Children Of The Corn - A whole new film once you've grown up

I first watched Children of the Corn when it came out on video in the eighties, when I was roughly the same age of the child stars that were in it. I loved it. Now I've gone and watched it again as an adult - and with children of my own - it's a completely different experience!

It's about a small American town in Nebraska where the children kill all the adults and start sacrificing each other to a mysterious god (did I mention it was based on a Stephen King book?). I used to love seeing the children attacking the adults (and no, I wasn't a hooligan, by the way). Now, I just wanted to send every last one of them up to bed and take away their portable DVD players (works every time with my daughter).

It's certainly not the best adaptation of a Stephen King book, but it's certainly not the worst either. I guess there's a good half the film spent following the young couple of accidentally stumble across the deserted town, as they wander round trying to work out what we - the viewers - already know.

However, what does make it pretty freaky is the lead (evil) children themselves. In recent Hollywood films, children have often been portrayed as the bad guys for added nastiness. Although, for example, just my making a kid's eyes glow red or have them dressed in ghostly clothes, doesn't necessarily make them scary. These kids are the real deal (and continue to freak the hell out of me without any false claws of glowing eyes whatsoever). All they needed was to be ugly enough! One has an extremely bad haircut (even for the eighties) and speaks like South Park's Eric Cartman. The other is like a young, ginger Mick Jagger. Even I would have my doubts about denying these two television privileges!

Children of the Corn has sort of stood up to the test of time. If nothing else it's interesting to see Linda Hamilton in a completely different role to her most known part as Terminator's cyborg-killing Sarah Conner. I found the second half of the film more engaging than the first. My advice: if you haven't seen this before and are watching it again for the nostalgia factor, know what you're getting. It's a bit cheesy in places, but still pretty good fun for a film that takes itself very seriously.

8/10 The Force is definitely strong with this one