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COTC: C20

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children of the corn 666 isacc's returnCHILDREN OF THE CORN 666: ISAAC’S RETURN

2 Stars  1999/18/79m

Director: Kari Skogland / Writers: Tim Sulka & John Franklin / Cast: Nancy Allen, Natalie Ramsey, John Franklin, Paul Popowich, Alex Koromzay, Stacy Keach, John Patrick White, Sydney Bennet.

Body Count: 8

I wouldn’t blame you if you thought there were 665 other Corn movies before this one. Certainly feels that way.

There’s a few ‘names’ in what seems like it was intended to be the Halloween H20 moment for the ever-goalpost-moving Children of the Corn series, which has gone through more metamorphoses than Kim Kardashian’s butt.

Teen Hannah (Ramsey) drives her banged-up old convertible to Gatlin to find her mother, Rachel, a member of the first-incarnation of the cult (she was the girl who attacked Burt and Vicky with the sickle at the end). On route she picks up a creepy preacher guy who literally disappears from the passenger seat after quoting a few cryptic Bible verses.

She locates the local hospice to research her adoption history, some oddballs, is nearly run off the road, and has recurring visions of corn, dead birds, and a shadowy figure.

Meanwhile, original preacher Isaac (looking like Jonathan from Buffy) wakes from his nineteen-year coma intent of providing safe passage for another prophecy about first born this, sacred birthright that, which will entail his son getting it on with Hannah to create something or other that was lost into a web of confusing dialogue.

In spite of the title suffix, Franklin doesn’t get that much screentime and achieves very little. He Who Walks Behind the Rows puts in an appearance (finally!), and there’s some gooey slayings, but the body count only gets going with minutes left on the clock.

children of the corn 666 isaac's return

Director Skogland overhauls the general look of the series, giving Gatlin a dusty, ghost town appearance and pours on the visual grit thick, with a washed-out colourless look to proceedings. It just makes it a bit emo and boring, with no real group of set-upon protagonists beyond Ramsey, who carries most of the film capably enough, propped up by Allen and Keach.

The big twist arrived undercooked and is done with in minutes and considering the roots of the series, there’s hardly a child in sight, and those we do see are just skipping about in the corn not bothering anyone.

If this was an attempt to springboard the series back into cinemas, gotta wonder if there was much of a demand for that in the first place, but COTC 666 adds very little to an already clogged and dizzy franchise, compounded by the next one having even less in common with this arc.

Blurbs-of-interest: Natalie Ramsey was Brittany Murphy’s friend in Cherry Falls; Stacy Keach was in The Hollow.

It certainly felt like a whole day

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a day of judgment 1981 box

A DAY OF JUDGMENT

1 Stars  1981/15/97m

“The night HE came to collect his own.”

A.k.a. Stormbringer

Director: C.D.H. Reynolds / Writer: Tom McIntyre / Cast: William T. Hicks, Harris Bloodworth, Brownlee Davis, Jerry Rushing, Toby Wallace, Inga Dennis, Larry Sprinkle, Helen Tryon, Careyanne Sutton, Charles Reynolds.

Body Count: 9

Laughter Lines: “If you’re going to kill me, give me time to pray!”

This plodding oddity is notable only for being one of very few period slasher films, being set in a small Southern town in the 1920s, where, after what feels like hours of boring, dull scenes of dialogue, a mysterious cloaked figure has come to lay to waste the nasty folk.

Beginning with the departure of the local Reverend, who laments he has failed to make the local people change their sinful ways, very slowly and boringly we’re introduced to the various characters in town:

  • Greedy, fat bank manager who won’t give anybody debt extensions
  • Nasty old lady who hates children and poisons their pet goat
  • Cheating spouse of department store owner
  • Scheming ambitious boyfriend of said spouse
  • Angry alcoholic man
  • Man who wants his own parents committed for their estate
  • Some solicitor or something?
  • A rotund, but fair Sheriff

It takes almost 40 minutes for the first of these unpleasant reprobates to be taken out, dragged into the earth by creepy hands that spring from the soil. Then some guy shoots himself because fat bank manager tries to foreclose on his farm. Another guy dies during a fight and his wife and her lover cover it up by making it look like a car accident.

a day of judgment 1981

It’s all really confusing and boring. Why aren’t they being slashed up by the cloak-dude?

Some double-crossing crap is revealed, I zoned out. More people are being shot than sickled.

The score sounds like Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.

My God, 97 minutes has never felt so long. This is worse than church.

SHIT A BRICK AND FUCK ME WITH IT – THE TWIST IS THAT IT WAS ALL A DREAM.

This isn’t a slasher movie its a Christian propaganda tale of A Christmas Carol proportions. The film even ends with the Ten Commandments scrolling up!

Blurbs-of-boredom: Jerry Rushing was the coach in Final Exam; Helen Tryon, William T. Hicks, and Larry Sprinkle were in House of Death.

Twists of Fury: The Dorm That Dripped Blood

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In this feature, Vegan Voorhees examines those jaw-dropping revelations that the slasher film loves to bat our way from the blue, like a pushy parent tossing softballs at a kid who doesn’t want to learn baseball.

