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I mean, they're kids. The max age any of them can be is 18 and most of them spend all their time quoting scripture or the like. They don't have combat training and only killed the previous adults thanks to the element of surprise. Kicking their asses would be easy.
I always felt like it mirrored a zombie movie... one or two of them could be dispatched easily, but in a large enough group you'd get surrounded and picked off. And if you let them catch you off guard you're in real trouble.
Which was especially odd because the Children of the Corn have plenty of teens in their midst so really size should be less of an issue than many creepy children (like Devil Times Nine). But like with the scene where the kid gets hit by a car and the protagonists seem mostly confused the directing decisions were off in a lot of places
Fun fact John Franklin (Issac) was 23 at the time of filming. He just had an issue with his hormones that stunted his growth and kept him younger looking. I think that's part of why he was so scary. There was something subtly older about him that made you feel the power behind their religion Apparently he also played Cousin Itt which is cool
But here’s a fact that is fun. Graham Crackers with jelly works well with various other different ingredients. From peanut butter, to cream cheese, etc @@TheTubePoweredOne
@@CoOlKyUbI96 Too true. But for me personally, not pairs better with a graham cracker than a roasted marshmallow (it's gotta have that gold/brown scorch mark to *really* seal the deal), and a big square of a Hershey chocolate bar! 💋🤌🏻 Also, a favorite past time of mine from high school: Sticking a marshmallow directly into the fire and pulling out a flaming mallow, blowing it out (extra cool points if you did it in one big breath like you were a professional 😎), and the marshmallow had to have a charred black layer on the outside, sliding it off the mallow perfectly and eating it, and then putting the marshmallow back into the fire again to roast once more, blowing it out and then eating the whole marshmallow.
@@lucretiamaggio6154 I dunno man, whenever I hear people put his short stories over his novels I always remember his short story about a industrial laundry press getting possessed by evil spirits. There's an accident, blood is spilled in the press, and the industrial laundry press awakens the evil within it before literally going on a rampage through the city killing more people. It is quite literally the Family Guy joke where he goes "this story is about a haunted -looks for item- LAMP! Boo, bah, ahh!". I'm not saying it isn't well written- it's written very well- but it's Looney Tunes man. His short stories can be amazing but they can be reeeaaallll fuckin' goofy.
90s kid here. When sleeping, we sometimes forget to turn off the tv so at times you’d wake up past midnight and find yourself watching whatever’s on. One night this film was on and it did terrified me as a kid, it was disturbing.
It was terrifying when it came out. I just think movies have evolved so much (special effects, acting, screenplay, story lines, etc.) it just doesn't work today. There was a remake of it but it was just low budget and terrible. I think it could be really well-done with the right director and writers.
It is always funny to me how King's writing can be so involving, and then when you try to summarize the story it often sounds really, really dumb. Far better that than the other way around though.
To be fair, a lot of stories can sound pretty silly when you summarize them. It's actually something I like for creative writing. The premise can be really simple or odd, but it's how you present and develop it.
That's what's so good about his books - they're stereotypical horror scenarios that he makes gripping. Even his characters are pretty boilerplate, but the way he writes them makes you so immersed.
I could always tell when I first watched it that this was a SHORT story. Maybe this would’ve been an excellent 40 minute episode in a Stephen King anthology series.
Yes! I think his short stories would do so much better in the hands of invested producers to make an anthology series. I’m thinking like Love Death + Robots or even more recently, Guillermo del Toro’s, Cabinet of Curiosities.
As a note, Shawshank Redemption was a short story-only 79 pages, if I recall-so it is possible to make a long, compelling film out of his short stories. However, the screenwriter / director / etc. need to reframe how the story is presented in order to accommodate the change.
The kids in this movie are so much fun to watch. Half that cast went: I have no speaking lines so my only job is to take the few seconds I am on screen and make sure I am the most interesting thing in the frame by ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Whether that means pulling a face or screaming comically over-the-top while sprinting headlong at a target. I salute all of them.
Growing up in a small Midwestern town in a home surrounded by cornfields, the idea of something in the corn watching and waiting was absolutely bone-chilling. I agree with the short story being much better, but seeing the movie as a child made it terrifying, even if as an adult I can pick it apart.
Yeah, I first saw it when I was about 10 when I spent the night at my sister's house, which is surrounded by cornfields. Creaky old house + pitch black country darkness outside + early summer midwestern thunderstorm + 8ft tall cornstalks in every direction + a freak lightning strike to the transformer right outside the window x Children of the Corn = me not even trying to watch it again until I was in my 30s.
One night I was driving home from my grandparents’ house and passed by a large cornfield. The owner had placed a wooden silhouette of Bigfoot at the edge as if he was emerging from the corn and it scared the shit out of me at first.
It's a very scary concept! Could you imagine being in a Starbucks and everyone around you started dropping dead after sipping coffee or tea, then have younger people approaching those of you who didn't die with knives and farm tools? That's scary as hell and it's something that could happen. Religion makes some people do strange things. Religious based cults breed psychopaths. It definitely traumatized me as a child and I didn't live in the Midwest.
The movie is kinda goofy, but the idea of He Who Walks Behind The Rows has stuck with me for years honestly. Some eldritch monster who lives in the cornfields is really frightening to me.
It really is one of his better monsters even though it's in such a short story. It uses religious language very effectively and the concept of how it took over and maintains power is realistic enough that it's perfectly believable within the context of the short story. You could probably remake Children of the Corn focused on a modern home school crazy kind of small town and make it like an emotional statement on how the wrong path for religious zealotry can put everyone in danger
@@merchantfanas someone who’s lived most of his life in small communities like that and has suffered from a lot of issues thanks to a combination of toxic family dynamics and less-than-stellar relationships with others, agrarian/small-town horror fascinates me. I still haven’t found enough works that explore it in a way I’ve found satisfying, though I have read the original “The Children of The Corn” story as well as Norman Partridge’s novella Dark Harvest and thought they were both all right. I’ve especially been scrounging around a lot for music that creates that kind of feeling; if anything, my fascination with that theme was basically thanks to me getting into the band Slipknot not long after I started experiencing mental health issues. The title track of Iowa is my favorite Slipknot song AND one of my all-time favorite songs in general for that reason, and believe me when I say that you’ll never truly understand that song unless you’ve lived in a place like that.
I only read the story once and sure, it was weird as shit, but it was also pretty damn depressing. The movie had a few moments, but I spent more time laughing and rolling my eyes than anything else. I'd say a film adaptation could work, but honestly? It's best as a short story.
There’s another short story that was written by Shirley Jackson called, “The Lottery”. It too is about a town that preforms human sacrifices to ensure a fruitful corn harvest. But it really isn’t revealed until the end what is actually happening. All the reader starts out knowing is that there an annual lottery that takes place every June 29th. It starts out as more off an annoyance for the towns people, but the situation starts to get more ominous as you continue to read. It’s a good story, but the reasoning for the lottery is even more ambiguous. The reader is never told what the towns religious beliefs are, or why they believe an annual human sacrifice will ensure a fruitful harvest, but this is a quote from one of the characters. “Lottery in June means corn’s coming soon.” There was a short film made in 1970, that featured a then unknown Ed Begley Jr.
When I was in middle school, my class took a field trip to see another school's performance of the live theater version of "The Lottery". This was decades ago and I still remember the stoning scene. It was one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen to this day.
@@kirajenmystic9955 what’s interesting about the author is that she wrote short horror stories for The New Yorker, and short comedy stories about her family for Good House Keeping.
The thing that works about the couple hating each other in the original short story is that it adds to the paranoia and fatalism. His wife becoming more and more manic makes the story way more intense in the pages before the children appear, and his realisation that if it wasn't for his pride and he had listened to her they would have left Gatlin intact is so effective
The opening scene completely explaining everything instantly killed my interest in watching this movie. The scariest part of the short story is just two people accidentally stumbling upon a crazy situation with no idea what is happening.
The concept of Children of the Corn is pretty Lovecraftian, and echoes the themes of Old-Gods worshipping cults in Lovecrafts writing, especially in that the corrupting influence of the entity is so powerful that even thinking about it can cause harm to people. The cult members are so insignificant to the entity that they’re basically just livestock for it to feed on, literal “lambs to the slaughter”
I think his novellas also have led to three high quality movies: Shawshank, Apt Pupil and the Body are all three movies I like to love and would rewatch (apt Pupil is a one and done movie but I was creeped out big time by the whole movie)
I remember the scene where the kids kill everyone in the diner feeling really messed up, it comes so suddenly, you can feel the same kind of shock and confusion the adults feel being slaughtered by their own kin. Say what you will about that movie, but I still think about that scene.
