Children of the Corn (1984)

Directed by Fritz Kiersch. Starring Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton, John Franklin, Courtney Gains, Robby Kriger, Anne Marie McEvoy, R. G. Armstrong, Julie Maddalena. [R]

Ludicrous, inept folk horror dreck—found somewhere in the abominable triangle of supernatural religious hooey, juvenile slasher flick, and Orville Redenbacher—gives it all away in the prologue (so much for suspense before discovery), and it’s downhill from there. Uninteresting couple Horton and Hamilton are traveling through the cornfields of Nebraska when they come upon what seems like a ghost town, except there are creepy and murderous children about: creepy and murderous children…of the corn! Alternately boring and laughable—and far more of the former—with nothing here to scare anyone besides kalampokiphobes, which, for laymen, is a person with a pathological fear of corn, and honestly, the camerawork does seem to be trying to exploit that terror. What few adult actors are on hand deliver borderline-amateurish performances, and the cult kids are also terrible, but at least charismatic leader dork Franklin (an adult actor with a growth hormone deficiency) and sinister henchman/rival Gains are terrible in humorous ways; together, they make a few segments tolerable in a, dare I say it, corny sort of way. Spawned an astounding nine sequels/prequels to date, and remade for television in 2009.

21/100