A carnival of technology

I have to admit that I was little worried about not understanding the story because I couldn’t remember which of the seven Children of the Corn films I had and had not seen. Still, I went in to the movie optimistic that I could figure out what was going on.

I should note that our copy of the film was a Hong Kong VHS rip since the 2nd installment of this series is not available on DVD in the United States. Besides being very grainy and having just stereo sound, we were able to pick out the most important details. During our bad movie watching sessions, I try to make note of the special effects and I also try to assemble some sort of plot in my head. This usually involves indentifying the protagonist(s).

Throughout the whole movie I never could figure out who the protagonist was supposed to be. I think it was the corn since that was the least logical. If you watch this film, it feels like 3 or 4 short films that are thrown together and they happen to connect under a central theme (corn). Think about movies like Airport and Earthquake where you have a random ensemble cast and they are all joined by this central event that’s happening. Except in this movie there is no ensemble and the central event is rotting corn. Not that great.

Some of the highlights of the film including lowering a jacked up house on to an old lady, Wizard of Oz style. I also claim predicting that the combine would be responsible for killing the main evil child. It was. And I predicted it!

I didn’t understand the native American guy. Like he had some sort of connection with the corn that involved a tree and a ghost, but that’s about all I remember.

One of the actors was Terrence Knox (easily identified by his disappearing/re-appearing hot pink shirt). I first saw him in the short-lived TV drama called Tour of Duty. This was not his best work. This movie, I mean. Tour of Duty was meant to compete with China Beach and I think it was better because it had less Ricki Lake.

On the special effects front we didn’t have anything special except for some lame fake blood and that thermal vision camera effect they used in Predator. The corn was capable of this, I think?

What else can I say about the corn? Not much. We did take four breaks while watching this movie. No one objected either and it was difficult to sit back down and finish it. I give this movie 2/10 only because I did finish watching it and the combine did kill someone. It loses the remaining 8 stars because it didn’t make any sense at all.

These children are home alone, too. But their parents won’t be coming back.

Rated R for horror violence and language.

Starring a combine and that filter from Predator.

Viewed 2005-07-07 by David, Susi, David, Mike, and Dane

Corn: America’s true amber waves. It’s in nearly everything we eat, as starch, sweetener, or oil, and it sees some popularity as a fuel source, both in the form of ethanol and biodiesel. Also, it can host a deadly mold that causes children to form a corn-worshiping cult and kill their parents. Yay, corn!

Children of the Corn II was oddly hard to find. When taken as a whole, one expects the Children of the Corn series to be horrible: it’s a seven-movie long horror series with Stephen King involved. However, even given these low expectations for movies 3-7, every movie except the second is still in print. For number two, I’m not sure if it was even ever put on DVD; we had to settle for a poorly-made pirate version that I suspect was manufactured in Hong Kong. The compression was a bit bad, but at least it was in English.

Notable in Children of the Corn II is that after watching the movie, we’re not sure who the protagonist was. I remember some of the characters—there was the single-dad tabloid reporter looking for a story on the corn children, bravely facing ridicule from more legitimate reporters and disinterest from his son; there was the rebellious son who became entangled with the evil children; there was the teenaged son’s big-breasted love interest; there was an Indian guy; there was some lady who wore shoulder pads with her t-shirt; and there was the old lady who tried to move her house. All of these people were threatened by the children in some form, but, in true horror movie fashion, none of them received much character development beyond the summaries I just provided. I suppose that one could say that the plot actually centers around the cult of corn, following the religious fervor of the kid with the creepy eyes (Isaac? Jedediah?) as he bravely stood up against the tyranny of adulthood, but the thing that kills people is never the protagonist in horror movies, and this movie isn’t nearly artsy enough to try something like that.

Of course, what would character development be without bad acting, forced dialog, and a painful, tedious plot? They talked about corn a lot. Adults are bad. Corn, corn, corn. The corn tells us to kill our parents. Let’s go back out to the corn; there aren’t any adults there. That’s about it. The lack of stupid crossfade wipes and stupid camera angles were an improvement over Battlefield Earth, but nothing blows up in Children of the Corn II. This is an unfortunate missed opportunity. Corn is such a versatile plant that they should have easily been able to find some excuse to make it explode.