CHILDREN OF THE CORN. (1984) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

CHILDREN OF THE CORN. (1984) BASED ON THE WRITINGS OF STEPHEN KING. DIRECTED BY FRITZ KIERSCH. SCREENPLAY BY GEORGE GOLDSMITH.

STARRING PETER HORTON, LINDA HAMILTON, R.G. ARMSTRONG, JOHN FRANKLIN AND COURTNEY GAINS.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

Isaac: Malachaiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

Malachai: Whaaaaaaaat?

Isaac: Tell Bart to come home!

Malachai: He’s not here! I think he’s at Nelson’s!

Isaac: Whooooooooo’s Nelson…?

Heh-heh-heh. I just had Isaac and Malachai re-enact a shouted conversation between Homer and Milhouse from THE SIMPSONS for the hell of it, just because they seem to be in such fine voice all the time.

Anyway, I love the first thirty-five or forty minutes of this Stephen King horror film adaptation. I love watching the dynamics of the relationship between newly-graduated doctor Burt Stanton (played by Peter ‘Thirty-Something’ Horton) and his try-too-hard girlfriend, Vicky Baxter. I could watch this pair bicker passive-aggressively all day. Burt is a Grade-A commitment-phobe, and slithers away from all of Vicky’s cringeworthy attempts to bring them closer together.

I also love the bits where they’re driving round in circles in ‘corn country’ trying to find the town where Dr. Burt is supposed to begin his doctoring career, but all they find after hours and hours of driving and getting more and more bad-tempered and narky with each other is a dead boy whom they may or may not have run over.

Oh, and a cranky old man running a gas station whut don’t have no gas no-how. And as for this old-timer giving the young couple some directions to where they’re going, well, talk about ‘There ain’t no Mono-rail and there never wuz…!’ Something strange is definitely going on around these here parts…

Those bits are great. It’s only when they get to the bits with the small blonde-haired girl in the LITTLE HOUSE AND THE PRAIRIE get-up who can draw the future (sometimes, she even whittles the future) that I settle back for a swift kip.

These kids are super-boring and have little to recommend them. Outmoded fashions, a funny old-fashioned Biblical way of talking and ridiculous restrictions on their own lives (‘She was listening to music and drawing and doing puzzles!’) and mental health.

They’ve killed all the adults in their town, on the orders of their teenage leaders, Isaac and Malachai (these two are brilliant!) and therefore only have corn to eat. It seems to me that they’re a tad over-reliant on the corn, plentiful though it may be:

Isaac: Hey, Malachai, whatcha get for your birthday?

Malachai: Um, some corn, I guess.

Isaac: Oh yeah, right. Corn…

And what about when they go to the job centre?

Official: And what other jobs have you had?

Isaac: I’ve worked in, erm, corn some.

Official: Hmmm. I see. What are your strengths?

Isaac: Erm, I’m good with, um…

Official: Corn…?

Isaac: Yeah.

Official: I see…

And their phoney, makey-uppy god, a malevolent entity who apparently ‘walks behind the rows’ (of corn? What else?), has got these dumb, poorly-dressed hicks committing suicide at nineteen, the age at which their lives are just about to open up like a flower.

Why? Well, the dopes believe they’re going to live in their version of Heaven with ‘He Who Walks Behind the Rows,’ but of course they’re so not. It’s all a big fat religious con, if they could but see it, the poor fools.

I like Isaac and Malachai tearing verbal strips off each other near the end, but the end itself is messy and confusing and there’s probably just a little too much fire. I love when the couple end up with the two ‘normal’ kids at the end and Burt says playfully: ‘How’d you kids like to come and stay with us for a week?’

Vicky is ecstatic, probably because she feels that the kids will bring herself and Burt closer together, much like having a baby of their own. I just can’t wait till Dr. Burt finds out that you have to keep kids for longer than just a week. Would sure love to be a fly on that wall…

Hey, how’d you get Isaac or Malachai off your back?

Just point to somewhere in the distance and yell: ‘Dang me, it’s an Outlander…!’ Lol.

Also, right, I’m now officially coining the term, ‘corn horror.’ There are loads of films that would come under this category: HUSK, SIGNS… Well, there’s bound to be a few more when I sit down to have a good think about it.

PS, RIP, Sarge, you poor good doggy, you. That was well out of order, what happened to you.

I’ll leave you with an hilarious quote on the film from Roger Ebert:

‘By the end of Children of the Corn, the only thing moving behind the rows is the audience, fleeing to the exits.’

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is out now from Poolbeg Books:

https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

THE VANISHING. (1993) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

THE VANISHING. (1993) DIRECTED BY GEORGE SLUIZER. BASED ON THE NOVELLA, THE GOLDEN EGG (HET GOUDEN EI) BY TIM KRABBE AND ON THE 1988 DUTCH FILM, THE VANISHING, OR SPOORLOOS (WITHOUT A TRACE).

