Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on the latest internet machine.
It’s not a surprise that stories written by Stephen King would be frequently adapted into films. Certainly it’s something that King himself appreciates. In fact, he offers a bunch of his stories as something he calls “Dollar Babies.” Film students and new filmmakers have the right to adapt these stories into films, provided they aren’t commercially released and that King gets a copy, for the princely sum of one dollar. And, of course, there are dozens of commercial films based on King’s work. Sometimes you get classics like Stand by Me or The Shawshank Redemption. Sometimes you get complete turkeys like The Mangler. Sometimes you get films that have literally nothing in common with the original story beyond the name, like The Lawnmower Man. And sometimes you get Children of the Corn.
Children of the Corn, sometimes known as Stephen King’s Children of the Corn, is a not so terribly accurate or faithful adaptation of the original story by King. Oh, it gets the broad strokes of the story, but it avoids the completely downbeat ending and the incredibly disturbing coda, opting instead for something that is, I have to admit, a lot more cinematic. What’s odd here is that the vast majority of the killing in Children of the Corn happens in the opening few minutes. There are a couple of deaths further in, but this is much more about the atmosphere than it is about the gore or the deaths.
