• Very weird effects. Both practical and… animated??
• Spoiler alert: this is about A CORN LORD!
• Feels like it was written AND made by kids. 
• Good music - both spooky choir chanting in Latin and Runaway by Del Shannon - which remained stuck in my head for days after watching this.
• Ends weirdly abruptly.