Movie Appraisal: Children of the Corn (1984)

Beware He Who Walks Behind the Rows!

Children of the Corn is an interesting movie. Released in the height of the Stephen King movie madness, the same year as Firestarter, and a year after Cujo, The Dead Zone, and Christine, this film is certainly a staple of the Stephen King adaptations in general. When I was young, The Shining, Cujo, Pet Sematary, Christine, Carrie, and Children of the Corn defined Stephen King's career for me like I'm sure they had for most people in the same time period. This was before I had read his books or had become the Stephen King fan that I certainly am today. I knew the stories because the movies had entered pop culture, and they were never going to leave.

Even today if you mention any of those movies, people, even those unfamiliar with horror or with Stephen King, will be able to tell you exactly what they're about. I do not tend to define Stephen King by these books and movies, but looking at what he's known for, it certainly seems as if the general public defines him by these films. I don't tend to review the better known Stephen King movies, but eventually I'm sure I'll do them all. Children of the Corn is a special case for me for two reasons. The first is that I do believe this is the first Stephen King film I ever saw, and the second is that I'm not just reviewing this movie this October, but the entire franchise! (Provided I can get through all of them without hating myself too much.)

To be honest, I have no idea why this movie kickstarted a franchise. While it is a solid and decent horror flick, there's nothing there that gives it a killer personality or the amazing good looks that franchises seem to need. And like most of these eighties franchises, the first movie ends in a way that leaves it as a very standalone thing. I have no idea where the franchise will go from here, and I'm certain that I won't like it.

I had the idea for reviewing the franchise in my last October Nights when I reviewed Disciples of the Crow, a short adaptation of the same Stephen King short story. It is a very close adaptation and worked very well for what it was. This movie, on the other hand, is not so close to the short story, and it suffers for it. I don't think it's bad, but it is way too long, and the ending was an extreme disappointment. Despite being the first Stephen King movie I saw, I don't believe I've seen it more than once or twice in all my years. While I remember certain scenes, the ending was something that didn't stick in my memory, and now I know that was for good reason.

The story here is simple: kids in a small town in Nebraska (Gatlin) go on a rampage and kill all of their parents at the urging and leadership of two boys, Isaac and Malachai. Three years later Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton hit a boy who is already standing dead in the road(!?) as they drive through some back roads for reasons that are never clearly explained. How this boy is dead and just standing there is never explained or shown, and it confuses me greatly. Obviously he has not entered rigor mortis yet, so the only thing that I can think of as an explanation is that Malachai propped him up with either magic or a stick. In either case, why would he even do that? They put the rest of the people into the corn for He Who Walks Behind the Rows. So, why just prop a kid up in the middle of the road after his throat is sliced? Was he hoping a car would hit him? Or was it just random happenstance?

Another thing that bothers me is that this town has been dead, except for children, for three years. Wouldn't somebody notice? What about the trucks that restock the stores or the gas pumps? What about the postal vehicles that need to pick up and drop off mail? What about the state and federal governments that collect taxes and might wonder where their citizens went off to inexplicably? My point is that even in the dark ages of the eighties, there would be questioned asked and inquiries made. Signs would be put up saying something like "A whole town disappeared one day here. Maybe it's not safe to come gallivanting around here." It would be as famous as Roanoake. People all over the world would know about it. It wouldn't just be a secret. When a couple thousand people disappear, it's something that's going to get out. Somebody's going to say something. Even if that town only supported a hundred people (and that's ridiculous, look at the size of it) people would talk and pilgrimage there to look upon the mystery. It's less a problem with the movie and more a problem with the short story in general. It has always bothered me, and while watching the movie it was the only thing I could think of. It took my mind off of the film and made it unrealistic and very silly.

So, I guess I find the premise ridiculous in the first place. I'll get that out of my fingers right now before I go further. While the movie is fine, it will never be something I love or really enjoy. And ti will always be known to me more for its atmosphere than for its amazing plot or premise.

And it does have a great atmosphere, among the corn fields and an abandoned town. The movie is shot well (except for the ending), and there are times when it can be genuinely heart-pumping. While never scary, it does have a few unsettling moments, and works well with them. I would say the oddness of the children is probably the highlight of the film, with Malachai and Isaac being the breakout creepy kids. What I find interesting is that the actor who played Isaac, John Franklin, had a growth hormone deficiency and was actually 25 when he was in the movie, which may explain why he just doesn't look quite right. I like the unsettling nature of that decision, even if it does seem slightly exploitative.

The acting is quite good in the movie beyond that, but the dialogue and script are not so good. And the ending is frankly terrible. A happy ending to a short story that has one of the biggest downer endings in all of Stephen King's written works? It seems like some sort of betrayal. The couple of the movie was supposed to fight and they were supposed to die as well. Not having that dynamic took away from a great deal of the passion of the flick, making large swaths of the movie uninteresting a more than a little boring to watch. While the imagery was mostly pretty solid as well, shots of corn and long periods of time of walking or looking around just seemed like padding more than anything else.