In the greater Stephen King universe it is heavily implied that He Who Walks Behind The Rows is Randall Flagg -the guy in The Stand, and The Dark Tower series
@@aliensoup2420 not reaaaallllly in this instance unless you want to argue that HWWBTR is one of Pennywise's eggs, maybe? Pennywise has always been tied to Derry Maine but Gatlin is in Nebraska. That being said, Pennywise does show up as a cameo in Insomnia, and Tommyknockers. It's also my theory that he's of the same species as Dandelo in the dark tower, and Tak from Desperation/Regulators. Possibly also the outsider if he was a baby version from an egg.
I've admittedly only ever seen some of its 2009 remake on the Syfy Channel, but even there, Burt's discovery of his wife Vicky's body crucified into a scarecrow with corn stalks in her eyes was a pretty gruesome find. 🌽👁
@@blakeharris58 Ha ha, yep that's the one. I was surprised to learn later that she played Sue Snell in a version of Carrie (the 2002 TV one), and that she had a major voice role in one of my old Barbie movies (Barbie in a Christmas Carol; she played the Bob Cratchit equivalent).
The demon tootling around under the dirt is still such a cool effect. I'm glad they didn't try to make an actual physical representation of it, even if it did ultimately leave us with an Acme TNT explosion.
“Tootling around” - hahaha, the demon doesn’t sound too menacing when you put it that way. I loved the story so much that I refused to ever watch any of the movies.
Still blows my mind that John Franklin was an adult when he played Isaac here. He looked and sounded more like a crazy kid then most of the actual child actors they had.
I've always thought the actor who played Isaac reminded me a bit of the actor who played Honeythorn Gump in the fantasy movie "Legend" with Tom Cruise and Tim Curry (the Gump actor was also smaller, slender and had dark hair). At first I thought their voices sounded similar too, but then I found out that actress Alice Playten, who played the main goblin Blix in "Legend", also dubbed Gump's voice. Still, the passing physical resemblance combined with the characters' similar voices gave me a chill!
This movie creeped me out when I was young. It was weird seeing an older movie (I was born in 93) with children being the main threat in the movie. It was like a Lord of the Flies lead by a satanic cult.
Thanks for this Ryan, I have been waiting for this since your Dream catcher video. You know what's funny despite seeing this movie multiple times since childhood, I never realized the woman was Linda Hamilton. I saw a clip earlier this year that said it was her. I think she looks better then whatever haircut she had in terminator. Funny both of these films came out the same year, she could not get a break that year. Either you get killed by a machine or by children.
I don't understand the notion that movies need to be rational. I don't go into a movie about a cult of murderous children and an evil being living in corn thinking it's going to be rational...that's just silly lol. It's one thing if a movie is meant to be a grounded realistic story and it goes off the rails, but some movies aren't meant to be rationalized.
I rewatched this one on Shudder a few weeks back and actually began to enjoy it again for what it was. I feel like I loved this as a child and as I got older I grew to massively dislike it. But right now I think I’ve balanced on it. As a massive fan of Kings version I’m still hoping for a solid adaption some day. There’s a whole world of King works that would be amazing done today
It's been a while since I've seen this movie and I was fairly drunk last I did, but I remember thinking 'This Isaac kid is goin hard and I love it'. He really made the movie imo.
The actors playing Isaiah and Malachi made that movie. They ate! I mean, the movie’s not great or scary but it’s memorable because of those two committed performances.
as someone who literally cannot watch scary movies of any kind, I find strange comfort in horror movie analysis and walkthroughs, of which you are one of the best channels for because you cover just sheer enormous breadth of content. So thank you from a scaredy cat
You’re not missing anything with the sequels. The one highlight I remember is that in #6 (which they naturally call 666) they bring back the actor who played Isaac in the original, and he seemingly hasn’t gotten any taller since then. He looks like an adult child, which was super creepy in its own right.
Jesus, Ryan… I sat down to watch this for the first time this weekend, realized I couldn’t sit through it after the first few minutes and then you just HAPPEN to make a full video about it. You’re scaring me.
my mom was born and raised in the christian reformed church. she’s always warned me that when she watched children of the corn, it was absolutely evil and she physically gets uncomfortable talking about it. this is my first exposure to the movie ever out of precaution for her warning 😭 it’s definitely not as bad as she always thought it was lmfao
What's interesting about Bert's death is that it further adds to the ambiguity of what really happened because his interpretation of it is being skewed by injuries, stress and trauma, which is how extreme cultist perspectives can be formed. When it's made int a literal entity, you have to wonder why it only seeks control of children within the cornfield and doesn't expand its territory and control. Maybe it's because I come from a Christian background, but wouldn't an entity that seeks to be worshipped want to be the only thing being worshipped and thus try to expand its domain? Why is it content with just a cornfield and group of children and not the whole world? Is it worth worshipping and fearing if its realm and control ends beyond the field?
"Children of the corn", "the stone boy" and "the terminator" came out the same year. These were Linda Hamilton's 2nd-4th movies the first two released, flopped, and the last one made Arnold and Linda house hold names. Terminator was so popular that it actually made people look for more Linda Hamilton films which boosted the sales of this movie in the home release market
I was just watching Ryan's last video until this new video popped up. I remember watching Children of the Corn and finding it a bit boring, but I sorta like the idea of something hidden and some of the kids being truly evil. I just wish it would've been more creepier and focus more on the evil kids and doing more evil and unspeakable things.
Yeeeessssss!! I have been WAITING for you to talk about Children of the Corn!! 💗 It's definitely one of my favorite film adaptations of a Stephen King movie-- although if I *had* to pick a favorite, it would be Brian De Palma's "Carrie"! (Speaking of, would love to see you tackle that movie too! As well as De Palma's cult classic "Phantom of the Paradise"!)
I hate when a UA-camr I really like says something dumb like this. Statistics prove that children raised in a stable “nuclear family” have better outcomes across all demographics.
I watched Children of The Corn 6 once. This may be shocking to hear but... It wasn't very good. But I barley remember it. Isaac has apparently been in a coma since the events of the first film, but then he wakes up, and starts to presume his previous cult leader duties, and nobody stops him, for some reason, even though the events of the first film are now well known throughout the world as kindoff a Jim Jones thing. Also the main character sleeps with someone and and is now pregnant with some sort of prophecy child, Isaac's replacement, perhaps?
Frustrating adaptation? Believe me, the Dark Tower series of his is one of my favorite set of books and they are in no way capable of being adapted visually
I saw Children of the Corn 2 when I was really young and I don't remember a thing about it except it has some truly goofy kills that are played for laughs. Example: The children terrorize an elderly woman until she tries to flee by crawling underneath her hydraulic-lifted house. The children, of course, turn off the hydraulics and as the house descends, the woman cries "Oh, what a world" as she's flattened from the waist up. Yes, a kill constructed entirely around a blatant Wizard of Oz joke.
SyFy remade the movie in 2009. The only thing I remember about it was how the couple hated each other. I know the wife died but I can't remember if the husband did. That movie didn't work because the audience had no one to sympathize with. The best way I think to do the story justice would be to remake the first movie, take out the campiness, make it ambiguous to what's really going on, like you suggested, until the 3rd act. And if they want a 'good' child they're trying to save as well change it to the one that has visions. And when they burn down the cornfield have a figure of a man in the burning cornfield watching them as they flee
It's impossible to make that movie, because we would all know EXACTLY what's going on, because series has been long time around. It's like when they try to make new Predator movie and keep him unseen, like dude we know what's stalking main cast. It simply won't work for that reason. However, apparently last CotC movie was found footage, and some other was ripping of ghost movies and had Samara-type ghost? What in the?
@@njmfff True. I just read they made another even further from the story. Something about a girl that goes crazy, starts killing people, talks other kids in joining her except for one teenage girl & it's on her to stop the madness
I hadn't watched the previous ones when I found the 2009 version. Then I found the old series and watched it was meh. Burn dies cause the corn gets him in the end
Fortunately the follow-up sequel was funny as hell. I love all the goofy death scenes, especially the remote control takeover of the geezer's wheelchair that they sent flying into the street, only to have it park in front of a speeding bus.