STARRING KIEFER SUTHERLAND, SANDRA BULLOCK, JEFF BRIDGES, NANCY TRAVIS AND PARK OVERALL.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I’ve always loved this strange, disturbing film, and it’s only today, as I’m researching it, that I’m finding out that, A, it’s a re-make of a much more popular 1988 film of the same name, and, B, it’s considered to be one of the worst re-makes ever made.

Well, that sure told me, didn’t it? George Sluizer, a Dutch-Jewish film-maker, now deceased, made both films, although why he made the second one only five years after the original, I’m not sure, unless it was to have both the Dutch and English versions out there. Elementary, my dear Watson…

I’ll concentrate on the later version here, as it’s the only one I’ve seen. Kiefer Sutherland and Sandra Bullock play attractive young American couple, Jeff and Diane (A little ditty, ‘bout Jeff and Diane, two ‘Merican kids doing the best they can…!). Okay, yes, I know that it’s meant to be a song ‘bout Jack and Diane, and not Jeff and Diane, I just had a brief moment of levity, is all. So sue me, John Cougar Mellencamp, lol.

Anyway, Jeff and Diane are really annoying together. Jeff is a bit of an insensitive prick, and Diane the kind of woman who has a panic attack if Jeff leaves her alone for two minutes to go to the bathroom.

She’s clingy and emotionally controlling, making Jeff give her endless promises and reassurances that he’ll never leave her. Well, of course we know men just love that kind of thing. They can’t get enough of extreme neediness in a bird. How Jeff doesn’t leave her ass in the tunnel where their car breaks down is some kind of miracle.

Jeff and Diane are on their way back home from a less-than-successful driving holiday when Diane vanishes into thin air after paying a quick visit to a gas station convenience store. For three long years, Jeff obsesses about the disappearance night and day, posting fliers featuring Diane’s mugshot all over the place and appearing on television and talk radio shows.

He even acquires a new girlfriend, Rita the waitress (freshen your drink, sugar…?), she of the fabulous curly hair-do and the determination to make Jeff, a complete stranger who wanders randomly into the diner where she works, into the Perfect Boyfriend for herself.

Perfect in every way, except, of course, for the all-consuming obsession with his missing girlfriend. But there’s no underestimating the ruthlessness of a diner waitress in the matter of love. She’s onto a good thing here, is Rita.

Living with would-be writer Jeff beats the hell out of serving hash browns and eggs over-easy to auld lads who think her body comes with the price of the check. (Pandering by using ‘Merican spelling.) Rita won’t give up on Jeff. But will Jeff give up on Diane? Not bloody likely.

I don’t even think that it’s a matter of Jeff’s being in love with Diane any more, like poor Nancy fears. After all, he’s now got Nancy to tickle his fancy, innit? I honestly think it’s more the case that his male pride is hurt by having had his girlfriend swiped from him, right out from under his nose, and now he just wants to find out for certain what happened to Diane.

He needs to know. He needs closure. He needs the answer to the question, what happened to her, almost as much as he needs air to breathe, and not even the feisty Nancy can change his stubborn mind. Enter the villain of the piece, Jeff Bridges as the weird and shambling University chemistry professor, Barney Cousins…

This is the only film of Jeff Bridges’ in which I don’t fancy him. I loved him in films like JAGGED EDGE and THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS. Here, he has a horribly unflattering hairstyle and a funny accent, which I’ve only just worked out is probably meant to be Dutch, given the earlier version of the film and the Dutch director George Sluizer.

Barney is creepy. The scenes where he’s in his car, rehearsing how to abduct a defenceless female, would certainly give you the willies. Barney is super-intellectual and detached and curious about things. You could imagine him staring impassively, with scientific objectivity and no compassion, at an animal or a human being in pain or distress.

Jeff, on the other hand, is impetuous, hot-headed and inclined to punch first, ask questions later. Who will win in their battle of wits? Will intellect win out over stubbornness and tenacity, or will a bunch of fives annihilate intellect every time…? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out, folks.

I love the scenes where the feisty Nancy squares up to the evil Barney, and also the fact that her co-waitress and partner-in-crime is played by Park Overall, who once co-starred in a great old ‘Eighties sitcom called EMPTY NEST with Dinah Manoff, Kristy McNichol and David Leisure. She herself portrayed a nurse called Laverne. Her heavy Southern accent and no-nonsense personality is kind of her trademark.

Enjoy the movie anyway, folks, whichever version you see. And steer clear of anyone called Barney, as they are clearly bonkers. Exceptions include the big purple dinosaur on kiddies’ TV, the character from THE FLINTSTONES and Barney, the resident drunk in THE SIMPSONS.

