ELI – “We who are young have a vision and that is the gift to us from He Who Walks Behind The Rows. Our greatest harvest is to come!” T-LOC – “Harvest this, motherfucker.”
Let’s face it, there are only so many corn-related scenarios you can plant before the crop gets spoiled, so after Children Of The Corn and its iffy sequel it was decided to take the series to the streets instead. No longer are we dealing with a town full of creepy-looking Amish kids, instead we’ve got two of them living in the city.
Joshua and his younger brother Eli have been moved from Gatlin to live with foster parents in Chicago. Since they come from Amish backgrounds it takes them a little while to get settled into their new city lifestyles, and this is further compounded by the fact that the younger brother is a fucking maniac.
Eli fell for the "shaken Coke can" trick
Things come to a head when the inseparable brothers go to their new city school and are promptly separated (due to their age), which doesn’t go down too well with Eli. While Joshua tries to fit in, learn the city life and befriend his new classmates, Eli instead starts hatching a plot to make everyone pay. Continue reading “Children Of The Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995)”→
Starring: Ed Nelson, Deborah Rose, Norman Fell, Phyllis Diller
“The bodies… the bodies we saw? They’re not dead.” (Alley, The Boneyard)
This one’s a little off the wall. Alley Cates (Rose) is a psychic who’s been asked by the police to help them figure out what’s happened to three young children whose naked, rotting bodies have been found. When she gets to the morgue (which, conveniently, is underground and difficulty to leave quickly) she realises that the ‘children’ are actually zombies who were afflicted with an ancient Chinese curse and are ready to wake up and munch on some human.
A freshly-woken Cher reaches for her makeup case
Typically the morgue’s exit is blocked, trapping Alley, an experienced police chief, his young deputy, a mortician and a suicidal young woman who was pretending to be a corpse. As you do. They need to figure out a way to get out of the morgue while also killing the three zombie children and any other monsters that turn up. And trust me, they do. Continue reading “The Boneyard (1991)”→
Starring: Sophie Vavasseur, Stephen Billington, Richard Felix, Jo-Anne Stockham
“Don’t worry, God never abandons anything to evil.” (Chris, Exorcismus)
Typical bloody teenagers, eh? They mess around with their pals, they take drugs, they get possessed by the devil and try to kill their family members, they go to nightclubs… wait, hang on a tick. That doesn’t seem right.
Well, it’s certainly the case at least for 15-year-old Emma (the believable Sophie Vavasseur), who has started slipping into odd little episodes where she starts acting like a proper fanny then waking up and wondering what’s happened. Her parents take her to a psychiatrist but, suspiciously, he has a heart attack while having a session with her. Later she tries to kill her brother before snapping out of it and coming to her senses.
You might remember Sophie Vavasseur as the girl from Evelyn, starring Pierce Brosnan. Then again, you might not
Eventually, Emma starts to believe she may be possessed by the devil, so she finds her uncle – a priest who is conveniently known for having performed an exorcism previously – and tries to convince him to perform an exorcism on her. But is Emma really possessed by the devil, or is it all in her silly little teenage head?
Well, she is possessed. Sorry if that seems like I’m spoiling things, but the film doesn’t really keep you in suspense for too long either. In fact, it’s only about half an hour in when she starts levitating in front of her family, leaving the audience in no doubt that these aren’t just teenage mood swings she’s having. Continue reading “Exorcismus (2010)”→
Starring: William Holden, Jonathan Scott-Taylor, Lance Henriksen
“For such are false apostles. Deceitful workers whom lie and transform themselves to look like real apostles of Christ.” (Corinthians 11:13)
When you’ve already revealed in the original film that the main character is the Antichrist, how do you deliver a similar revelation in the sequel? Simple – make it so the nasty little bugger in question doesn’t know it yet.
That’s the premise in Damien: Omen II, which is set seven years after the events of its predecessor. Now 13 years old and living with his uncle and aunt, Damien has been protected from the past and as such doesn’t know what happened to his mother and father in the events of the first movie. He’s just a normal, cheery boy who happens to be part of the wealthy Thorn family.
"You're laughing now but wait until my dad wrecks the bloody joint"
It’s only when he goes to military camp with his cousin and starts hurting a bully by simply staring at him that Damien begins to notice something out of the ordinary is happening. Others – including his sergeant (the awesome Lance Henriksen) and the vice-president of Thorn Industries – seem to know who Damien really is, and are keen to help him discover his true identity.
Meanwhile, as in the original film, anyone who suspects Damien’s secret and tries to put a stop to it inevitably meet their fate in all manner of horrific ways. Trucks, trains, elevators… they’re all involved in some of the gruesome deaths this time around.
