A new version of Children of the Corn is coming, with a brief theatrical release date followed by a digital premiere in March. It will be the third adaptation of the Stephen King short story to reach screens and the 11th movie in the franchise overall. It's a dubious honor: the Children of the Corn movies entertain a cult following, but they've rarely aspired to anything truly worthwhile. While the 2009 Syfy adaptation shows a flair for the material, the new film largely has the cornfield to itself. A solid effort could make it an instant favorite among Stephen King fans.
The truly extraordinary thing about it all is how prodigious the franchise has become. Considering the pedigree of the author -- and the sheer number of his works that have been adapted -- Children of the Corn feels like a dubious standard-bearer for King movie adaptations. And yet with nearly a dozen features in the can and decades under its feet, it leaves every other King story in the dust on this front. It's a testament to the enduring power of his creepy short story as much to the inexplicably durable movie series it spawned.
Stephen King Found a Creepy Campfire Story in Children of the Corn
"Children of the Corn" was first published in the March 1977 issue of Penthouse magazine: comparatively early in the novelist's career. It recounts the story of a feuding couple, Burt and Vicky, who come across the seemingly deserted town of Gatlin, Nebraska. The children in the town murdered all the adults 12 years earlier and commenced the worship of a pagan deity called He Who Walks Behind the Rows. The couple ultimately falls victim to the god in their efforts to escape the town.
The story puts a unique spin on Lovecraftian folk horror, with its cult of children doing the bidding of a monster. Its structure resembles the likes of The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre, with normal people stumbling into a nightmare tucked just out of easy sight. But what really pulls the story together is King's recurring theme of evil taking root in a small town, giving a supernatural sheen to real-life insularism and religious intolerance. The children's puritanical garb and ready use of bladed farm tools provide a swift visual hook for all manner of larger implications.
Children of the Corn Made for a Strangely Enduring Film Series
Still, in an era in which King produced some of his masterpieces -- including Carrie and The Shining -- a single short story in the pages of a men's magazine hardly stands out. The original movie adaptation opened in 1984, amid a glut of King-based movies when anything with the author's name on it was hot property. It was filmed on a slender $800,000 budget and made big changes to the story, including a happier ending in which Burt burns up He Who Walks Behind the Rows and the couple escapes with several friendly children in tow.
It wasn't much, but it made money, and that in turn spawned a staggering eight additional films as sequels. Most went direct to cable or video, and all of them stretched King's wafer-thin story well past the breaking point before the 2009 reboot delivered a more accurate and respectful version. And yet the franchise persevered through decades of changing tastes, as video stores gave way to digital downloads, and King adaptations both good and bad continued permeating the pop culture landscape.
The new film joins the 2009 version in breaking from the sequels, focusing instead on the early days of the children's takeover of the town. Its release marks over 40 years of the franchise, which is remarkable regardless of how well it does. Some core of the story keeps enough people coming back to it, and its durability amid more high-profile remakes such as the IT series speaks to how much King could squeeze into the original concept. As a franchise, Children of the Corn may not be the proudest corner of the author's universe -- and the new movie may elevate it -- but like its monster, it's proven extremely difficult to kill.
Children of the Corn opens in theaters on March 3.