Children of the Corn (1984) 1h 32m

You know that scene in Spaceballs where Yogurt is talking about the merchandising of Spaceballs and shilling things like Spaceballs the toilet paper, Spaceballs the three-hole punch, or whatever?  That's kind of how this felt.  Although, instead of selling you something it makes sure that you know that this is a work by Stephen King.  The title card and poster both say "Stephen King's Children of the Corn," as well as having other works by him listed, and it goes as far as to have a copy of Night Shift (The post Penthouse option for this story) sitting in paperback form on the dash of the outlander's car.  I'm surprised the two helpful kids here haven't had their names changed to "Stephen" and "King" for the film!  Okay, I'm jumping too far ahead of myself now.

Children of the Corn takes place in Gatlin, Nebraska where a drought has caused a lack of crops in this farming community.  A boy, Issac, gathers the other youths in the town, claiming he has some divine contact with a entity known as "He who walks behind the rows," and gets the children to murder all of the adults in the town.  Once this is done the corn crop flourishes and the remaining under-18 crowd create a new society and religion.  Cue our adults, Burt and Vicky.  Their coming is foretold by a clairvoyant young girl and Issac, Malachai, and the other cult children prepare for their coming.

Children of the Damned and Children of the Corn are probably the most quintessential creepy children films.  Between Issac's voice and appearance, and Malachai's penchant for violence, there's always something to make you feel just slightly unsettled.  In addition to that, there's no down-time with this film.  It's just scene after scene after scene of something happening or plot development.  I'm not complaining, it's just something that I haven't payed attention to on previous viewings, but it really keeps you engaged with the film.

The only major issue I have with Children of the Corn is that its effects are dated as fuuuuccckkk!  The rotoscoped lightning and claiming of Issac, the sky color change, and let's not forget when Issac is on a cross and it just shoots up and spirals in the air like a child throwing an action figure.  I'm sure they did what they could with what they had, but damn!  Also the unexplained actions of the children ransacking Burt and Vicky's car and then just filling it with corn stalks seems excessive.  We get it!  Your shit is corn!  Calm the fuck down!

Fun fact to end this review on:  While researching this I found out that the kid that played Issac also played Cousin It in the Adams Family films (and MC Hammer video).

I give Children of the Corn 4 rotoscopes out of 5:

13 Days of Christmas Day 13: Gremlins (1984) 1h 46m

When I set out to do the 13 Days of Christmas I knew that I wanted to end it with Gremlins.  I hadn't watched the film in years and, oddly enough, it might have been the first horror film I ever watched as a kid.  It was one of those films that everyone saw at a young age when it came out.  It also was one of three movies that I liked that had a jump scare that freaked me out at a young age (the other two being Large Marge in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and the librarian ghost at the beginning of Ghostbusters).  My big question coming into this was would Gremlins live up to my nostalgia for it?

If you've never seen this film, let me sum it up for you:  An inventor comes across a strange creature known as a Mogwai while in Chinatown.  He acquires it from the shopkeeper's grandson and brings it home as a present for Billy.  There are three rules with the Mogwai: 1) no bright lights and sunlight can kill him, 2) do not feed him after midnight, and 3) never ever get him wet.  Needless to say two of these three happen and what was once a cute a fuzzy Mogwai spawns a mass of horrible green gremlins which kill and terrorize the town.

It was weird to watch this after such a long time and actually attempt to keep track of the body count.  There are four confirmed deaths that we see and then a load of other unconfirmed ones that we never know for sure (except the guy playing Santa lives but you have to be paying attention to background noise to find that out on a newscast).  The puppets still hold up visually and there isn't a single weak link in the casting.  Even the fucking dog is a good actor!

There are a lot of plot holes with this film, mainly revolving around the rules.  I'm not getting into it aside from the fact that snow apparently doesn't count as getting them wet.  For people that want to argue the booze, that gets handled in the official graphic novelization.  As far as my nostalgia, it was hurt a bit because I realized that this film isn't far off from just becoming a B-movie.  It isn't, but it skates such a fine line that if the quality of this film drooped at all then it wouldn't be what it is.

On a side note, as mean as this may be, I still cheered when Mrs. Deagle shot out of that window.

I give Gremlins 4 ripped Santas out of 5:

And with that, the 13 Days of Christmas come to an end.  We'll be back to our regular reviews on Sunday, January 7th.  In the meantime, I hope you have a good holiday if you're celebrating something around this time.  If not, then I still just wish you well.  See you in a few weeks!

13 Days of Christmas Day 5: Silent Night Deadly Night (1984) 1h 19m

One of the quintessential holiday horror films, along with Black Christmas and a few others I'm going to cover on here, Silent Night Deadly Night seems to be the most remembered.  Since Thanksgiving has passed, images of this film have been plastered all over my social media feeds.  My own personal aversion to Christmas kept me from watching this previously but no longer!  I have joined the SNDN cult!

Silent Night Deadly Night focuses on a boy named Billy.  His family visits his grandfather in a mental hospital where the grandfather secretly tells Billy that Santa will punish the boy for not being good all year.  On their drive home the parents stop to help a man dressed as Santa on the side of the road.  This Santa is some sort of lunatic criminal that kills the father and then rips open the shirt of the mother before he cuts her throat.  Billy hides but sees all of this and becomes ultra traumatized toward Santa Claus.  He and his baby brother are then taken to an orphanage run by nuns where the Mother Superior has incredibly old-fashioned (even for the time) views of child psychology and corporal punishment.  As if Billy weren't fucked up enough, she just makes it worse.  Finally, in the "present day" of the film, Billy has a job at a toy store where he ends up playing the store Santa.  After a few drinks at the holiday party and walking into an attempted rape by one of his co-workers, Billy has a flashback and then just goes on a murderous rampage.

I'm sure that when this film was being written they were just looking for plot reasons to have Billy snap.  The thing that floored me with Silent Night Deadly Night was the fact that from a psychological point of view everything makes sense.  The initial trauma toward Santa based on real life events, the fear of punishment for being "naughty," the aversion to sex and the association of violence with it and the baring of the female body, these are all relevant reasons for Billy's emotional response.  Granted, this is an extreme expression of it, but the inclusion of alcohol (which he had no previous experience with) would lead to a lowering of inhibitions.  The only thing is once he started, he just didn't stop.

With that analysis out of the way, I liked Silent Night Deadly Night.  It's dated, but for someone like me it felt nostalgic.  Seeing He-Man toys on a shelf or the weird inflatable bunny that everyone had for Easter let me go back to the 80's without an issue.  I found myself only caring about Billy as far as the characters go.  Though, with a holiday slasher, everyone is pretty much expendable.  This movie also spawned a few sequels which I may watch at some point.  However, if I take anything away from this movie, it's going to be just shouting "NAUGHTY!" at the cats when they misbehave.

I give Silent Night Deadly Night 4 ripped Santas out of 5: