“Question me
not Malachai.”
The first Stephen King book I read was “Pet Sematary” in 1988. Four years earlier I saw the first horror
movie based on a King short story that terrified me: “Children of the
Corn”. I had caught glimpses at that
time of “Salem’s Lot”, “The Shining”, and had seen “Creepshow” and “Cujo”,
while they had their scary moments, none of them stayed with me like the
children of Gatlin, Nebraska. From the
opening scene where adults are massacred to the sounds of the eeriest chanting music
I had ever heard, this movie made an imprint on my fear center like nothing
else.
Watching it
now after years of horror movies, I can say that “Children of the Corn” is not
a very good movie, nor is it particularly scary anymore. The chanting is still a little creepy, if it
were more underplayed it would work better, and the acting by the children is a
couple of rungs short of a daytime soap.
There’s jump scares and blood, though nothing gory for the most
part. It pushes the thriller aspect when
the interlopers Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton get to the children’s evil
little town. The tense moments are few
and far between but he worst is the voice-over narration by Robby Kiger who
plays Job. All he does is describe what’s
happening and it removes any surprises, he eventually gets better near the
films climax. Along with the adults the
only good child performance is given by Courtney Gains as Malachai, he’s the
most terrifying like a Destro to Issac’s Cobra Commander (the cartoon, not the
movies). By the end I was glad it was
over as the chanting music lost its sway over me. This is one of my childhood horror classics
that didn’t live up to my memory of fears and it certainly didn’t age as well
as something like “The Omen” or “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. I have to say I will probably never watch it
again. But, I’ll still quote that ‘Malachai’
line to my kids for years to come.
--Robert L.
Castillo
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