CHILDREN OF THE CORN III: URBAN HARVEST

 1994/18/89m

“In the heart of the city, an adult nightmare is about to be reborn.”

Director: James D.R. Hickox / Writer: Dode B. Levenson / Cast: Daniel Cerny, Ron Melendez, Jim Metzler, Nancy Lee Grahn, Michael Ensign, Mari Morrow, Jon Clair.

Body Count: 18

Dire-logue: “Whatcha gonna do, man? Preach me to death?”

Vile 2009 remake aside, this is my least favourite of the Corn-clan.

Brothers Joshua and Eli are shipped off to Chicago after their dad “disappears” in a Gatlin cornfield. Fostered by city couple Metzler and Grahn, while Joshua attempts to fit in at school and befriends the kids next door, Eli slowly brainwashes his classmates to the ways of He Who Walks Behind the Rows and plants a patch of corn in the abandoned factory lot behind his house, further cementing my theory that, by and large, children are evil.

Shortly after, adults connected to the boys start dropping like flies, although the hands-on sickle-slashing of the first two films is abandoned in favour of supernatural demises that include wormy corn-roots that really get under your skin and a social worker’s face burning and melting! So it’s not much of a slasher flick – but then the whole series walks a thin line – and this is probably why I can’t get into the corntastic groove so much with this one.

Things take a Diet-Omen route with Ensign as a troubled priest trying to muster the strength to defeat Eli, who manages to out-evil Isaac and Micah in terms of bratty slappability.

While decamping to the city adds an interesting element, ultra-crappy effects during the mass-teenacide finale ass-rapes any credibility out of it, with a really awful looking plasticine monster feeds on the disciples. Truly, it looks like a junior school’s stop-motion video project with a blob of Playdough plucking doll’s house figurines off the ground.

Charlize Theron and Buffy’s Nicholas Brendon allegedly appear as extras but I couldn’t recognise either of them, probably much to their relief.