Did King describe their dress as "Quaker" or Mennonite/Amish? Because "Quakers"/Friends don't really have special outfits, it's just a normal religious sect that tend to have very prestigious religious schools (Obama's daughters attended a Friends school when he moved to DC). The kids dress Mennonite/Amish which I can kind of understand- Amish are generally pretty nice and civil but they are one of those "definitely kind of a cult but they've been around long enough that it's quaint Americana" kind of things when you know about their internal workings
The nuclear family is an "antiquated patriarchal belief"? I've noticed your pozzed politics coming out plenty before but this is an absolutely bizarre statement to make. What did you even mean by this?
I remember being somewhat entertained when I first watched it, but something felt off that was keeping me from loving it. Your analysis explains why I felt that way spot on.
Oh, and I’m so glad you did this film cause my wife and I have had an ongoing five year inside joke about the children of the corn who live next door. Like seriously, looks and behaviors and a family of 4-12 kids (who really knows) made me double check our locks 😂
The short story is soooooo much better then the movie. I read it after seeing the movie when I was a teenager and couldn’t believe how different they were.
Isn't He Who Walks Behind The Rows accepted as one of the alternate identities of Randall Flagg? I don't know if that's a fan theory or explicitly stated somewhere. If so, wouldn't that mean things are even worse for those kids than it looks?
In "The STAND" Flagg menaced Mother Abigail a few times while standing out in her corn fields. He sent weasels after her and the incident became the backdrop of a later vision she had after fasting and praying, asking God to show her where she failed. Flagg appears to her as a wolf from out of the corn. Also the dog, "Big Steve" who became Professor Bateman's dog Kojack, battled and killed wolves in Abigal's yard. He hides under her house to recover and senses Flagg moving through the corn, searching for him in the form of a Sauron-like eye.
i love children of the corn but i find it kinda disappointing? it's an issue i have with most of king's work tbh and it's that like. i wish there wasn't a grand reveal of an Actual Supernatural Thing behind the insanity. i think it would not only be scarier but also more psychologically interesting if it was just kids being fuckin crazy for no reason. that the charisma of one kid could convince every child in a town to murder all of the adults is way, WAY more impactful to me than it just being that the kid was a thoroughfare for an actual demon. idk, demon/supernatural stuff has never been scary to me so maybe it's just a personal ish.
In King's "The STAND" the author equates corn to a nautural sensual aspect of human procreation (Garrison Kelior did same once in a monologue). I guess you have to be from the US midwest to see the sexyness of corn. That may be why he had the couple in the short story at odds with one another, and the malelevolent being targeting children, a product of procreation, perverted into minions of his corn religion.
Yeah, I was... really confused by that. The nuclear family is a thing because -it just works-. It's literally one of the keystones of a strong civilization, and the current spite of it is a large contributor to the Western world's harsh decline and inevitable collapse. He's supposed to be an educated and well-researched guy, so I assume his comment just didn't come out right, but if he actually meant that... yeesh.
At 11:53, you say, "the back road known as the Bible Belt". The Bible Belt is actually a large section of the United States that stretches throughout the southern and mid-western part of the country and not just a "back road". This should lend some more context to the nightmare that is America, in that this horror could appear with fanatics anywhere over a third of the country and not just this tiny little town.
I always read the story first when it comes to King especially. They always leave so much of the deeper darker stuff out. And they usually mutilate the ending by trying to make it happy in times when he doesn’t. For example, there is no time travel in the story the tall grass.
as someone from Nebraska, let me assure you that we were ALWAYS aware of the corn and this movie did NOT make camping any easier. But, it did make our parents think twice before yelling at us after we watched it
I’d have to disagree with you. I don’t think this movie is boring. I genuinely enjoy it. I like to have this on when I’m sewing or making my resin art!
The power of the original short story and limitations of the film always make me remember something King wrote in the forwards to one of his short story anthologies about how he preferred writing the short stories because being free from the need to give a standard full structure and explanations meant he could just focus on the moments without worrying too much about beginnings and endings
I knew the director of this movie, Fritz Kiersch, when I was a student at Oklahoma City University where he was head of the film department. He's a really nice guy. He's got a lot of great anecdotes from his time in the film industry. I asked him why Isaac came back from the dead to kill Malachai, saying "he wants you too" or whatever that was about. Fritz replied something like "Ehhh, we kind of did that for shock value. And besides, we made this movie for dumb teenagers, not smart guys like you."
I have never seen this film all the way through. After seeing an old Lost in Adaptation episode, I listened to the short story (which I think UA-cam has removed now ). Now I listen to it every October. It is a fascinating story; there's something about nihilistic Stephen King I find...contrarily very comforting. As for the movie...eh. Might watch it one day. Not in any rush.
I watched this in the 4th grade with my mom. I've shown a few friends who don't like horror and they like it because the actors commit and it's not scary. I find it a fun time with good pacing even though it's not that good lol
They had pretty decent remake on sci-fi back 2012-13 that was pretty close to story, interesting part Burt was Vietnam vet and was actually having flashbacks and hallucinating seeing his teammates and Vietcong sneaking through the corn
I was going to wait to watch this till tomorrow since I'm tired, hyever I probably would forget about it so I decided to just watch it now. If not I would of had him saying hyever stuck in my head the entire night.
Just a couple of random observations, pleaseing the algorithm as well. First, it's not that King has a reputation for failing to deliver on an ending, it's just that it seems he has a hard time articulating it. Some stories are a lot better with their endings than others. Cujo, Tommyknockers are among the best. The stand, despite it being my favorite out of all of his stories, fails to stick the landing though by the time you get to that point I think he might be a little bit forgiven. As for the dark tower, I liked how it ended, but the seventh book does have a few nitpicks that I will avoid saying here to not ruin it for people. Suffice to say the seventh book kind of churns through a lot, and then he ruins the very end because the next to last chapter is an actual letter from him to the reader suggesting to the reader that they don't read the last chapter cuz they might not like how he ended the story. It's not done as a meta thing, it's done as the author actually telling people you may not like how I end my book and I don't like that. Otherwise, his short stories are always going to be better. He punches in, gives you the setup, you hit the punchline, and you're out. Unsurprising when you consider that the author is someone who grew up on and loves EC comics. Regarding the movie and the short story, his use of that particular segment of Christianity has to do with it being different. They are a polite religion, but they're also not necessarily the most welcome to outsiders. They prefer archaic Garb and archaic ways of speaking and they bypass most forms of technology. So he was using them just because for somebody who grew up in the northeast, that was his reference point. I always found the short story to be more chilling than the movie for a lot of reasons, but especially because of how the short story ends. You get the feeling that the demon or entity or whatever it is will continue to find fault with them, lowering the age of consent further and further until eventually the entire town is wiped out. And then it presumably moves on, to devour another small isolated town. It's a chilling, almost lovecraftian visual. It's an entity that has no clear defined motivation, no clear defined appearance, it seems to exist as some kind of horrendous mutation of christianity, almost like a meme brought to life. I'm honestly surprised that the movie did not go with the same kind of Bleak ending as the story, because the sequels as little as I remember them generally keep that kind of nailistic ending
Before I make this comment, I already know that every UA-camr cannot take people's opinions as actual criticism, but that person being a negative troll, only saying mean things to tear them down. I'm aware of that. With that being said. I love your videos, except for how you say "however".... I mean, the word is right there, I just typed it. You cannot pronounce that as "highever" and still be pronouncing it correctly, regardless of accent. Accent may point in a direction, but bastardization is wrong in every literative sense. But that's not my main complaint. As a guy your age, I think your hair looks awful recently. My girlfriend agrees, but she would never do something so cringey as telling you. That is all. Almost no complaints about your actual videos. Except for highever. Like, that goes for all English speakers. Canadians say sorry correctly... Britts, Australians, and Americans all say it wrong.
By reading that excerpt aloud, you reminded me just how much I used to Love listening to books on tape! Time to find some SK audiobooks. Thanks for reawakening a forgotten love!❤
I like the movie. 🤷🏻♀️ The intro always disturbs me, and Issac is effectively creepy. The defacement of the church is something else that also unsettled me. The story is so much more bleak but I don't have any issues with the movie, except for the cheesey special effects at the end, but it was the '80s. 🤷🏻♀️
I always imagine the corn converging and becoming the physical form of He Who Walks in the climax of the story- and that Burt and Vickie being swallowed by a giant mass of living corn plants is totally freaky!