"Alright, who said that? I could have sworn someone said Pumpkinhead was shite"
Indeed, Omen II feels a bit like an attempt to recreate much of what made the original film so memorable. There are the nasty deaths, the doom-and-gloom “he will destroy us all” people who are shunned by Damien’s uncle, the eventual realisation that it’s true and the subsequent attempt to stop him – all of which feel very similar to events in The Omen. There’s even an evil animal in there, though it’s a raven this time instead of the first film’s dogs.
While it doesn’t quite have the same storytelling flair, chilling moments and impressive cast as the original film (Henriksen aside), Omen II is still a decent little film. The acting’s solid enough for the most part – although the young chap playing Damien is irritating for the first 20 minutes – the story moves along at a fair pace and there’s a reasonably satisfying conclusion to the whole thing.
"It's not a shit haircut, it's en evil haircut. Get your facts right mate"
It just feels at times a bit like The Omen Lite, an attempt to replicate the impact of the original but one that cuts out vital ingredients in doing so. There’s no equivalent of the first movie’s mental Mrs Baylock to keep viewers on their toes, there’s no big shock as to the lead character’s secret identity because we already had that shock in the previous film, and – ironically – since the ‘smears on photos predicting deaths’ idea from its predecessor is no longer here, there isn’t actually an omen to speak of either.
That said, it’s still an interesting follow-up to the original film, and one that provides a decent midway point between The Omen and the significantly different The Omen III: The Final Conflict. Just don’t go rushing out to see it if you haven’t seen the original first.
Starring: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, Harvey Stephens, Billie Whitelaw
“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666” (Revelations 13:18)
After the phenomenal success of The Exorcist it was inevitable that some imitators would appear to try and cash in on all the “yay God, boo the devil” sentiment among moviegoers. While a number of low-budget attempts failed miserably it would be The Omen, released three years after The Exorcist, that would successfully manage to effectively compete for the coveted crown of Best Horror Film About A Little Child With Links To Satan But It’s Not A Horror Film Honest Mate It’s A Faith-Based Thriller. And that’s a highly competitive sub-genre.
Mrs Thorn felt uneasy as she saw Michael Barrymore arriving for the party
The Omen follows Robert Thorn (Peck), an American Ambassador and potential future President of the United States. His wife unfortunately has a stillborn child at the start of the film but she remains unconscious for a while after the delivery and so isn’t immediately aware of this. A priest offers Robert a solution – a healthy orphan newborn whose mother has died in childbirth and has no immediate family. Thorn takes the baby and tells his none-the-wiser wife it belongs to them.
"What? Oh we were just digging up this grave to give the skeleton some air. We definitely weren't going to have sex with it"
Fast-forward five years and weird things start happening. At their son Damien’s fifth birthday party their nanny hangs herself in front of all the guests, declaring to Damien that it’s “all for you”. A replacement nanny turns up out of the blue and, along with her rottweiler dog, show an unhealthy interest in taking care of Damien.
Things start going tits-up when Thorn is approached by a priest, who claims he was there when Thorn’s adopted son was born. He tells him Damien is actually the Antichrist, the Devil’s son, and that Thorn has to start accepting Christ if he wants to survive. Thorn isn’t having any of it, and shortly afterwards the priest dies in a freak accident where he’s impaled with a spear-like church spire.
"That's odd, I'm sure my black telephone is always sitting right here"
A journalist called Jennings (Warner) shows Thorn photos he took of the nanny and priest before they died. Both have dark marks over them in the shape of a noose and a spear respectively. What’s more, Jennings had taken a photo of himself and in it there’s a dark line across his neck. DUN DUN DUNNNNN.
Despite the whole spooky child premise and the Satanic element The Omen doesn’t really have much in common with The Exorcist. Damien doesn’t ever really do anything in the way Reagan does, it merely seems to be the case that odd things happen around him. Instead the film feels more like a predecessor to more modern movies like Final Destination and The Ring in that it revolves around premonitions of deaths about to occur (or omens, if you will).
Well hello there, little chap! Aren't you a cute little OH JESUS CHRIST MY EYES ARE ON FIRE
As a result of this, despite any suspicions you may have The Omen actually isn’t that scary at all. The fear comes in the concern that Damien is about to suddenly snap, expose himself as the devil’s son and do something evil, a concern that ultimately leads to nothing. Its few deaths, while effectively directed, are still handled in a way that they’re not too shocking with the possible exception of the film’s most famous scene, involving a stray pane of glass. Instead it’s more of a paranormal thriller, a race against time to figure out why these deaths are happening and how to put an end to them before any more occur.
