Children Of The Corn 5 - Fields Of Terror

...insane willpower) was to watch Children of the Corn V – Fields of Terror. Straight after watching Children of the Corn IV. These things must be done – for science! And for cheap laughs. Take my hand…let’s take a roll in the corn…

***THE PLOT***
Opening on a field, we see a young jug-eared kid wander up to a fire, which is burning red, orange – and green. Rather than run away screaming “chemical fire!” he stares at it a bit, ...
...short story was that of children sacrificing adults so that the corn crops would be fruitful. Now “He Who Walks…” is nothing more than a background (ha ha) idea – and here they mention him ad infinitum as if to make up for not doing so in Part IV. In fact, I counted – they mention him/it 13 times. Symbolic? Eh, probably. Let’s chalk it up to bad scripting!

The scripting falls on the wimpish shoulders of director Mr Wylie, who does ... more

Glutton for punishment, that’s me. Not in a “tie me up tie me down” kinda way, but I like to put myself through things I don’t think I’d enjoy – just to see if I would. So, in my time I’ve had piercings (they’re crap), watched The Naked Chef (irritating) and endured some things probably too “difficult” for your delicate sensibilities, dear reader. >;)

The latest in a long line of such tests (I am basically The Dice Man without the insane willpower) was to watch Children of the Corn V – Fields of Terror. Straight after watching Children of the Corn IV. These things must be done – for science! And for cheap laughs. Take my hand…let’s take a roll in the corn…

***THE PLOT***
Opening on a field, we see a young jug-eared kid wander up to a fire, which is burning red, orange – and green. Rather than run away screaming “chemical fire!” he stares at it a bit, and is promptly possessed by a bad special effect. One year later (for no apparent reason) the kid goes to a house and kills a man with magical powers.

Meantime, some young upstarts turn up in wherever this is set, and incur the wrath of the naughty ankle-biter, who now has a lot of similarly murderous child-pals. When their friends pull up in the same town (they’re meant to be meeting there, y’see), they discover their chums dead and one of their party, Alison, is spooked by talk of “He Who Walks Behind The Rows”.

Finding themselves stranded in the town, the kids get all shirty as Alison decides to nose around. Her brother went missing with talk of the same mysterious row-walker you see. Her desire to return her brother to normality is not met with party hats and cake by the troublesome youth, and soon the ‘outsiders’ find themselves in a whole heap of crop.
* * * * *

Yes, get down to the shops and buy some cream crackers folks, you’re gonna need ‘em with all this cheese around. Stilton Of The Corn – Fields of Cheddar may well have been a better title. But with strong cheese comes fun, exactly what this franchise desperately needs.

If you’ve seen any of the preceding CotC flicks, you’ll know that they get too serious for their own good (okay, there was the giant monster in one of them, but forget that!). Some bright spark handed the reins over to the helmer of many a fun/horror picture, Ethan Wiley. The man who brought you Lake Placid and House 2 (crap!) is going through something of a renaissance recently, and this may well have been the feature that turned his fortune back on its feet.

The story starts off well enough – as most horror movies should, it sets up a few questions that need answering. Of course, this being a direct to video deal, there are never any rational explanations (and not many irrational ones come to think of it) to back up the plot turns. Characters amble from one situation to the next on auto-pilot – maybe I’m missing something and this is the “style” of CotC movies. Dumb grown ups, smart kids. Actually, that may be a bit of a stretch. After all, the kids all do manual labour for no money. Not too smart!

The whole Corn mythology seems to be based around a rather loose set of ideas anyway – kids who do evil for a nameless demonic force. In the last episode, there was no mention of “He Who Walks Behind The Rows”, a demonic harvest god of some sort. The initial concept in the Stephen King short story was that of children sacrificing adults so that the corn crops would be fruitful. Now “He Who Walks…” is nothing more than a background (ha ha) idea – and here they mention him ad infinitum as if to make up for not doing so in Part IV. In fact, I counted – they mention him/it 13 times. Symbolic? Eh, probably. Let’s chalk it up to bad scripting!