There's a 2009 remake that actually attempts to be closer to the book and tries to recreate the original ending... yet somehow I don't feel is very good regardless, it also had some... really uncomfortable scenes in a not good at all way
Child of the 80's here--movies and stories featuring scary cults were popular back then. You have to keep in mind that Jim Jones cast a lingering shadow in peoples minds.
2:24 It’s actually not that weird or silly of a concept. An Eldritch being that thrives on worship and control will have an easier time controlling the children with flexible and adaptable minds than the aging and elderly adults who are set in their ways and religion. Much easier to clear the board and start from scratch.
Fun fact: Stephen King hates this adaptation of his work and actively tells fans not to watch it. He and his family have a running joke of yelling "Outlander, we have your woman!" at each other like a weird version of Marco Polo.
I'm very critical of organised religion in general, but Quakerism has always struck me as a really cool religion. It's almost dadaist in it's approach to spirituality and religious dogma, and I find that super interesting.
I like the concept of children the corn more than I actually like the children of the corn. The characters in the novel and in the 30-minute short film that came out before the movie are not likable. They're a bickering couple and both suck. The 84 movie was decent I like the acting of the bad guys Malachi and Isaac. I don't think it's the best. I think the second movie is the best because it's just a cheesy fun slasher movie that doesn't negate the storyline of the first movie. I've seen three four five and six as well but I haven't seen most of the ones after that except runaway. I still plan on watching them I just know that I'm not going to like them. I had some fun with 3 & 5 too though. 6 is fucking stupid as a concept. 4 was very forgettable.
"Antiquated patriarchal belief in the nuclear family". Really?! The "nuclear family" is how humanity has existed since its inception. It is neither "patriarchal" nor "antiquated".
@@notatruck2640 For most/almost all of human history children grew up in extended families or in the care of their entire community (i.e. a village or a tribe). "Nuclear Families" - i.e. two Parents and their children living together in a single home only became less rare during the Industrial revolution and only became the Norm in the u guessed it: nuclear age after world war 2.
@@BloodyVulnona Historically true, but the essence of what the nuclear family gives was present in societies that had those group structures as well- specifically protective and caring mothers and strong father figures to emulate. When you look at -certain groups of people- one of the most common traits among them is lack of a strong father figure (whether they simply don't have a father present, or the one they have is completely useless in all meanings of the word). Reduction from larger extended family sizes or communities was simply a natural evolution of modern society no longer needing that sort of thing but still retaining the core benefits. The fact of the matter is that men and women are fundamentally different, especially in how they handle, well, quite literally everything, and as such lacking a (good) mother or father is detrimental to a child's development as both viewpoints are needed for a well-rounded person.
Right? It's almost as if having a caring and protective mother alongside a strong father figure worth emulating makes for a much more well-rounded and stable growth cycle in a child or something. It's almost as if the majority of -certain groups of undesirable people- exhibit the pattern of lacking a good mother or father in their life or something. It's okay, the constant push for destroying the nuclear family has already led to a sharp decline in the western world, just a little bit more and we'll collapse hard enough that norms will be forced back into place.
I always recommend reading King's short stories to people who complain about his novel endings. I've found his short stories and novellas to be far scarier in general than his longer works, which usually don't horrify me- minus all the parts with the child SA stuff- so much as feel me with a distant kind of dread. That said, while Children of the Corn is not a _good_ movie, it does have my favorite scene in any of the many King-based movies that have been made: Burt, in front of all the children, going on a lecturing tear about all the atrocities they've committed because they'd been hoodwinked by one of those Hellfire and Brimstone preachers that he'd been so dismissive of in the beginning of the movie, is so proud of himself when he beats up Malachai and decides to be _moral_ and _merciful_ by not killing him, only for *He Who Walks Behind The Rows* to make it's presence known and, without another word, literally just nopes out because oh hey, look at that, there actually _is_ a powerful supernatural presence that is demanding human sacrifice, oops.
*What do you think? Leave your thoughts and requests below!*
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Good work as always, Ryan! I’d love to see a video on “Midnight Mass” & “Storm of the Century”.
I think, between this and Sleepwalkers, King has an issue with corn.
Angel Heart is a little known supernatural mystery/film noir and it's NUTS. I love it.
I'd love to see your take on Halloween Resurrection! 🤣🤣
I would love a video on the sequel to Suspiria, Inferno. It’s actually my favorite Argento movie so far.
I still remember cackling when the male lead pushed down one of the children. The movie failed at making the children believably threatening.
That’s the point. 😂😂
I mean, they're kids. The max age any of them can be is 18 and most of them spend all their time quoting scripture or the like. They don't have combat training and only killed the previous adults thanks to the element of surprise.
Kicking their asses would be easy.
I always felt like it mirrored a zombie movie... one or two of them could be dispatched easily, but in a large enough group you'd get surrounded and picked off. And if you let them catch you off guard you're in real trouble.
Which was especially odd because the Children of the Corn have plenty of teens in their midst so really size should be less of an issue than many creepy children (like Devil Times Nine). But like with the scene where the kid gets hit by a car and the protagonists seem mostly confused the directing decisions were off in a lot of places
Oh the ending of this movie is undoubtedly one of the funniest horror movie endings of all time
Fun fact John Franklin (Issac) was 23 at the time of filming. He just had an issue with his hormones that stunted his growth and kept him younger looking. I think that's part of why he was so scary. There was something subtly older about him that made you feel the power behind their religion
Apparently he also played Cousin Itt which is cool
He was in a sequel as well some time around 2000 I think. Was still the same size.
Another fun fact: He grew up to be Lindsey Graham.
@@dop01 Not sure how fun that fact is.
But here’s a fact that is fun. Graham Crackers with jelly works well with various other different ingredients. From peanut butter, to cream cheese, etc
@@TheTubePoweredOne
@@CoOlKyUbI96 Too true. But for me personally, not pairs better with a graham cracker than a roasted marshmallow (it's gotta have that gold/brown scorch mark to *really* seal the deal), and a big square of a Hershey chocolate bar! 💋🤌🏻
Also, a favorite past time of mine from high school: Sticking a marshmallow directly into the fire and pulling out a flaming mallow, blowing it out (extra cool points if you did it in one big breath like you were a professional 😎), and the marshmallow had to have a charred black layer on the outside, sliding it off the mallow perfectly and eating it, and then putting the marshmallow back into the fire again to roast once more, blowing it out and then eating the whole marshmallow.
It's crazy how it's one of Stephen Kings shortest short stories yet it spawned so many movies
Alot of people sympathize with living around a bunch of weirdos and corn.
@@garretphegley8796 this is SO true 😂
@@garretphegley8796 Good point, Iowa does have a huge population
I think that his short stories are, for the most part, better than his novels. Just my opinion, though.
@@lucretiamaggio6154 I dunno man, whenever I hear people put his short stories over his novels I always remember his short story about a industrial laundry press getting possessed by evil spirits. There's an accident, blood is spilled in the press, and the industrial laundry press awakens the evil within it before literally going on a rampage through the city killing more people.
It is quite literally the Family Guy joke where he goes "this story is about a haunted -looks for item- LAMP! Boo, bah, ahh!". I'm not saying it isn't well written- it's written very well- but it's Looney Tunes man. His short stories can be amazing but they can be reeeaaallll fuckin' goofy.
90s kid here. When sleeping, we sometimes forget to turn off the tv so at times you’d wake up past midnight and find yourself watching whatever’s on. One night this film was on and it did terrified me as a kid, it was disturbing.
I’ve seen posts about people doing that with youtube and woke up to ‘6 hours of kebab meat rotating’
It was terrifying when it came out. I just think movies have evolved so much (special effects, acting, screenplay, story lines, etc.) it just doesn't work today. There was a remake of it but it was just low budget and terrible. I think it could be really well-done with the right director and writers.
@@tarakennedy707 Rob Zombie would be a great director. Lol
This movie also scared the shit out of me as a kid, the sacrilegious stuff creeped me out too.
I'm a 60s kid, I know what you mean! I loved that, tv providing the best shows in the middle of the night. I need a channel based on that.
