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A box set that assembles the first three entries (of six, so far) in the Stephen King-derived minor horror franchise, Children of the Corn: The Collector's Edition puts three not-really-very-good horror pictures together into a fairly satisfying junk food platter than works okay as a demented four-and-a-half-hour miniseries. In the 1984 original, Linda Hamilton and her dead-loss husband are stranded in Gatlin, a small town in Nebraska where the children have formed a cult around the mysterious "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" and slaughtered all the adults. It has a certain creepy atmosphere in the early sections, but degenerates into a pointless run-around, with characters doing silly things that get them into further peril.

Strangely, the sequels play better. In the 1992 The Final Sacrifice, a journo and his estranged son show up to delve into the Gatlin story, and one of the surviving cultists reorganises the gruesome business, with a few special effects hints that give a bit more form to the monster villain. And the 1994 Urban Harvest has another Gatlin kid adopted by a Chicago commodities broker and raising a patch of sinister corn in a backlot; this has a no-name cast and the usual dumb script, but make-up man Screaming Mad George stages some impressively gruesome stuff with a killer scarecrow and murderous cornstalks before finally bringing "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" on-screen as a Thing-ish vegetable monster whose rampage provides this set with something like a big finish. Incredibly, there are three more Corn sequels out there, presumably saved for a follow-up collection.

On the DVD: Children of the Corn: The Collector's Edition's first film is in 16:9 anamorphic, though the original elements aren't in pristine condition and the soundtrack is mono; the 4:3 full screen sequels look sharper and have stereo to show off the Omen-like chanting scores. The only extras are "theatrical trailers", though parts two and three almost certainly didn't play in any theatres. --Kim Newman

Release Date: Aug 12, 2002
Audio:

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The murder rate is as high as an elephant's eye in Children of the Corn, a flaccid adaptation of Stephen King's short story. While driving through Nebraska en route to a new job, medico Burt (Peter Horton) and his wife Vicky (a pre-Terminator Linda Hamilton) nearly run over a mutilated boy who staggers from the cornfields. Seeking help, they enter the town of Gatlin, whose under-20 residents have butchered their parents per the decree of junior-grade holy-roller Isaac (John Franklin), who preaches the word of a being called "He Who Walks Behind the Rows". King's original story (from his 1978 collection Night Shift) was a lean and brutal mélange of Southern-Gothic atmosphere and EC Comics-style gore, which scripter Greg Goldsmith effectively neutralises by adding a youthful narrator (a grating Robbie Kiger) and putting an upbeat spin on the story's morbid conclusion. Fritz Kiersch's direction is TV-movie flat, with the sole inspired moment (hideous religious iconography glimpsed during a bloody "service") delivered as a throwaway. Aside from Horton and Courtney Gains (as Isaac's hatchet man Malachai), the performances are dreadful. The depiction of the monster-God as a sort of giant gopher inspires more laughter than terror. Amazingly, the film spawned six sequels; Franklin (Cousin It in the Addams Family films) later appeared in and wrote 1999's Children of the Corn 666.--Paul Gaita, Amazon.com

Release Date: Oct 16, 2000
Audio: