Calling CHILDREN OF THE CORN II a better film than its predecessor is something like damning with faint praise, but this sequel manages to be somewhat less ludicrous and occasionally a little more chilling than the first film.
The kids who committed all the mayhem in the original are being shipped from their hometown of Gatlin to the neighboring Hemmingford by officials who are apparently unaware of the evil that possessed them. Among the many media figures who arrive on the scene are John (Terence Knox), a former
Newsweek reporter currently reduced to writing for a tabloid rag. A divorcee, he's traveling with his estranged son, Danny (Paul Scherrer), who's none too thrilled to be journeying to the middle of nowhere with a father he dislikes. The pair rent a room from boardinghouse owner Angela (Rosalind
Allen), whom John takes a shine to, while Danny, waiting in vain for a bus out of town, encounters Lacey (Christie Clark), a pretty local girl. He also makes the acquaintance of Micah (Ryan Bollman), a sullen young man who, on a subsequent night, is sucked into the ground while walking in a
cornfield and possessed by the demonic forces.
The evil has already claimed the lives of a couple of John's rival newsmen, and soon it inspires Micah to lead the town's youngsters to start slaughtering local grownups. Among the first to go are a pair of elderly sisters who suspect the kids are up to no good; one, who's planning to move her
entire house out of town, winds up crushed under the structure, while her wheelchair-bound sister is remotely guided into the middle of the street, where she's run down by a truck. John, trying to get to the bottom of the previous murders, meets a local Indian medicine man named Red Bear (Ned
Romero) who believes in ancient mysticism but has doubts as to whether it was responsible for the mayhem. In the course of their investigations, the two men discover a large stockpile of corn from the previous year's crop; the rotting corn has grown a mold known as aflotoxin, which, when it gets
into the air, can affect people's minds. The duo suspect that this might be behind the kids' mania, but they are soon captured by some of the locals, who are planning to mix the tainted corn with the current crop and sell the whole lot for a profit. John and Red Bear are left to be chopped up by a
thresher, but they manage to escape.
Meanwhile, the children's reign of terror continues unabated, as they contrive the deaths of the local priest, doctor and ultimately a whole houseful of people who have met to decide how to deal with them. Angela and Lacey are kidnapped by the kids, who intend to sacrifice them, along with John
and Danny, to the evil presence, known as "He Who Walks Behind the Rows." But John manages to save the day and, with Danny's help, rescues their girlfriends, while Micah is chopped up by the thresher and the evil spirit vanishes.
The immediate advantage CHILDREN OF THE CORN II has over the first film is that it contains a great deal more plot than the original, which was essentially an extended chase between two unlucky souls and the townful of religious-fanatic kids they stumbled onto. This entry also plays down the
religious angle, replacing it with the musings of Red Bear, a likable character who, in what is probably a film first, uses the Indian word "koyaanisqatsi" (meaning "life out of balance", and the title of Godfrey Reggio's non-narrative 1983 film) in a sentence. He also has some of the movie's best
dialogue, as when John asks if the upset of the Earth's spirits was behind the Gatlin slaughter, and Red Bear replies, "Nah, that was just a bunch of kids who went apeshit and killed all their parents."
Unfortunately, the filmmakers here can't seem to make up their minds about the motivations for the murderous events, establishing both the supernatural force and the contaminated corn as possible sources and never ruling out either possibility. It's a defect that prevents the film from building
the tension it should, coupled with the fact that the kids' targets are largely predictable, though the scene in which Micah causes the priest to die from an overwhelming nosebleed is a memorably disgusting setpiece.
The performances are a mixed bag, with Knox and Scherrer doing what they can with their cliched estranged father-son situation and Allen given the absolute minimum of onscreen time necessary to justify her presence as a terrorized heroine at the climax. For his part, Bollman looks so sullen from
the start that it's hard to tell the difference after he's possessed by the computer-generated hell-bubbles (an effect added just before the film's release). Aside from Romero, the most engaging performance is given by teenaged love interest Clark, who nonetheless violates the established rules of
exploitation filmmaking by doing her shower-under-a-waterfull scene wearing a bikini top, jeans and sneakers. (Graphic violence, sexual situations, profanity.) leave a comment