It is always funny to me how King's writing can be so involving, and then when you try to summarize the story it often sounds really, really dumb. Far better that than the other way around though.
To be fair, a lot of stories can sound pretty silly when you summarize them. It's actually something I like for creative writing. The premise can be really simple or odd, but it's how you present and develop it.
I mean it is dumb. He tried to make corn scary... and King is not the most talented of writers.
The Bible Belt is a real place in the US. Also how is getting married and having kids outdated?
@@michelegraham1181 Huh?
That's what's so good about his books - they're stereotypical horror scenarios that he makes gripping. Even his characters are pretty boilerplate, but the way he writes them makes you so immersed.
I could always tell when I first watched it that this was a SHORT story. Maybe this would’ve been an excellent 40 minute episode in a Stephen King anthology series.
Or a short film
Yes! I think his short stories would do so much better in the hands of invested producers to make an anthology series. I’m thinking like Love Death + Robots or even more recently, Guillermo del Toro’s, Cabinet of Curiosities.
Or a masters of Horror type show
Thats actually a really good idea.
As a note, Shawshank Redemption was a short story-only 79 pages, if I recall-so it is possible to make a long, compelling film out of his short stories. However, the screenwriter / director / etc. need to reframe how the story is presented in order to accommodate the change.
The kids in this movie are so much fun to watch. Half that cast went: I have no speaking lines so my only job is to take the few seconds I am on screen and make sure I am the most interesting thing in the frame by ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Whether that means pulling a face or screaming comically over-the-top while sprinting headlong at a target. I salute all of them.
Growing up in a small Midwestern town in a home surrounded by cornfields, the idea of something in the corn watching and waiting was absolutely bone-chilling. I agree with the short story being much better, but seeing the movie as a child made it terrifying, even if as an adult I can pick it apart.
yeess we had corn and soybean fields everywhere and it was so very creepy as a kid
Yeah, I first saw it when I was about 10 when I spent the night at my sister's house, which is surrounded by cornfields. Creaky old house + pitch black country darkness outside + early summer midwestern thunderstorm + 8ft tall cornstalks in every direction + a freak lightning strike to the transformer right outside the window x Children of the Corn = me not even trying to watch it again until I was in my 30s.
One night I was driving home from my grandparents’ house and passed by a large cornfield. The owner had placed a wooden silhouette of Bigfoot at the edge as if he was emerging from the corn and it scared the shit out of me at first.
Yes! Same here in Ohio! This is why this movie scared me so much as a kid! Lol I honestly had no business watching these kinds of movies as a kid 😅.
It's a very scary concept! Could you imagine being in a Starbucks and everyone around you started dropping dead after sipping coffee or tea, then have younger people approaching those of you who didn't die with knives and farm tools? That's scary as hell and it's something that could happen. Religion makes some people do strange things. Religious based cults breed psychopaths. It definitely traumatized me as a child and I didn't live in the Midwest.
The movie is kinda goofy, but the idea of He Who Walks Behind The Rows has stuck with me for years honestly. Some eldritch monster who lives in the cornfields is really frightening to me.
Cornfields are the original liminal space.
It really is one of his better monsters even though it's in such a short story. It uses religious language very effectively and the concept of how it took over and maintains power is realistic enough that it's perfectly believable within the context of the short story. You could probably remake Children of the Corn focused on a modern home school crazy kind of small town and make it like an emotional statement on how the wrong path for religious zealotry can put everyone in danger
@@merchantfanas someone who’s lived most of his life in small communities like that and has suffered from a lot of issues thanks to a combination of toxic family dynamics and less-than-stellar relationships with others, agrarian/small-town horror fascinates me. I still haven’t found enough works that explore it in a way I’ve found satisfying, though I have read the original “The Children of The Corn” story as well as Norman Partridge’s novella Dark Harvest and thought they were both all right. I’ve especially been scrounging around a lot for music that creates that kind of feeling; if anything, my fascination with that theme was basically thanks to me getting into the band Slipknot not long after I started experiencing mental health issues. The title track of Iowa is my favorite Slipknot song AND one of my all-time favorite songs in general for that reason, and believe me when I say that you’ll never truly understand that song unless you’ve lived in a place like that.
@@eeyorehaferbock7870 Yeah it's a shame it's never been adapted in a non-cheesy way there's a lot of potential
I only read the story once and sure, it was weird as shit, but it was also pretty damn depressing. The movie had a few moments, but I spent more time laughing and rolling my eyes than anything else. I'd say a film adaptation could work, but honestly? It's best as a short story.
There’s another short story that was written by Shirley Jackson called, “The Lottery”. It too is about a town that preforms human sacrifices to ensure a fruitful corn harvest. But it really isn’t revealed until the end what is actually happening. All the reader starts out knowing is that there an annual lottery that takes place every June 29th. It starts out as more off an annoyance for the towns people, but the situation starts to get more ominous as you continue to read. It’s a good story, but the reasoning for the lottery is even more ambiguous. The reader is never told what the towns religious beliefs are, or why they believe an annual human sacrifice will ensure a fruitful harvest, but this is a quote from one of the characters. “Lottery in June means corn’s coming soon.” There was a short film made in 1970, that featured a then unknown Ed Begley Jr.
The Supernatural episode Scarecrow sounds similar to it.
When I was in middle school, my class took a field trip to see another school's performance of the live theater version of "The Lottery". This was decades ago and I still remember the stoning scene. It was one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen to this day.
@@kirajenmystic9955 what’s interesting about the author is that she wrote short horror stories for The New Yorker, and short comedy stories about her family for Good House Keeping.
@@heidifedor I heard she suffered from depression and committed suicide
Marilyn Manson's music video for his song Man that you fear was an homage to the Lottery! Very well done!
The thing that works about the couple hating each other in the original short story is that it adds to the paranoia and fatalism. His wife becoming more and more manic makes the story way more intense in the pages before the children appear, and his realisation that if it wasn't for his pride and he had listened to her they would have left Gatlin intact is so effective
"Stay safe, stay away from cornfields..." *looks around self living in rural MN, surrounded by nothing BUT cornfields* Well...shit...
😂
Get in that corn!🌽
Lmao I'm over here in Ne like crap they're even in the cities
Never seen the Children Of The Corn, but it sounds like a movie Ari Aster should do a remake of!
Children of the Corn Fucking The Dads of the Corn
oh god that would be perfect
@@elleofmusic To be fair, it seems that he already kind of did with Midsommar.
@@rk28984 Midsommar feels more like a re-imagining of The Wicker Man. Not enough killer children 😁
That would be amazing!!
The opening scene completely explaining everything instantly killed my interest in watching this movie. The scariest part of the short story is just two people accidentally stumbling upon a crazy situation with no idea what is happening.
The concept of Children of the Corn is pretty Lovecraftian, and echoes the themes of Old-Gods worshipping cults in Lovecrafts writing, especially in that the corrupting influence of the entity is so powerful that even thinking about it can cause harm to people. The cult members are so insignificant to the entity that they’re basically just livestock for it to feed on, literal “lambs to the slaughter”
Totally forgot that Linda Hamilton played in the movie! Lol. Talk about versatility! 💜
King's best work will always be in his short stories IMO.
I've always wanted an adapatation, maybe an hour tops, of The Sun Dog.
@@jjohnson3469 oh hell yeah!
His dramas, too.
I think his novellas also have led to three high quality movies: Shawshank, Apt Pupil and the Body are all three movies I like to love and would rewatch (apt Pupil is a one and done movie but I was creeped out big time by the whole movie)
@@andu1854 Funnily enough, all three of those novellas are from the same book!
I remember the scene where the kids kill everyone in the diner feeling really messed up, it comes so suddenly, you can feel the same kind of shock and confusion the adults feel being slaughtered by their own kin. Say what you will about that movie, but I still think about that scene.
same! as well as the boy getting killed. it really stuck with me
Shaun White was so young in this movie, he’s barely aged in the last 30 years it’s amazing
The fact Sarah Connor can't take a bunch of crazy kids in a fight is bullshit.
its a bunch of kids with weapons
"I'll be back......with WEAPONS"
In the greater Stephen King universe it is heavily implied that He Who Walks Behind The Rows is Randall Flagg -the guy in The Stand, and The Dark Tower series
Isn't the It demon also related?