This list is subject to change, just as soon as I can think of any more Barneys. Hey, wasn’t there a posh New York department store called BARNEYS in FRIENDS where Jennifer Aniston’s character Rachel Greene used to shop? I’ll look into it. Over and out…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is out now from Poolbeg Books:

https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

EMILY. (2022) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

**EMILY. (2022) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY FRANCES O’CONNOR.**
**STARRING EMMA MACKEY, FIONN WHITEHEAD, OLIVER JACKSON-COHEN, ADRIAN DUNBAR, ALEXANDRA DOWLING, AMELIA GETHING AND GEMMA JONES.**
**REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©**

***‘Freedom of thought…’***

This period drama-slash-biopic looks incredible on the big screen, which is where I saw it recently. It tells the story of Emily Bronte’s life before she wrote the book for which she is famous, *WUTHERING HEIGHTS*, the same tale of Cathy and Heathcliff’s doomed love which inspired Kate Bush’s magical, evocative and chart-topping song.

You don’t have to be a fan of the book to watch this film, I suppose, but it probably helps. I myself love the book, the song, the writer, the singer and the wild windy moors that inspired the whole shebang, so I was literally in writer-heaven for the two hours and ten minutes. Yep. It’s a long ‘un…! **Brace yourselves…**

Emily Jane Bronte (1818-1848) was an English novelist and poet. The film *EMILY*, written and directed by a female actor-director *(it’s totally a woman’s film, though that doesn’t mean that men can’t enjoy it too!)*, concentrates on the period of Emily’s life when her Irish father Patrick Bronte, not a barrel of laughs by this account, at least, was serving as perpetual curate to the parish of Haworth in Yorkshire.

Emily, already a stunningly beautiful young woman when we meet her, spends her days writing poetry, making up stories for the amusement of her two sisters, Charlotte and Anne, and running wild on the moors in all weathers with her troubled alcoholic brother, Branwell, who is a painter on his good days.

Their mother is dead at this point, probably from bearing her husband six children, of whom only four are alive when we come in, **in an era when women traditionally had a desperate time during childbirth and it weakened them forever after.**

The sisters and Branwell miss their kind, gentle mother dreadfully. I’m not surprised. While their priest father isn’t overtly cruel or abusive, he’s still stiff and unbending and pious and there’s a lot of church and praying and being good and all that stuff that frequently doesn’t sit too well with young people.

Emily is thoroughly wild and undisciplined, unlike Charlotte and Anne who are much more genteel and lady-like, and I’m genuinely surprised her humourless father doesn’t try to marry her off to someone in order to curb her excesses.

**I say try, because the spirited Emily, dubbed ‘the strange one’ of her family by the villagers, would surely have resisted to the death the notion of marrying for anything other than love…!**

Emily and Branwell have such a close, intense relationship that I half-expected them to just slip into an incestuous kiss or two on the moors, or even the full monty. That’s not the way it goes, however, and Emily chooses for a love object her father’s new curate, Mr. William Weightman, played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen of *THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE* and *THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR* on Netflix.

Their affair is as wild and exciting as Cathy and Heathcliff’s as first. They make tumultuous love in an abandoned, ramshackle cottage on the moors and Emily, her long dark hair hanging loose and free as an excellent metaphor for her unfettered thinking and behaviour, is happier than she’s presumably ever been in her life.

Then something abominably unfair and wretched happens, and it’s after that that Emily settles down to write the book that makes her name. Did she have to endure the horrible cruelty of a doomed relationship herself before she could adequately write about one? Maybe. Everything happens for a reason, so they say, and maybe so did this.

The film gives the impression that Charlotte was jealous of Emily’s success in writing and publishing *WUTHERING HEIGHTS*, the gothic novel to end all gothic novels, and we see her getting stuck in to her own writing after Emily’s premature death from tuberculosis. Charlotte, as we know, penned *JANE EYRE*, another iconic book, and so, if she only knew it, she didn’t really have any reason to be jealous of Emily.

We clearly see both Emily and Charlotte being inspired to write by the moors outside their very bedroom windows. The moors are indeed a place where you could *‘roll and fall in green.’*

Wild and desolate, they extend to the Brontes’ garden and takes in the church where their father is parish priest and the fabulous old graveyard. It would be so easy to be inspired to write by such a dream-like place. **The scenes where it’s raining on the moors *(that’s all of them, lol)* are out-of-this-world gorgeous.**

Unfortunately, the downside of living in such a place and time is the long list of diseases that can carry off a body in a twinkling, due to unsanitary conditions and lack of all the medicines that sadly haven’t been invented yet.

Cholera, tuberculosis, the consumption, for example, all those delightful ailments characterised by high fever and genteelly coughing up blood into a hanky before you expire, all skin and bone and huge tormented eyes, and have to be laid to rest pretty sharpish-like before you infect anyone else with your gross disease, eeuw!

