Great cobs of corn, it’s Burl, here to
review another sequel! This one is Children
of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice, and of course it’s the Final Sacrifice
in the same way as Friday the 13th part 4 was the Final Chapter! Which is to say, ha ha, there were a thousand
more brain-dead sequels that came after the supposedly final one!
I have an unreasonable fondness for this ol' cronker, though, and I’ll tell you why! Certainly it’s not because the movie is any
good - it’s not! - but more because of the circumstances in which I first saw
it, way back in 1992 or so! My then-girlfriend and I were driving back from somebody's
wedding, I remember, and we saw a movie theatre with that long title on the
marquee! So we stopped the car and, still dressed up in our fancy weddin' clothes, strolled in, bought some popcorn and settled back to watch this opus! We had a great time and it’s a pleasant memory!
But that’s about where the fondness stops,
ha ha! If you’ve seen the original Children
of the Corn, or read the Stephen King story, you’ll know that it involves
the murder of every adult in town by the children of Gatlin, Nebraska, who are
under the influence of a pagan corn god known as He Who Walks Behind The Rows!
This picture, which came along eight years after the first one, takes things up as the outside world discovers the bodies and
tries to figure out what to do with the children!
Into the world of Gatlin, and a neighboring
town called Huppleburg or something, comes a tabloid reporter called John
Garrett, played by husk-y Terence
Knox from Lies, in the company of his near-adult
son Danny, who looks a little like Emilio Estevez and with whom John endlessly
bickers! Ha ha, this bickering quickly becomes tiresome, and the murder scenes
with which the picture is punctuated are great respites from it!
The two Garretts have many adventures among
the maize! They each find love: Garrett the Elder with Rosalind Allen from Ticks, while the Younger meets cute Christie
Clark from A Nightmare on Elm Street 2:Freddy’s Revenge! An ingratiating fellow named Frank Redbear teams up to
help out with the mystery, pointing out that the corn is moldy and might be making the children crazy! He equally suspects the involvement of an evil corn god, however, as well as a problem with the koyaanisqatsi! Meanwhile, there are murders: flying corn products take out two
newsmen; a house squashes an old lady; a doctor is poked by knives and needles;
a random fellow gets the world’s worst nosebleed thanks to some voo-doo; and a
whole mess of townsfolk are incinerated in a meeting hall! Most of these crimes
are committed by the children, but the cornfields themselves take on some of
the work as well!
The picture proceeds on the same theory as
its predecessor: that if you cast a young adult as a teenager, put him in an
Amish outfit with one of those flat hats and caution him never to smile, he’ll
automatically turn creepy! Also like its predecessor, He Who Walks Behind The
Rows is represented by a traveling furrow of earth, as if it was the gopher in Caddyshack turned bigger and meaner! It’s too bad we don’t ever
get to see this corn demon, which shoots blue lightning at people before either
killing them or possessing them! We do get a brief look at a corn-demon pizza-face on the
lead corn-child, Micah, before he gets swallowed up by a big corn husking
combine!
The picture offers too much filial bickering; a bit
of gore here and there; some squirmy, silly murders; and a happy, strangely
touching supernatural ending for Frank Redbear! Altogether it’s not a great
movie and not a good one, but it’s an acceptable autumn time-filler that, I can
tell you from experience, plays a lot better on the big screen! I give Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice
one and a half cobs of stupid old corn!
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