@@aliensoup2420 not reaaaallllly in this instance unless you want to argue that HWWBTR is one of Pennywise's eggs, maybe? Pennywise has always been tied to Derry Maine but Gatlin is in Nebraska. That being said, Pennywise does show up as a cameo in Insomnia, and Tommyknockers. It's also my theory that he's of the same species as Dandelo in the dark tower, and Tak from Desperation/Regulators. Possibly also the outsider if he was a baby version from an egg.
Also both insomnia and Tommyknockers take place in Derry as well
that worm that crawls underground is none other than stephen king, himself copying everything he finds....
@@lesleyrussell8200 you're gonna have a conniption when you learn about the word "trope" and "archetype". Enjoy fifth grade English class.
I've admittedly only ever seen some of its 2009 remake on the Syfy Channel, but even there, Burt's discovery of his wife Vicky's body crucified into a scarecrow with corn stalks in her eyes was a pretty gruesome find. 🌽👁
That’s the one where Vicki has on that sexy ass yellow dress? That’s my favorite one😅
@@blakeharris58 Ha ha, yep that's the one. I was surprised to learn later that she played Sue Snell in a version of Carrie (the 2002 TV one), and that she had a major voice role in one of my old Barbie movies (Barbie in a Christmas Carol; she played the Bob Cratchit equivalent).
@@DJtheBlack-RibbonedRose She also played a major role in "Battlestar Galactica".
I liked that version
The demon tootling around under the dirt is still such a cool effect. I'm glad they didn't try to make an actual physical representation of it, even if it did ultimately leave us with an Acme TNT explosion.
“Tootling around” - hahaha, the demon doesn’t sound too menacing when you put it that way. I loved the story so much that I refused to ever watch any of the movies.
I also enjoyed the term "tootling". 😂
@@kimberlyoldschool "Doopity doop dop, I'm the corn demon, tootling around, doing corn demon stuff"
Still blows my mind that John Franklin was an adult when he played Isaac here. He looked and sounded more like a crazy kid then most of the actual child actors they had.
probably because child actors are children and have less experience?
I swear... the kid who played Isaac is related to the child who played Joeffry in GOT. They have that same strange face and nasal voice.
He was actually 25 when he played Isaac but he had a growth hormone deficiency that kept him at 5 feet.
It's a disability called cunthausen syndrome. It's hereditary and very infectious too.
I've always thought the actor who played Isaac reminded me a bit of the actor who played Honeythorn Gump in the fantasy movie "Legend" with Tom Cruise and Tim Curry (the Gump actor was also smaller, slender and had dark hair). At first I thought their voices sounded similar too, but then I found out that actress Alice Playten, who played the main goblin Blix in "Legend", also dubbed Gump's voice. Still, the passing physical resemblance combined with the characters' similar voices gave me a chill!
This movie creeped me out when I was young. It was weird seeing an older movie (I was born in 93) with children being the main threat in the movie. It was like a Lord of the Flies lead by a satanic cult.
Thanks for this Ryan, I have been waiting for this since your Dream catcher video.
You know what's funny despite seeing this movie multiple times since childhood, I never realized the woman was Linda Hamilton. I saw a clip earlier this year that said it was her. I think she looks better then whatever haircut she had in terminator. Funny both of these films came out the same year, she could not get a break that year. Either you get killed by a machine or by children.
I don't understand the notion that movies need to be rational. I don't go into a movie about a cult of murderous children and an evil being living in corn thinking it's going to be rational...that's just silly lol. It's one thing if a movie is meant to be a grounded realistic story and it goes off the rails, but some movies aren't meant to be rationalized.
I rewatched this one on Shudder a few weeks back and actually began to enjoy it again for what it was. I feel like I loved this as a child and as I got older I grew to massively dislike it. But right now I think I’ve balanced on it. As a massive fan of Kings version I’m still hoping for a solid adaption some day. There’s a whole world of King works that would be amazing done today
"He who walks behind the HOYEVERS!"
It's been a while since I've seen this movie and I was fairly drunk last I did, but I remember thinking 'This Isaac kid is goin hard and I love it'. He really made the movie imo.
The actors playing Isaiah and Malachi made that movie. They ate! I mean, the movie’s not great or scary but it’s memorable because of those two committed performances.
Didn’t he end up playing Rusty in European Vacation?
@@andu1854 pretty sure that was Anthony Michael Hall (at least in the first one). They’re both gingers so they do look similar!
No, Malachi was played by Courtney Gaines. Rusty in EV was played by Jason lively.
They’re as much the stars as Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton
as someone who literally cannot watch scary movies of any kind, I find strange comfort in horror movie analysis and walkthroughs, of which you are one of the best channels for because you cover just sheer enormous breadth of content. So thank you from a scaredy cat
I live for the way Ryan says "hoyeverrr".
Big love from Australia ❤
Fun fact: Another King story implies that the corn monster is another version of Randall Flag
_"Weasels in the corn, Lawd."_
No way, are Randal Flagg and bob gray/pennywise related
You’re not missing anything with the sequels. The one highlight I remember is that in #6 (which they naturally call 666) they bring back the actor who played Isaac in the original, and he seemingly hasn’t gotten any taller since then. He looks like an adult child, which was super creepy in its own right.
It's a genetic disorder, think the same thing Gary Coleman had
He has the same condition as BAby doll in Batman, where you don’t grow up and look like a kid, also Joe C was also the smae
I prefer the second movie over this, but Issac and Malakai are so fun to watch. The idea of something in the cornfield was scary.
Jesus, Ryan… I sat down to watch this for the first time this weekend, realized I couldn’t sit through it after the first few minutes and then you just HAPPEN to make a full video about it.
You’re scaring me.
If you heard "hoyever" outside your house Ryan's watching you.
my mom was born and raised in the christian reformed church. she’s always warned me that when she watched children of the corn, it was absolutely evil and she physically gets uncomfortable talking about it.
this is my first exposure to the movie ever out of precaution for her warning 😭 it’s definitely not as bad as she always thought it was lmfao
What's interesting about Bert's death is that it further adds to the ambiguity of what really happened because his interpretation of it is being skewed by injuries, stress and trauma, which is how extreme cultist perspectives can be formed.
When it's made int a literal entity, you have to wonder why it only seeks control of children within the cornfield and doesn't expand its territory and control. Maybe it's because I come from a Christian background, but wouldn't an entity that seeks to be worshipped want to be the only thing being worshipped and thus try to expand its domain? Why is it content with just a cornfield and group of children and not the whole world? Is it worth worshipping and fearing if its realm and control ends beyond the field?
"Children of the corn", "the stone boy" and "the terminator" came out the same year.
These were Linda Hamilton's 2nd-4th movies the first two released, flopped, and the last one made Arnold and Linda house hold names.
Terminator was so popular that it actually made people look for more Linda Hamilton films which boosted the sales of this movie in the home release market
I was just watching Ryan's last video until this new video popped up. I remember watching Children of the Corn and finding it a bit boring, but I sorta like the idea of something hidden and some of the kids being truly evil. I just wish it would've been more creepier and focus more on the evil kids and doing more evil and unspeakable things.
Yeeeessssss!! I have been WAITING for you to talk about Children of the Corn!! 💗 It's definitely one of my favorite film adaptations of a Stephen King movie-- although if I *had* to pick a favorite, it would be Brian De Palma's "Carrie"! (Speaking of, would love to see you tackle that movie too! As well as De Palma's cult classic "Phantom of the Paradise"!)
The nuclear family isn't antiquated. It's a proven structure for raising children and has nothing to do with the 'patriarchy.' Good review, btw
I hate when a UA-camr I really like says something dumb like this. Statistics prove that children raised in a stable “nuclear family” have better outcomes across all demographics.
I watched Children of The Corn 6 once.
This may be shocking to hear but... It wasn't very good. But I barley remember it. Isaac has apparently been in a coma since the events of the first film, but then he wakes up, and starts to presume his previous cult leader duties, and nobody stops him, for some reason, even though the events of the first film are now well known throughout the world as kindoff a Jim Jones thing.
Also the main character sleeps with someone and and is now pregnant with some sort of prophecy child, Isaac's replacement, perhaps?
Frustrating adaptation? Believe me, the Dark Tower series of his is one of my favorite set of books and they are in no way capable of being adapted visually
The movie was crap, agreed.
Wanted to like it so much, but it was a complete adaptation failure.