Emma Mackey, who plays Emily, is a terrific actress and captures her subject’s conflicted essence really well. Gemma Jones- *BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY* and a million other things- portrays the Bronte sisters’ aunt, though I’m not sure which side of the family she represents. She’s seventy-nine, now, would you believe, and looks adorable in her sweet little bonnet and ribbony old lady things.

The film is actually a good choice for Halloween. There’s a sort of séance in it which puts the willies up all the sisters (***though*** *not in the way they’d like, I fancy, snigger)*, and *WUTHERING HEIGHTS*, while not classified as a ghost story as such, has more than enough that’s haunting in it to justify either reading or watching it in the season of the witch, when the veil between our world and the spirit world is at its thinnest. Enjoy.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is out now from Poolbeg Books:

https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER. (2021) AN IRISH FOLK HORROR REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

**YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER. (2021) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY KATE DOLAN. STARRING HAZEL DOUPE, JORDANNE JONES, CAROLYN BRACKEN AND INGRID CRAIGIE.**
**REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©**

Damn you, scary Irish horror films about changelings and the wee folks and so on! Scared the Christ out of me there the other night, making me close my bedroom door at bedtime instead of leaving it invitingly open for Dracula as usual. Well, you know, just in case he’s ever free for a supernatural shag, like.

This film, which feels to me to be primarily a woman’s film with a mainly female cast, is set on an Irish housing estate with mountains and woods nearby. Char, short for Charlotte, is the protagonist. She is a schoolgirl with a really miserable life. I mean, seriously, you’d feel actively sorry for her.

She has no dad. Her mum Angela has untreated mental problems. They live with Angela’s mum Rita, who, though kindly, is elderly with health and mobility problems, and Angela’s brother Aaron, who lives nearby, pops round from time to time to throw an eye over things.

There’s not enough food in the house for a growing schoolgirl, and you get the impression that poor miserable Char, with an unexplained burn on her face to boot, has to fend for herself much of the time. She gets bullied in school by a trio of really disgustingly horrible female bullies, and, to be honest, her life is just one long round of misery piled on top of misery.

**Anyway, one day Char’s mentally unstable mother Angela, who clearly needs to be treated for her obvious depression, goes missing for a day and a night. The Guards aren’t a whole lot of help.**

Then, Angela just suddenly turns up back at the house, seemingly none the worse for wear. Where the fuppin’ hell has she been…? *‘I can’t tell you… yet,’* Angela tells her daughter Char ominously. **Well, that’s not bone-chillingly disturbing at all…**

It’s clear to the viewer that Granny Rita thinks there’s something radically wrong with the Angela who’s returned from God-knows-where. A terrified Char notices some pretty big differences herself between her old mother and this frighteningly upbeat new mother.

**There are some really creepy scenes as she tries to keep herself safe from the eerily manic ‘New Mom.’** ***(Including one set to the music of Irish, erm, heart-throb, singer Joe Dolan. I haven’t been able to find out whether writer and director Kate Dolan is any relation…!)***

Where has Mum been, and what if anything does it have to do with the burn on Char’s face, which her family have always tried to persuade her is a birthmark? And why do the neighbours think that Char’s family is weird, and why does the dad of one of Char’s bullies order his daughter to stay the hell away from Char?

It’s all tied up with the fascinating but terrifying world of Irish folklore and mythology, where changelings and fairy folk and curses and spells abound. Trust me, you don’t want to piss off the little people, whether it’s by demolishing their fairy fort in order to build a new road, or by trying to swap a changeling back for your original child. Nothing but thorns and sadness, or even madness, lies in store for such a person.

*YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER*, on Netflix at the moment, gave me a right good scare, so I’ll score it highly and recommend it to fans of Irish folk horror. Almost as frightening as the scary story itself is the bullying element of the movie.

If girls today are really as vicious to each other as they appear in the film, then teachers and parents are not properly doing their respective jobs of keeping an eye on the little brats. Parents in particular need to start looking into what the hell their kids are doing in their after-school hours and clamping down on it where necessary.

The film is set at Halloween, by the way, and revolves around a bonfire built by the schoolies ***(handle fire carefully and responsibly, kids!)***, so it’s the perfect film to watch this October. Happy viewing.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is out now from Poolbeg Books:

https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

LUDIK. (2022) A NETFLIX CRIME DRAMA SERIES REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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Fun reviews of films of all genres

Month: October 2022

CHILDREN OF THE CORN. (1984) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

THE VANISHING. (1993) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

EMILY. (2022) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER. (2021) AN IRISH FOLK HORROR REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

LUDIK. (2022) A NETFLIX CRIME DRAMA SERIES REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.