Perhaps the most effective thing about the film however is the music. Jerry Goldsmith’s iconic Latin chanting and dramatic orchestral score is so effective and adds so much to the action it won him his only Oscar, impressive considering his life’s work included scores for the likes of Poltergeist, LA Confidential, Chinatown, Gremlins, First Blood, Alien, Mulan and Planet Of The Apes.
If you’re expecting spinning heads and an evil kid going on a rampage, that’s not what The Omen is all about. If you’re looking for a creepy movie with an underlying sense of unease however, rather than a balls-to-the-wall demonfest, then The Omen is a mini masterpiece.
Starring: Kim Basinger, Jimmy Smits, Christina Ricci, Angela Bettis, Rufus Sewell
“The devil’s greatest achievement is that people don’t believe he exists. Nowadays, the concept of evil is politically incorrect. ” (Reverend, Bless The Child)
I had Bless The Child on my DVD shelf for years and never really felt the need to watch it. The front cover made it look like a cheap Exorcist rip-off and the only thing that really appealed to me was Christina Ricci (what can I say, I went through a Ricci phase at Uni). On at least five or six separate occasions I actually put it in my DVD player then changed my mind as it loaded and took it out. Finally, one night I thought “better get this over with”, slammed the bastard in and refused to turn it off no matter how bad it was going to be. I wasn’t exactly pleasantly surprised, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I’d expected.
There's nothing like the odd dodgy CGI demon shot to keep things interesting
Maggie O’Connor (Basinger) is a bit pissed off when her sister Jenna (Bettis) suddenly turns up at her door one day with her newborn baby, dumps the baby in her house then fucks off. With Jenna eventually presumed dead, Maggie reluctantly decides to become baby Cody’s unofficial mother. It soon becomes apparent that Cody’s autistic but what isn’t so noticeable is the fact that she has special powers – she can make things spin, light candles with her mind and the like.
Well, what do you expect? That's what you get when you live in Hull
Maggie copes for a few years until the very much not-dead Jenna comes back for her daughter with her new man, Eric Stark (Sewell). Not quite the killer catch, Stark is a devil worshipper who’s been killing children left, right and centre trying to find the one with the power to save mankind, or (by joining Stark and the devil) destroy it. Guess who that is then? No, I mean the girl.
Bless The Child is not a very scary film. With the exception of one scene in a subway this is a plot-driven horror film rather than one that relies heavily on ‘boo’ scares or moments of lengthy tension. As a result it never really has you on the edge of your seat but that’s not necessarily a bad thing because it was never trying to in the first place.
"What that child needs is a bloody good blessing"
Despite how far-fetched the plot is, the film is played well enough to suspend the audience’s beliefs for a while and accept the goings-on as real possibilities. Holliston Coleman is excellent as little Cody, and the way she portrays her character’s power can make the viewer feel slightly uneasy whenever she’s on-screen. Basinger plays it as you would expect, with plenty of “I WANT THE GIRL BACK” screamfests and ample helpings of tears throughout, while Jimmy Smits does the job as the detective (even if he does seem to accept the many odd and paranormal occurrences far too easily, essentially believing anything Basinger tells him no matter how out there it seems).
In all though, my concern about this being a load of old arse were unfounded. Bless The Child isn’t the greatest film ever made and the special effects are pretty poor (with the exception of one decapitation scene), but it’s enjoyable enough. It takes itself very seriously but not enough to be considered boring or pretentious, and it should manage to keep your attention for an hour and a half.
Starring: Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller
“I think the point is to make us despair. To see ourselves as animal and ugly. To make us reject the possibility that God could love us.” (Father Merrin, The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen)
(Note: if you haven’t read my review of The Exorcist yet, it may be best to check it out first.)
Although The Exorcist was a worldwide smash hit and remains Warner Bros’ highest-grossing film at the box office (after inflation), William Peter Blatty remained unsatisfied. As the author of the book on which the film was based he felt some key scenes had been dropped, scenes that would have given viewers the message he originally wanted to express.
William Friedkin, the film’s director, disagreed. He felt the film worked perfectly as it was and told Blatty he was being “a bad winner”, that they were both making a fortune on a hugely critically successful film and he should be happy with the recognition. The two fell out for a while because of this dispute.
"I told you to take your toys off the stairs, now look what's happened"
Time passed and Blatty and Friedkin resolved their differences and became friends again. Blatty still maintained that he wasn’t happy with parts of the film, in particular the ending, which he felt ended too ambiguously and left people leaving the cinema on a downer thinking the devil may have won. Friedkin remained unconvinced, and maintained that the film should stay untouched.