Oh, and the special effects were anything but special. They're one of the big reasons the ending fails so spectacularly besides the script. I can't even believe they used those effects. It was embarrassing to watch. There could have been so many ways they could have gone around the special effects, but nope, let's put really bad effects in the movie and hope it keeps people scar- oh- it looks like that? Well, that made me laugh so hard I was crying a little out of my eye holes. And then I just felt disgusted for a while.

On the whole, it's a decent film with some bad decisions. It is a whole film though, one that tells an entire story, so I'm shocked there's a franchise made from this, and I have no idea where it's going to go besides having children and corn and probably recycled plots and a bunch of blood. So, I'm looking forward to it?







No.





No, I really don't think I am.

Book Evaluation: The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson (Author's Definitive Edition) (1984) (Re-released in 2004)

I previously reviewed the original version of F. Paul Wilson's start of the Repairman Jack series back in 2011. I have been into these books, reading them and enjoying them for a good long while, but about two years ago, I started having less time and had a good amount of trouble getting through the last four or so books of the series. I had forgotten some details and generally felt frustrated that I couldn't easily get back into the mindset I needed to read these books. So, back in November or so I started reading this book. But again I ran into time troubles which have only recently begun to resolve themselves. And thus, I started reading through the series again, almost as if it were new to me.

I really enjoy the series, and must again express my surprise that very few other people I know (most of whom are into this type of fiction) have ever even heard of the author before much less the series. But I've certainly expressed my love of the series to them in the interim. Anyway, since I've already reviewed this particular book in an earlier form, I'm basically just going to go over some of the changes I noticed and give a bit more critical look at the book itself. Reading through it a third time has left me much more enthused to read the rest of the series, but a little less high on this particular book. It seems like a strange this to me, so maybe I should explain.

The story and the players in the story: Jack, Gia, Vicky, Kusum, Kolobati, Abe, and the rest, they all work really well here. They work well as rounded character in well-rounded situations. There was never a moment when I was wondering if a character were evil or good. Honestly, evil and good don't seem to exist in this universe. There seems to be something else at work, in my opinion something more realistic. The villains are never cackling and twisting mustaches. They are conflicted antivillains most of the time, ready to do horrible things, but only because they feel they need to for the greater good. Kusum, the main antagonist of the novel, sums up that thought perfectly. A religious zealot who polluted his own karma, Kusum is trying to "save" both himself and his beloved India, but the means he uses is both extreme and terrifying. It's also very much an extreme we as people living in the world today can both understand and abhor for it goes on all the time. We see it in the news and maybe even in our daily lives.

I don't remember reading the book last time and feeling such sadness for Kusum and such loathing for his sister, Kolobati. In the book it's pointed out many times that there is a sincerity and will in Kusum that makes him almost a hero, just on the wrong side of the protagonist. Kolobati though seems both spoiled and sickening, a twisted soul whose long life has etched a selfish and self-centered attitude within her. The rakoshi are removed from these judgments, being both animalistic and following orders. Less evil and more Other. But I guess this isn't the book to go into that yet.

Again, the plot is a simple mystery. Jack and his ex-girlfriend, Gia, are on the outs. She found out that he was stockpiling weapons in his apartment, confronted him, and lost it when she learned the truth. Most of Jack's motivation throughout the book is trying to win her back through trying to help her with finding her daughter, Vicky's, missing great-aunt. Jack does eventually discover what happened to the great-aunt, Grace, and then later to her sister, Nellie, but he cannot save them. He arrives too late and they are already dead, eaten by the rakoshi, demons from a different era.

The complaints I have are few, but the amount of sex in the book is kind of ridiculous. It worked well in the original novel, written and feeling very much like a product of the 1980s. But for a more modern retelling, it just doesn't feel right. Maybe that explanation is flimsy, coming down to the years between when I read the original and when I've read this revised edition. Maybe I've changed or my tastes have, but I doubt that. I think there is much less motivation there for Jack to be having sex with another woman when he claims to still love the one who won't take him back. Then again, perhaps I've been in a committed relationship too long and have forgotten what it feels like to be alone and longing for a connection. My point is that it felt a bit gratuitous, and F. Paul Wilson always seems to fall into the same trap or telling us how long the sex happened for. I don't need to know that, and it really doesn't matter to me. But there's always, when sex is mentioned, a time period attached. And those moments when the time is all night long or something- well, that just seems mildly ridiculous. It's an issue in the back of my head at least, and something that would repeatedly take me out of the book itself. This seems to fix itself, mostly, in subsequent novels, but feels wholly insane here, with no less than five or six circumstances of sex being described, timed, and spoken about in detail, in a novel where I mostly wanted to read about Jack killing monsters and fighting a one-armed Indian.

