Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror

In case you were wondering how things were to begin anew in Corntopia, that picture above demonstrates the hows and whatfors of it: a fire in a cornfield blasts out green sparkling flames into a child, DUH. How did you expect the story to resurrect itself from behind the rows?

As the opening credits of Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror rolled, I was treated to a veritable cascade of celebrity names. Alexis Arquette! Ahmet Zappa! Eva Mendes! David Carradine! Fred fucking Williamson! I was anticipating, like, a Battle of the Network Stars special wherein said Stars battle children, corn, and any combination of the two. Let me tell you, friends, I wasn't disappointed!

Wait, yes I was. This film is terrible! Well, let me modify that. See, in the Corn-ening edition of Awesome Movie Poster Friday, I mentioned that the poster for this film is clearly from the post-Scream assembly line. Y'all, that is some truth in advertising: this movie is decidedly some post-Scream crap; however, "terrible" is too strong a word. Unfortunately, the Fields of Terror are located in that dreaded No Man's Land: it's not good enough to be good, it's not bad-good enough to be good, and it's not bad enough to hate. Nope. It's just...there.

He Who Walks Behind the Rows is back, sort of, but in name only. He's no longer a giant worm-thing tunneling beneath the ground as in parts 1 and 2, and he's not a giant puppet-thing as in part 3. Now, he's an Eternal Flame, you see. The bright spot of his evolution is that now I can pretend that Bangles song is about Children of the Corn V. This association improves both the film and the song.

The biggest crime Fields of Terror commits is that it's boring, boring, boring. As I mentioned, it's post-Scream crap that follows your standard city-folk-in-the-country slasher flick formula. A bunch of good-looking young people wander into a nowhere town, and you just know from the outset which one will survive; the Corn religious tie-in is really just an excuse to have kids do the killing rather than a masked weirdo. I will say that the "action", as it were, culminates in an explosion. That makes 4 out of 5 Corn flicks that do so. That is some leitmotif shit.

Even the Zoltan vampire puppy-style "oh no the evil isn't dead because there are glowing eyes" ending couldn't save this one. I'm already fixin' to forget it completely...say, a picture of that Zoltan vampire puppy sure would help! It helps everything!