The scripting falls on the wimpish shoulders of director Mr Wylie, who does a fairly good job of keeping things pacy, but never really expands on a number of potentially interesting points. The killer kids seem very selective about who they do in, until the end of the movie when hunting season opens. One character reads about 2 pages of the children’s “gospel” and decides to join them – just like that! After seeing someone die horrifically in front of her, Alison just gawps. Run away when people die – do you know nothing?

Also, Wylie lets the direction slip into “experimental” territory, which does stamp a *little* character on the work but seems largely show-off like and not really essential to the plot. We get side-on camera shots of cars zooming by, and the laughable “rocking-chair-cam”. All these flashy camera moves are no substitute for character development and sensible plotting though – for example, the teenagers turn up in an empty house that just happens to be fully stocked with food and beer! Yeah, okay…and then there’s the whole deal with turning up in a town where the lead character’s estranged brother lives. Convenient, no?

The only thing rescuing this badly plotted farce is the gallows humour that prevails at just the right moments, sometimes not - but hey, at least it has a sense of playfulness. The protagonists have driven through this town on the way to scatter their friend’s ashes who died doing extreme sports – “Who would have thought bungee jumping was so dangerous” someone says, a revelation that raised a chuckle from your humble reviewer. Alexis Arquette provides most of the light relief as the stereotype goofy “loves the lead character but can’t say it” type. Also got some fun from spotting Frank Zappa’s kids (and some B movie stalwarts) in key roles – hey, those Zappa kids are cheap, roll ‘em in!

Oh my, how could I forget the gore? I didn’t, poindexter, I’m telling you about it right now! Pretty effective, some miscellaneous organs being dumped into a body bag, a head splitting open and revealing a fleshy stump that spouts fire into the face of another character (bizarre!), folks on fire – always a treat – bring yer marshmallows, and the obligatory knife in the side/throat. Oh, and a drill in the leg. Never sofa-behind-hidingly grim, but some nice stuff for you gore hounds.

In all, I wasn’t taken by surprise by this movie – there were no effective jump-outta-your-seat moments, standard gore (okay, occasionally inexplicable), but far too many things that made me go “oh, shut up!” There is the occasional great line (“Mmm! Smeat!”) and the occasional duff one (“Ah shoot!” exclaims someone failing to start up a car. “Shoot?” Are we in the 1950’s?!) – but I just can’t get away from the DUMB parts.

The denouement is especially intelligence-stabbing, with an extremely lame end “twist” that has nothing to do with the next instalment, which I plan on NOT watching as soon as possible. If you’re going to make a franchise, at least have them link to each other in some way – each CotC flick is a separate entity and whilst this may not be as bad as some of ‘em, it really is a “oh sod it, there’s nothing else on, I’ll watch it” movie. If it’s the last one in the video store, leave it, unless cheese is high on your renting agenda. In which case, brain off & enjoy.

Oh yeah, do you know what else? Not a jolly green giant in sight. What’s up with that?

© P$ 2002

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Main cast

Stacy Galina – Alison
Alexis Arquette – Greg
Adam Wylie – Ezekiel
Eva Mendes – Kir
Fred Williamson – Sheriff
David Carradine - Luke

Directed & written by Ethan Wylie

Rated 18 for strong, bizarre gore and class C sailor words

Running time: 84 minutes

Available from many a HMV/Virgin Megastores etc. for a piffling £5.99. Or watch it on the Sci-Fi channel like I did and save some brass!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Things I learned from enduring this movie:

· Fire = bad. Green fire = just plain evil!
· When advancing on someone in order to kill them, try not to battle cry first – YOU LOSE THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE, DOLT!
· Blow-up dolls work better than maps
· When impaled on a scythe, one’s first instinct is to quip
· Having a large hook rammed into your spine will in no way impair your movement

Thanx for reading!
 

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