Same here. The movie did not work.
The worst part is "The Gunslinger" would have been FINE for film adaptation. It's just a weird western! We know how to film those!
Antiquated patriarchal belief in the nuclear family? It’s in the best interest of the children though. I sure hope that’s not what you believe.
I saw Children of the Corn 2 when I was really young and I don't remember a thing about it except it has some truly goofy kills that are played for laughs. Example: The children terrorize an elderly woman until she tries to flee by crawling underneath her hydraulic-lifted house. The children, of course, turn off the hydraulics and as the house descends, the woman cries "Oh, what a world" as she's flattened from the waist up. Yes, a kill constructed entirely around a blatant Wizard of Oz joke.
SyFy remade the movie in 2009. The only thing I remember about it was how the couple hated each other. I know the wife died but I can't remember if the husband did. That movie didn't work because the audience had no one to sympathize with.
The best way I think to do the story justice would be to remake the first movie, take out the campiness, make it ambiguous to what's really going on, like you suggested, until the 3rd act. And if they want a 'good' child they're trying to save as well change it to the one that has visions. And when they burn down the cornfield have a figure of a man in the burning cornfield watching them as they flee
It's impossible to make that movie, because we would all know EXACTLY what's going on, because series has been long time around. It's like when they try to make new Predator movie and keep him unseen, like dude we know what's stalking main cast. It simply won't work for that reason.
However, apparently last CotC movie was found footage, and some other was ripping of ghost movies and had Samara-type ghost? What in the?
@@njmfff
True. I just read they made another even further from the story. Something about a girl that goes crazy, starts killing people, talks other kids in joining her except for one teenage girl & it's on her to stop the madness
I hadn't watched the previous ones when I found the 2009 version. Then I found the old series and watched it was meh.
Burn dies cause the corn gets him in the end
Fortunately the follow-up sequel was funny as hell. I love all the goofy death scenes, especially the remote control takeover of the geezer's wheelchair that they sent flying into the street, only to have it park in front of a speeding bus.
Is that the one where a corn stalk levitates, flies through a windshield, and impales someone?
@@camerondodge2070 sorry a corn stalk does _what_
You had me until "antiquated patriarchal idea of the nuclear family" 🙄🤮🤢
Did King describe their dress as "Quaker" or Mennonite/Amish? Because "Quakers"/Friends don't really have special outfits, it's just a normal religious sect that tend to have very prestigious religious schools (Obama's daughters attended a Friends school when he moved to DC). The kids dress Mennonite/Amish which I can kind of understand- Amish are generally pretty nice and civil but they are one of those "definitely kind of a cult but they've been around long enough that it's quaint Americana" kind of things when you know about their internal workings
The remake is surprisingly good and might be the only other Children of the Corn adaptation worth checking out
The nuclear family is an "antiquated patriarchal belief"? I've noticed your pozzed politics coming out plenty before but this is an absolutely bizarre statement to make. What did you even mean by this?
His politics are a bit skewed, to say the least.
I remember being somewhat entertained when I first watched it, but something felt off that was keeping me from loving it. Your analysis explains why I felt that way spot on.
Oh, and I’m so glad you did this film cause my wife and I have had an ongoing five year inside joke about the children of the corn who live next door. Like seriously, looks and behaviors and a family of 4-12 kids (who really knows) made me double check our locks 😂
The short story is soooooo much better then the movie. I read it after seeing the movie when I was a teenager and couldn’t believe how different they were.
that ending though 😂🤣Malachi just stood there ...lol
Isn't He Who Walks Behind The Rows accepted as one of the alternate identities of Randall Flagg? I don't know if that's a fan theory or explicitly stated somewhere. If so, wouldn't that mean things are even worse for those kids than it looks?
In "The STAND" Flagg menaced Mother Abigail a few times while standing out in her corn fields. He sent weasels after her and the incident became the backdrop of a later vision she had after fasting and praying, asking God to show her where she failed. Flagg appears to her as a wolf from out of the corn.
Also the dog, "Big Steve" who became Professor Bateman's dog Kojack, battled and killed wolves in Abigal's yard. He hides under her house to recover and senses Flagg moving through the corn, searching for him in the form of a Sauron-like eye.
Pretty sure it's just fan theory, but Skylx08 makes some very valid connections.
Not only did you mispronounce nuclear, but you consider the nuclear family antiquated? That explains a lot.
It could be that King went for the Quaker look because he felt the Puritan look was both too antiquated and too damn on-the-nose, even for him.
i love children of the corn but i find it kinda disappointing? it's an issue i have with most of king's work tbh and it's that like. i wish there wasn't a grand reveal of an Actual Supernatural Thing behind the insanity. i think it would not only be scarier but also more psychologically interesting if it was just kids being fuckin crazy for no reason. that the charisma of one kid could convince every child in a town to murder all of the adults is way, WAY more impactful to me than it just being that the kid was a thoroughfare for an actual demon. idk, demon/supernatural stuff has never been scary to me so maybe it's just a personal ish.
In King's "The STAND" the author equates corn to a nautural sensual aspect of human procreation (Garrison Kelior did same once in a monologue). I guess you have to be from the US midwest to see the sexyness of corn. That may be why he had the couple in the short story at odds with one another, and the malelevolent being targeting children, a product of procreation, perverted into minions of his corn religion.
In Sleepwalkers a corn on the cob is good as a murder weapon.
I still dig the original 1984 movie. It's still kind of creepy, and it's still better than most horror movies today.
The nuclear family isn't a 'patriarch' concept. Silly Ryan.
Yeah, I was... really confused by that. The nuclear family is a thing because -it just works-. It's literally one of the keystones of a strong civilization, and the current spite of it is a large contributor to the Western world's harsh decline and inevitable collapse. He's supposed to be an educated and well-researched guy, so I assume his comment just didn't come out right, but if he actually meant that... yeesh.
At 11:53, you say, "the back road known as the Bible Belt". The Bible Belt is actually a large section of the United States that stretches throughout the southern and mid-western part of the country and not just a "back road". This should lend some more context to the nightmare that is America, in that this horror could appear with fanatics anywhere over a third of the country and not just this tiny little town.
I always read the story first when it comes to King especially. They always leave so much of the deeper darker stuff out. And they usually mutilate the ending by trying to make it happy in times when he doesn’t. For example, there is no time travel in the story the tall grass.
I so relate to this, though the Mist was a nice adaptation with a very memorable and heartbreaking ending IMO
@@unslaadkrosis9435 Agreed. Even King said it was the better ending. Man, what a gut punch.
I mean that antiquated patriarchal nuclear family is still the most effective building block for society we have
as someone from Nebraska, let me assure you that we were ALWAYS aware of the corn and this movie did NOT make camping any easier. But, it did make our parents think twice before yelling at us after we watched it
I’d have to disagree with you. I don’t think this movie is boring. I genuinely enjoy it. I like to have this on when I’m sewing or making my resin art!
The power of the original short story and limitations of the film always make me remember something King wrote in the forwards to one of his short story anthologies about how he preferred writing the short stories because being free from the need to give a standard full structure and explanations meant he could just focus on the moments without worrying too much about beginnings and endings
I knew the director of this movie, Fritz Kiersch, when I was a student at Oklahoma City University where he was head of the film department. He's a really nice guy. He's got a lot of great anecdotes from his time in the film industry. I asked him why Isaac came back from the dead to kill Malachai, saying "he wants you too" or whatever that was about. Fritz replied something like "Ehhh, we kind of did that for shock value. And besides, we made this movie for dumb teenagers, not smart guys like you."
I have never seen this film all the way through. After seeing an old Lost in Adaptation episode, I listened to the short story (which I think UA-cam has removed now ). Now I listen to it every October. It is a fascinating story; there's something about nihilistic Stephen King I find...contrarily very comforting.
As for the movie...eh. Might watch it one day. Not in any rush.
It's a running joke in my family whenever you're looking for someone to say "He wants you, Malaki, he waaaannnttsss yoooouuuu"
Watched this for the first time while babysitting. Definitely added to the scare factor.
Ironically the 2009 television remake is the closest adaptation to the short story. But it premiered on Syfy and had a negative reception.
I watched this in the 4th grade with my mom. I've shown a few friends who don't like horror and they like it because the actors commit and it's not scary. I find it a fun time with good pacing even though it's not that good lol
These constand interruptions are extremely annoying. Stop it! I left TV to get away from commercials!