This month, we slide dirgey, cheapo 1981 slasher The Dorm That Dripped Blood under the terrorscope. If you haven’t seen it, beware humongaloid SPOILERS…

dorm that dripped blood ending twist

Set Up: College students who board at Morgan Meadows Hall are closing down the place for its imminent bulldozing. Good job too, it’s a right shitheap. Anyway, the handful of them sticking around during the holidays are picked off one by one by a shadowy killer. But who? And why? Final girl Joanne will save the day!

Twist: No she won’t. Once everyone’s dead and all red herrings off the hook, the real killer – smartmouth joker Craig – reveals himself to Joanne, tells her he loves her and will kill anyone who stands in the way of their love… AND THEN THROWS HER IN THE FURNACE!

The final shot is Craig being led to safety, while smoke billows from the furnace behind him as Joanne roasts away.

Problems with this revelation: The film is grimy enough without this downbeat ending stapled on, which lets Craig get away with his crime. Not that Joanne was the best heroine, but even so, the attempt at keeping things dark goes beyond the usual killer-is-still-out-there stuff into a place that just doesn’t work. No, I say. No.

Likely Explanation: The Dorm That Dripped Blood has little going for it to make it stand out. It plods along in underlit doldrums, with a few sticky murders chucked in, possibly realising the audience is slowly lapsing into a coma, so the eyebrow-raising coda was thrown on.

Go away.

…Something beginning with overrated

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my little eye dvd

MY LITTLE EYE

2 Stars  2002/18/92m

“Fear is not knowing. Terror is finding out.”

Director: Marc Evans / Writers: David Hilton & James Watkins / Cast: Laura Regan, Sean C.W. Johnson, Kris Lemche, Jennifer Sky, Stephen O’Reilly, Bradley Cooper, Nick Mennell.

Body Count: 4

Trailers for My Little Eye looked awesome back in the early 00s, and I went to see it around the same time that the similarly-themed Halloween: Resurrection floated to the surface.

Kind of an awkward marriage between parts of The Blair Witch Project and Big Brother – then at the peak of its popularity – five young hopefuls are plonked in a house in the middle of nowhere (a nowhere covered by an inescapable blanket of snow) for six months with the promise of a million dollars each if none of them leave before it’s over.

As they near the end of their stay, the shady producers begin sending stranger and stranger supplies to the house, such as bricks, a gun, a hammer. that prompt the residents to try and delve deeper into the agenda, amped up when a hiker happens by and claims he’s never heard of the show.

They discover they are guinea pigs to a secret circle of sadistic millionaires who want to see live murders and one of them turns out to be a well-placed psycho who’s happy to start doing the rest of them in until whiney heroine Emma takes him on.

my little eye 2002

In synch with hordes of other it’s-real-no-it’s-not slashers including Kolobos and Voyeur.com, a large spoonful of the film is presented via obscure camera angles as the slow build keeps the audience waiting for that mind-blowing revelation… There are a couple of suitably eerie moments on route, but instead of a huge twist, things just peter out with an annoying and bleak twist ending that succeeds only in cementing the hour-long build up as a waste of time.

Biggest mystery: If the whole thing was just an elaborate trap, why wait six months before killing everyone on the same day?

Blurbs-of-interest: Laura Regan was in Hollow Man II; Kris Lemche was in Final Destination 3; Nick Mennell was in the Friday the 13th reboot; apparently Bradley Cooper did a few films nobody ever heard of.

One way trip

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shroomsSHROOMS

1.5 Stars  2007/18/81m

“Get ready to get wasted.”

Director: Paddy Breathnach / Writer: Pearse Elliott / Cast: Lindsey Haun, Jack Huston, Max Kasch, Maya Hazen, Alice Greczyn, Robert Hoffman, Don Wycherley, Sean McGinley.

Body Count: 6

Laughter Lines: “You can’t fuck up what’s already fucked.”

Ireland supplied this disappointing comic horror in which five American college kids join a local on a camping trip into the woods for Shroom Season, where mind-trips galore await those who dare to sample to delicacies the forest floor has to offer.

Good girl Tara (Kirsten Dunst-a-like Haun) accidentally scoffs a forbidden Devil’s Head mushroom, which is reported to cause a variety of mind-bending affects including violent outbursts and foresight.

Tara begins to experience the latter and hosts visions of her friends’ murders during their respective trips, at the hands of a feral creature – the possible survivor of a massacre at the closed-down young offenders home they share the locus with.

Things kick off amusingly with a talking cow, dogging, and cold-blooded murder. The midriff of the project is consumed almost entirely by the three female characters running through the trees and shrieking like banshees, not too dissimilar to The Blair Witch Project, but not nearly as innovative.

Shrooms2Ultimately, the groan-worthy twist is too understated and pointless to save a film that is neither funny enough nor scary enough to warrant any kind of recommendation. The performances and photography are acceptable but lacklustre, and come the credits it feels like you’ve just wasted an hour and a half on nothing – but maybe that’s the ironic underlying message of this regrettable trip?

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