Some other subtle CGI effects (like this face morph) were added to the film
Eventually, around the time of the film’s 25th anniversary, Blatty persuaded Friedkin to dig out the unused footage from the film and put together a new cut of The Exorcist that more closely resembled Blatty’s original vision, a sort of ‘Writer’s Cut’. The result was released in cinemas in 2000 as The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen.
Despite Blatty’s original intention for the re-release, the most notable change in this new cut is the inclusion of the legendary ‘spider walk’ scene. This deleted scene, in which Regan flips upside-down and walks down the stairs like a spider, had been part of Exorcist lore for years with fans eager to see it as it was originally intended. The scene itself is pretty effective – here it is if you fancy a gander:
So, the spider walk aside, what else is in there? Well, the other main addition is of course the aforementioned alternative ending, which involves an extra scene at the end where Father Dyer and Lt Kinderman have a pleasant chat. This was the scene Blatty wanted to add to reassure the viewer that all was well with the world, and I could take it or leave it really.
There are also a few little trims and additions dotted here and there throughout the movie. Father Merrin has a few extra scenes with Chris MacNeil and Father Karras which flesh his character out a little, and there are some new digital effects where a demon’s face subliminally pops up from time to time.
Do these changes make The Version You’ve Never Seen a better movie than the original? Not necessarily, it just makes it a slightly different one that perhaps feels slightly more modern. Both versions are effective but if pushed I’d recommend you watch the spider scene above then just check out the original version of the film, since its more ambiguous ending leaves a greater feeling of unease.
Starring: Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller
“Mother, what’s wrong with me?” (Regan, The Exorcist)
The Exorcist is not a horror film. At least, that’s what director William Friedkin, writer William Peter Blatty and Linda Blair, who played the possessed little girl in the film, would have you believe. According to them, it’s a drama about the mystery of faith that just happens to have disturbing scenes in it. Personally I’d chuck a stern “bullshit” at that theory, but it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that whatever genre or niche you try to place it in, The Exorcist remains one of the greatest films ever made.
The story’s well-known, but for those who’ve maybe managed to avoid it I’ll fill you in on the basics. Chris MacNeil (Burstyn) gets concerned when her little girl Regan starts showing some odd behaviour. She pees on the carpet, swears at doctors and starts playing with ouija boards. While this may be the normal sort of behaviour you’d expect from an Essex youth, for the well brought-up Regan it’s very uncharacteristic.
"You might want to run this under the tap first, it's been... um, used"
Doctors are unable to figure out what’s wrong with Regan and brain scans come back negative, suggesting she’s not suffering from any sort of mental illness. Meanwhile, Regan’s behaviour gets more and more shocking, culminating in her slapping her mother across the face and ramming her head into her crotch. Remember, not from Essex.
It soon emerges that Regan claims to be possessed by the devil so, at her wit’s end, Chris goes to a local priest and asks him to arrange an exorcism. After a bit of persuasion (mainly involving Regan masturbating with a crucifix and spinning her head 360 degrees), he decides to get in touch with Father Merrin, one of the few Jesuit priests who still perform the rare ritual. Can they drive the devil out of Regan? That would be telling.
Critics felt the latest Derren Brown show had gone a little too far
While its key moments have been parodied time and time again, spoofed by the likes of the Wayans brothers in Scary Movie 2, Leslie Nielsen in Repossessed and even a Danish bacon advert, The Exorcist still has the power to shock. This is mainly due to two things – the believable and realistic special effects and the superb performance by Linda Blair as Regan.
Regan is such a likeable, idyllic little girl at the start of the movie that when she descends into her possessed state and starts saying and doing the most outrageous things it’s all the more shocking. You find yourself siding with her mother as she tries to get help – you care about this once-sweet little girl’s well-being and you want her to overcome this demon who’s possessed her. Had Regan not been so easy to warm to at the start then the audience would have made less of an emotional investment in the movie.
"What do you mean you forgot to buy my fucking Clearasil? It's the one bloody thing I wanted from the shop"
The effects, many of which have only been recently explained, are the work of genius. These days it suffers from the “Beatles effect” – the genre has evolved so much over the years (in this case thanks to CGI) that it can be hard to appreciate the impact it made when it was first released, but at the time it was doing stuff on camera that had never been seen before and without a computer in sight.