They had pretty decent remake on sci-fi back 2012-13 that was pretty close to story, interesting part Burt was Vietnam vet and was actually having flashbacks and hallucinating seeing his teammates and Vietcong sneaking through the corn
I was going to wait to watch this till tomorrow since I'm tired, hyever I probably would forget about it so I decided to just watch it now. If not I would of had him saying hyever stuck in my head the entire night.
Just a couple of random observations, pleaseing the algorithm as well.
First, it's not that King has a reputation for failing to deliver on an ending, it's just that it seems he has a hard time articulating it. Some stories are a lot better with their endings than others. Cujo, Tommyknockers are among the best. The stand, despite it being my favorite out of all of his stories, fails to stick the landing though by the time you get to that point I think he might be a little bit forgiven. As for the dark tower, I liked how it ended, but the seventh book does have a few nitpicks that I will avoid saying here to not ruin it for people. Suffice to say the seventh book kind of churns through a lot, and then he ruins the very end because the next to last chapter is an actual letter from him to the reader suggesting to the reader that they don't read the last chapter cuz they might not like how he ended the story. It's not done as a meta thing, it's done as the author actually telling people you may not like how I end my book and I don't like that. Otherwise, his short stories are always going to be better. He punches in, gives you the setup, you hit the punchline, and you're out. Unsurprising when you consider that the author is someone who grew up on and loves EC comics.
Regarding the movie and the short story, his use of that particular segment of Christianity has to do with it being different. They are a polite religion, but they're also not necessarily the most welcome to outsiders. They prefer archaic Garb and archaic ways of speaking and they bypass most forms of technology. So he was using them just because for somebody who grew up in the northeast, that was his reference point.
I always found the short story to be more chilling than the movie for a lot of reasons, but especially because of how the short story ends. You get the feeling that the demon or entity or whatever it is will continue to find fault with them, lowering the age of consent further and further until eventually the entire town is wiped out. And then it presumably moves on, to devour another small isolated town. It's a chilling, almost lovecraftian visual. It's an entity that has no clear defined motivation, no clear defined appearance, it seems to exist as some kind of horrendous mutation of christianity, almost like a meme brought to life. I'm honestly surprised that the movie did not go with the same kind of Bleak ending as the story, because the sequels as little as I remember them generally keep that kind of nailistic ending
Before I make this comment, I already know that every UA-camr cannot take people's opinions as actual criticism, but that person being a negative troll, only saying mean things to tear them down. I'm aware of that. With that being said. I love your videos, except for how you say "however".... I mean, the word is right there, I just typed it. You cannot pronounce that as "highever" and still be pronouncing it correctly, regardless of accent. Accent may point in a direction, but bastardization is wrong in every literative sense. But that's not my main complaint. As a guy your age, I think your hair looks awful recently. My girlfriend agrees, but she would never do something so cringey as telling you. That is all. Almost no complaints about your actual videos. Except for highever. Like, that goes for all English speakers. Canadians say sorry correctly... Britts, Australians, and Americans all say it wrong.
"Antiquated patriarchal belief in the nuclear family" yeah having a loving stable home is so last year and downright oppressive
By reading that excerpt aloud, you reminded me just how much I used to Love listening to books on tape! Time to find some SK audiobooks. Thanks for reawakening a forgotten love!❤
I like the movie. 🤷🏻♀️ The intro always disturbs me, and Issac is effectively creepy. The defacement of the church is something else that also unsettled me. The story is so much more bleak but I don't have any issues with the movie, except for the cheesey special effects at the end, but it was the '80s. 🤷🏻♀️
I always imagine the corn converging and becoming the physical form of He Who Walks in the climax of the story- and that Burt and Vickie being swallowed by a giant mass of living corn plants is totally freaky!
There's a 2009 remake that actually attempts to be closer to the book and tries to recreate the original ending... yet somehow I don't feel is very good regardless, it also had some... really uncomfortable scenes in a not good at all way
It's a shame how the children of the corn became a slasher franchise
Child of the 80's here--movies and stories featuring scary cults were popular back then. You have to keep in mind that Jim Jones cast a lingering shadow in peoples minds.
2:24 It’s actually not that weird or silly of a concept.
An Eldritch being that thrives on worship and control will have an easier time controlling the children with flexible and adaptable minds than the aging and elderly adults who are set in their ways and religion.
Much easier to clear the board and start from scratch.
Fun fact: Stephen King hates this adaptation of his work and actively tells fans not to watch it. He and his family have a running joke of yelling "Outlander, we have your woman!" at each other like a weird version of Marco Polo.
Fun Fact: My mom used to work with Ted Travelstead at a restaurant before he went on to star in Children of The Corn 2.
What the heck happened to Ryan's hair?
I'm very critical of organised religion in general, but Quakerism has always struck me as a really cool religion. It's almost dadaist in it's approach to spirituality and religious dogma, and I find that super interesting.
I like the concept of children the corn more than I actually like the children of the corn. The characters in the novel and in the 30-minute short film that came out before the movie are not likable. They're a bickering couple and both suck. The 84 movie was decent I like the acting of the bad guys Malachi and Isaac. I don't think it's the best. I think the second movie is the best because it's just a cheesy fun slasher movie that doesn't negate the storyline of the first movie. I've seen three four five and six as well but I haven't seen most of the ones after that except runaway. I still plan on watching them I just know that I'm not going to like them. I had some fun with 3 & 5 too though. 6 is fucking stupid as a concept. 4 was very forgettable.
"Antiquated patriarchal belief in the nuclear family". Really?! The "nuclear family" is how humanity has existed since its inception. It is neither "patriarchal" nor "antiquated".
thats just factually wrong and you know that
Lmao yeah like what? What's the alternative, "yeah bro heres my mom, my second mom, my dad, my dad's boyfriend, and his turtle"
@@notatruck2640 For most/almost all of human history children grew up in extended families or in the care of their entire community (i.e. a village or a tribe). "Nuclear Families" - i.e. two Parents and their children living together in a single home only became less rare during the Industrial revolution and only became the Norm in the u guessed it: nuclear age after world war 2.
@@BloodyVulnona Historically true, but the essence of what the nuclear family gives was present in societies that had those group structures as well- specifically protective and caring mothers and strong father figures to emulate. When you look at -certain groups of people- one of the most common traits among them is lack of a strong father figure (whether they simply don't have a father present, or the one they have is completely useless in all meanings of the word). Reduction from larger extended family sizes or communities was simply a natural evolution of modern society no longer needing that sort of thing but still retaining the core benefits. The fact of the matter is that men and women are fundamentally different, especially in how they handle, well, quite literally everything, and as such lacking a (good) mother or father is detrimental to a child's development as both viewpoints are needed for a well-rounded person.
Right? It's almost as if having a caring and protective mother alongside a strong father figure worth emulating makes for a much more well-rounded and stable growth cycle in a child or something. It's almost as if the majority of -certain groups of undesirable people- exhibit the pattern of lacking a good mother or father in their life or something. It's okay, the constant push for destroying the nuclear family has already led to a sharp decline in the western world, just a little bit more and we'll collapse hard enough that norms will be forced back into place.
Stop overemphasizing everything. The word "in" shouldn't last almost a second, certainly not the "i" in there.
I always recommend reading King's short stories to people who complain about his novel endings. I've found his short stories and novellas to be far scarier in general than his longer works, which usually don't horrify me- minus all the parts with the child SA stuff- so much as feel me with a distant kind of dread.
That said, while Children of the Corn is not a _good_ movie, it does have my favorite scene in any of the many King-based movies that have been made: Burt, in front of all the children, going on a lecturing tear about all the atrocities they've committed because they'd been hoodwinked by one of those Hellfire and Brimstone preachers that he'd been so dismissive of in the beginning of the movie, is so proud of himself when he beats up Malachai and decides to be _moral_ and _merciful_ by not killing him, only for *He Who Walks Behind The Rows* to make it's presence known and, without another word, literally just nopes out because oh hey, look at that, there actually _is_ a powerful supernatural presence that is demanding human sacrifice, oops.
His short stories are so much nastier than his novels. It's what I prefer to revisit when it comes to his work.
Hey Ryan you should cover Ginger Snaps (and it's sequels), I think it'd be a great video!