Beyond that, the revised edition doesn't have all that many changes that I noticed. There are DVDs mentioned instead of Betamax, and I believe a few more updates besides, but cell phones don't come into the plot, neither do computers, or really any technology used past the 1980s. I understand why this book was revised: so that it could fit into the mythology of the overarching series and fit in a modern world for ease of writing, but glaring omissions of use (but not mention) of technology seems to place this novel absolutely in the 1980s even if it were updated for a more modern consumption. It reads like a 1980s novel, being comparable to Stephen King's second Dark Tower novel which is heavily '80s: The Drawing of the Three. Both are set so fully in that decade that removing either of them from it would only make the change that much more obvious.

Maybe if I had never read the original before the change wouldn't feel so jarring, but it did. I still love the novel, but I think if I read it again, I'll stick with the original and just get over the continuity errors between this book and Legacies, the second Repairman Jack novel.

As for everything else, the book starts off as a slow-burning mystery, turning both historical and a bit mythical as the story goes on, and then turning into a full action-adventure story with an action hero as the lead for the end. I've called this story a modern male fantasy story before, and now I'll do it officially here. I think this is a perfect story for a man to read and put himself into the underdeveloped and closed off Jack. Much like Indiana Jones and that franchise, this one is also all about both magic and what a typical man might look for if he were wanting a more exciting and heroic life. Maybe that's just me though, but with all the sex and Jack always winning and coming out ahead, even just a little, it seems very plausible.

Anyway, that's about it. I recommend it a ton as well as the series as a whole. The climax on the ship is incredibly well played out, and I certainly enjoyed the ride.


As for upcoming reviews, I have a bunch planned. I have more of this series to talk about as I read through it for example, and some movies I've put aside to watch as well. It's only a matter of time and with the summer in full swing, I should have more time to write and review, even if that's less time of me working my official job. Anyway, I'll be back in not too long!

Book Evaluation: The Tomb (1984)

The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson is a book of multiple series. It is the second book of a series called The Adversary Cycle and the first book of the Repairman Jack books.

Now, if you have never heard of F. Paul Wilson, The Adversary Cycle, or the Repairman Jack books, you are certainly not alone. I only found out about the author and his books completely accidentally. The story is worth telling because I think it goes a long way to the actual review. I was in Cheyenne, Wyoming a few years ago and went into a used book store. While there I found three books by F. Paul Wilson. They happened to be the first three books of his Repairman Jack series. I didn't read them while I was there and once I got home, I put them on my shelf and there they stayed for the better part of two or three years. Last year I was bored and wanted to read something... anything... and I saw this book entitled The Tomb. I looked at the cover and read the back of the book and it seemed interesting. So, I started reading it.

As I read the book it spoke to me. Its writing wasn't anything special, and I'm pretty sure stories like this one have been done before... the overarching series story even eventually comes out as sounding like a plausible Batman series of novels, which I'm not saying is bad, but this first book came off as entirely plausible... well, except for the supernatural elements...

Anyway, the plot is incredibly interesting, delving into Indian mythology and British history all at the same time. The Rakoshi are surprisingly tense and well-done antagonist characters, and the whole plot has an air of mystery and supernatural thrills to it that not many other novels that I have read have at all. It is wholly different from anything else out there and so incredibly well done that I'm surprised and awed that it is better known. I loved the novel, the story, the characters, and the settings. The boat scene at the end was one of the best written things I've read in years. And Jack's relationship with Gia is both heartbreaking and beautiful all at the same time, eventually culminating in something wonderful for both characters... a beautiful kind of soul-mate love, which I approve of in general.

The main character, Repairman Jack, although usually he just goes by Jack, no last name, seems to be a genuine antihero. He sometimes does very bad things, but usually for what he deems to be some greater good. At the beginning of the novel he's living his job, which is something like an urban mercenary who also happens to be living without any government notice at all. He has no Social Security Number, no solid last name, uses a ton of aliases. He has cars and apartments in other peoples' names, most not even in existence. he also has very few "friends"... with most of the people he knows being acquaintances of some sort or another... most of whom Jack doesn't like very much.

The other characters in the novel are Abe Grossman, an obese Jewish black-market weapons salesman, Julio, a tough bartender, and Gia, Jack's ex-girlfriend, who wants nothing to do with him ever since she figured out what he is... and what he is is a highly trained killer.

The novel has many instances of pop-culture as well... that may sound random, but Jack is a aficionado of old movies, mostly terrible ones. This goes a long way when Jack finally starts seeing some of the supernatural stuff that's happening and wondering if it's all real... and comparing them to old movies and such.

It's an intelligent, cultured, and enjoyable novel the whole way through. The rest of the series varies in quality, but this first book is absolutely fantastic and worth reading if you happen to be a fan of horror, the supernatural, detective stories, adventure stories, or anything like any of those things.

Anyway, I love this novel. It is in my top favorites of all time. I suggest that everybody take a look at it because it is so worth reading.