Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Welcome to Streamin’ King, a series grave-digging through the myriad Stephen King adaptations available on your favorite streaming services. This time we’re watching Children of the Corn, the 1984 adaptation of the 1977 short story. Spoiler-light until noted otherwise.
THE GIST: A couple driving cross-country hit a boy who tumbles out of a Nebraska cornfield. They wind up stuck in the town of Gatlin, where, three years prior, the kids killed all the adults at the behest of child preacher Isaac. As both grown-ups and “outlanders,” the visitors are prime sacrifices for the pseudo-biblical entity/all-time-horrific CGI garbage-fire He Who Walks Behind the Rows.
PEDIGREE: Stars Linda Hamilton (Terminator, T2), Peter Horton (Thirtysomething), and first-timers John Franklin and Courtney Gains, who has more movies in post-production than anyone in IMDb history, maybe. Debut film for director Fritz Kiersch (Gor) and writer George Goldsmith (Blue Monkey).
WORTH WATCHING FOR CONSTANT READERS? If of the 100+ short stories King has published, this one is an absolute favorite, you probably owe it to yourself, for good or for ill. (Being in SK’s earliest collection, Night Shift, has given the tidy 30-pager more time to make the rounds than most.) Otherwise, under no circumstances should anyone utter the sentence, “Oh, you like Stephen King? You’d love Children of the Corn.”
WORTH WATCHING FOR KING NEWBIES/AGNOSTICS? If you’re already in on the cult, may you be blessed by He Who Walks Behind the Rows in Godawful MS-DOS Animation in all your rewatches. If only there were a The Room–style tradition where you could get together and throw ears of corn at the screen every time a moment of disastrous filmmaking occurs.
But if you’re curious to see what spawned seven sequels and a TV remake on Syfy, know there are intermittent touches of well-done ’80s horror-making—foreboding crayon sketches for the opening credits, the bad guy’s mandatory resurrection, the synth score once in a great while—and some heavy-duty laughs at Malachai and his enormous mouth’s hollers of “OUTLANDER!!” But also be assured the characters and performances are a series of leaden, grating catastrophes, nothing about corn in abandoned cars or small-town establishments is spooky, and the never-ending dialogue and child-narration lands like a hail of bricks. John Franklin’s performance as Isaac is beloved, but maybe it was creepier when you couldn’t Google the fact that the evil child preacher was actually like 24.
5 STEPHEN KING TIES, REFERENCES, AND MISCELLANY:
- Burt and Vicky could’ve had a real leg up if they’d read the copy of Night Shift sitting on their dashboard. It’s the awesome paperback, too, with the bandaged hand covered in eyeballs.
- According to screenwriter George Goldsmith in a book about cult films called It Came from the 80s!, King first wrote a script that opened with Burt and Vicky arguing in the car for 35 pages, “not cinematic at all; interesting dialogue, but sort of claustrophobic and intense and angry.” It “was not going to fly,” and Goldsmith’s version invented characters and made fundamental changes. The studio “liked my ideas but Stephen King was Stephen King,” so Goldsmith and Corn’s story editor got on the phone with the author. “Stephen opened up by informing me I did not understand horror and I countered that he did not understand cinema. … In the end I prevailed,” Goldsmith said, adding that “they tried to hose me on the credits … Gotta love Hollywood!”
- King and his author son Joe Hill published a meaty short story called “In the Tall Grass” in Esquire in 2012. It’s a kick-ass new take on “Children of the Corn,” eerier and with just as many you-fill-in-the-scary-blank bits of mythology. Great audio version, also.
- The fictional town of Hemingford Home—the setting of the new 1922 movie and an important place in The Stand—gets abbreviated to just Hemingford here, mentioned as a much better place to go than Gatlin. The eight-years-later sequel Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice is set in Hemingford.
- The words NO GAS appearing in red backwards letters in the mechanic’s window has a Shining vibe.
CRITICAL CONSENSUS: This isn’t one of the critical community’s favorite films. Roger Ebert mic-dropped his review with a PSA re: that repellent CGI conclusion: “By the end of Children of the Corn, the only thing moving behind the rows is the audience, fleeing to the exits.”
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT FOR “CHILDREN OF THE CORN”: Published in the first few years of King’s career, collected in 1978’s debut short story collection Night Shift alongside other to-be-filmed tales like “Sometimes They Come Back” and “The Lawnmower Man.” A few months later came The Stand.
NEXT TIME ON STREAMIN’ KING: Carrie, the 1976 adaptation that started it all, directed by Brian De Palma two years after the novel started his career.
Zach Dionne is on Twitter and also totally stunned by Joe Hill’s new novella collection Strange Weather.