The bed shaking was handled by building a bed, cutting a hole in the wall behind it and having a crew of men literally shake the bed from behind the set. The famous levitation scene (where Regan rises from her bed) was done with wires painted grey and white in a dash effect to confuse the eye and make them impossible to see in the film. The spinning head was a robotic dummy, the vomit scene was created with a mouth attachment that fired pea soup… all pieces of technical genius and all remarkably believable.
You could watch The Exorcist ten times and get something new out of it each time you watched it. Legendary critic Mark Kermode famously said he’s watched it over 200 times and it still feels new to him every time. There are so many subtle moments, so many nods to events that will happen later on, so many different ways to consider each scene and so many different interpretations you can give to its open ending that everyone will take away something different from the film. Religious viewers will see the fear in having their faith challenged, parents will see the fear in the helplessness Chris feels as her daughter succumbs.
Whoever you are and whatever your beliefs may be, you really have to see this film. It may terrify you beyond belief (though if you’re a hardened Saw addict it may not), but it’s one of the most important films in cinema and a landmark of the horror genre – whether or not the filmmakers believe it’s a part of it.
REDBEAR: “My ancestors would have told you that man should be at one with the Earth, the sky, the water. But the white man has never understood this. He only knows how to take. And after a while there’s nothing left to take, so everything’s out of balance and we all fall down.
GARRETT: “Wait a minute. So that’s what happened here in Gatlin?”
REDBEAR: “No. What happened in Gatlin was those kids went apeshit and killed everybody.”
How can a film be so good yet have a sequel so achingly bad? Many will tell you this has always been the case (Freddy’s Dead and “The Exorcist II” spring to mind). But Children Of The Corn II is so terrible compared to the first film that your soul will weep.
Seemingly taking place soon after the events of the first film, news teams have arrived to cover the story (presumably the survivors of the first film notified authorities). Meanwhile Garrett, a reporter, is driving through the countryside for a job interview in New York with his son Danny coming along for the ride (against his wishes). Hearing of the story in the small village of Gatlin, they decide to check it out. Horrific hijinks ensue.
Children Of The Corn II is rare in that you’ll probably enjoy it more if you haven’t seen the original first. If you already know the story so far, your brain will be overloaded with questions for the first 40 or 50 minutes. “How long is this after the first film?” “Are those two corpses at the start meant to be the couple at the end of the first film?” “How come Malachai looks so different?” and “Where did that new kid come from, and how did he become the leader so quickly?”.
This was the shittest barbecue ever
Put simply, this film makes no attempt to connect with the original. The first scene after the credits (a terribly-acted news broadcast) tries to explain its own version of what happened, deciding to totally ignore the characters played by Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton in the first film. One of the most important characters, Malachai, has been replaced by someone who looks absolutely nothing like him and has no emotion whatsoever (unlike the original actor who, as mentioned in the previous film’s review, made the part his own by being a wanker). Naturally the actor could not be called upon to play the role again because this was filmed eight years after the original and going by the story he would already have been sacrificed because he’d be well into his twenties.
The whole thing reeks of shoddy filmmaking in general. Two elderly sisters are played by the same person and are never seen in the same scene; a Native American character stereotypically called Red Bear is introduced and quickly gets into character by talking about how foolish “the white man” is; and the quality of the acting reminds me of a girl from my Drama class in High School (she failed).
It’s not all bad news however. There are some interesting death scenes (one in particular involving a windscreen and a bale of corn, reminiscent of Final Destination 2) and the actor playing Micah, the new cult leader, is curiously strange (as the role demands, after all). He’s certainly one of the more interesting characters and fits into the “Isaac” role of the first film quite neatly.
Humour is also scattered throughout the film, a move that is unwelcome in my opinion. The original film was straight horror and nothing else; an attempt to add comedic elements is out of place (except for the excellent quote at the top of this review, of course). A death in which an electric wheelchair is taken over by one of the kids is a prime example of humour ruining the tone of the film.
The only real area in which this film is on an equal ground with the original is unfortunately that both have a weak ending. Again we are treated to what seems to be a giant mole tunnelling underground, followed by poor CGI effects in an attempt to add an unnecessary supernatural element to the film. Of course, the sequel takes it too far before this point anyway, with pointless Predator-style ‘body-heat’ POV shots that affect the film in no way at all other than adding to the shitness factor.
Children Of The Corn II would have received only one skull out of five had it not been for the pleasant addition of Christie Clark, a fine actress who sadly didn’t do many films after this. To give a film an extra half a mark based on the appearance of a minor character alone however speaks volumes on the overall shoddiness of the entire production.
Do yourself a favour and watch this awesome seven-minute version of the film, which cuts out all the boring shit and leaves you with the weird shit.
Director: James Hickox
That Was A Bit Mental 