Children of the Corn III - Urban Harvest [DVD]

'Children of the Corn 3' is pretty damn entertaining. Not as good as two, but still superior to the original and well worth watching. It's certainly never effective as a straight horror movie, but it's got plenty of camp appeal and some amusing gore. This one is sorta vaguely related to the original central story, as it's about little creepy Eli and larger, normal Joshua who are adopted brothers. At the films beginning Eli murders his adopted father so they have to move in with a foster family... IN THE CITY!!!!! Eli is some sorta evil corn warlock and he starts killin' people for no particular reason and works on a scheme to feed tainted super-corn to all the world with the unwitting help of their foster father, who is some sort of corn magnate. What's worse, Eli starts preaching at the toughest Catholic school in the hood and starts converting everyone, to create a whole new pack of corn children! That all sounds pretty silly, I'm sure, and it is, but they try to take is seriously, which is nice. Intentionally camp movie do work sometimes, but they can rarely compare to something which was meant to be taken seriously. Though actually, I don't wanna be to hard on it, as it's actually more competent than a lotta films of this caliber. I get the feeling that the director could manage a pretty decent horror movie if he had a decent script and a moderate budget. But this is what we got, and there ain't much they can do with this plot, and the dude who plays Eli just ain't menacing, like Malachi was in the first one. Still, it's pretty awesome, with a nice scarecrow attack, a corncifiction, a big scary corn monster that eats a doll, some computer generated fireballs, a crazy agitated priest, a chick totally melting, a corn-thieving hobo who gets his comeuppance, icky bugs, a scary corn-bible and a glimpse into the mysterious world of international corn trade. If all that hasn't convinced you that you need to see 'Children of the Corn 3', that I don't think it's gonna happen. Also, Charlize Theron has a small role as one of the new Children of the Corn towards the end. Not that I can imagine why you'd care, though it does show how life really can change- in ten years she went all the way from 'Children of the Corn 3' to... ... .... ...'Aeon Flux'. You've come a long way, baby.

Grade: C

No other author in recent memory has had as much consistent success selling books as Stephen King. For roughly three decades the Maine writer churned out book after book, each one selling more and more copies. He's a world unto himself, the lucky fellow! He's so successful that he could throw out his pens, put away his typewriters, bury his word processor six feet under, never write another word in his life, and STILL have enough money to wallpaper the Great Wall of China five times over. In many respects, it's Stephen King's world and the rest of us are just living in it. But, and this is a gigantic but, an enormous number of metaphysically bad films based on his novels threaten to put a serious dent in his legacy. We all know the good ones, the ones that not only scared audiences stiff but also helped propel King's career to even greater heights. "Carrie" is probably the best example, followed by "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Dead Zone." These are wonderful, magical films that one can watch again and again without wearying of them. Then there are the rest: the truly wretched refuse that reminds one of dental plaque or the junk that washes up on the shores of a filthy river. Welcome to the Children of the Corn franchise.

"Children of the Corn 3: Urban Harvest" moves far beyond the parameters established in the first film. Instead of Isaac issuing the doom and gloom prophecies of "He Who Walks Behind the Rows," we now have Eli (Daniel Cerny) stepping up to the plate. He and his older "brother" Joshua (Ron Melendez) turn up in Chicago after Joshua's father, who had the temerity to question Eli's increasingly bizarre behavior, perished in a hideous manner back on the Nebraska farm. Adopted by William Porter (Jim Metzler)--a big shot at an agricultural firm specializing in the creation of resistant grains--and his wife Amanda (Nancy Lee Grahn), Eli and Joshua seem like fish out of water in the Windy City. Right from the start it's obvious that Eli is a little strange; it is also obvious that he has some sort of weird hold over Joshua. How odd is the pint-sized preacher? His new mother opens his suitcase only to find it packed full of ears of corn covered in huge bugs. Screeching like a banshee, Alice is astonished to discover that the insects were just a hallucination of some sort. Hmmm. Anyway, Eli soon realizes that a huge, abandoned warehouse right next door to the house provides fertile ground for a few rows of special corn. This crop grows to full height in a matter of hours, is impervious to disease and other forms of damage, and tastes great.

William Porter soon learns about the crop and dreams about how much money he can make selling these plants around the world, an idea encouraged by Eli. In the meantime, the two kids enroll in a Catholic school run by the kindly Father Frank Nolan (Michael Ensign). Eli continues to try and control Joshua, but his influence seems on the wane. With the help of Malcolm (Jon Clair) and his cute sister Maria (Nari Morrow), Joshua begins to emerge from his shell. He takes up basketball despite Eli's objections, and even strikes up a physical relationship with Maria. The young preacher turns his attention to the other kids in school, lecturing them about the importance of children in scripture and thus usurping Father Frank's authority. He even stands up one day during services to relate his interpretations of the holy word. Predictably, the kids soon fall under Eli's power. Joshua, with the help of Malcolm, heads back to Nebraska to unearth an important book buried there by Eli that just might help defeat the evil intentions of "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" and his earthly minion. We finally see the incarnation of this demon when Eli holds a ceremony in the warehouse. The film ends on one of those "the evil goes on even though we thought it was over" themes.

Actually, "Children of the Corn 3" isn't half bad. Director James D.R. Hickox is well known as a purveyor of schlocky yet entertaining low budget horror, so maybe that has something to do with it. I got a real kick out of the Eli character, who I thought looked like a miniature version of a certain "Grease 2" star (The movie should carry the title "Honey, I Shrunk Adrian Zmed"). He's not as eerie as Isaac in the first one, but he does carry a certain unease about him. The guy who played Father Frank was a real hoot, too. His hysterics make Rod Steiger's priest in "The Amityville Horror" look tame by comparison. But what really takes the cake in "Corn 3" are the imaginative kill scenes and cheesy special effects. A head bursting into flames, a combination garden tool/pipe atrocity, and people torn apart by "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" insures a good time for all. The model the filmmakers used to depict the corn demon, however, looks woefully inadequate. At one point the beastie snacks on a kid, but it's so obvious that the crew stuck a doll in the creature's mouth that I howled with laughter for hours afterwards. By the way, Charlize Theron appears in a bit part as one of Eli's followers during the final showdown.

Trailers for parts four, five, and six of "Children of the Corn," "Dracula 2000," "Halloween: H20," and "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers" are the only extras on the disc. I would recommend "Children of the Corn 3" over most of the other entries in the series. Sure, it is cheap and cheesy, but it's also a lot of fun. There are worse ways to spend a couple of hours of your time.

Despite the rotten ending this direct-to-video movie has good special effects and a few effective scenes. Two brothers move to Chicago and one of them is the children them of the corn and move with a foster family and the weird thing is the dad dislikes the older brother while the mom hates the younger brother. The other brother brings seeds that grow a cornfield in a vacant lot and rise the evil spirits and soon weird things start happening. Screaming Mad George's special effects are good especially the teen getting turned into a cornstock and blood shooting everywhere though the only fake effect was when a girl was getting picked up by the cornfiled monster they used doll and you could see the small doll that looked so unrealistic. the only part that was bad was the ending which was rotten.