Eli (Daniel Cerny) and Joshua (Ron Melendez), two orphans from Gatlin, Nebraska, are taken in by a Chicago couple. While Joshua adapts to city life, Eli plants corn in an abandoned factory and soon has the local teens joining the cult of “He Who Walks Behind the Rows.”
Those wild, Amish-dressing kids are back with more wacky corn-filled hijacks. And once again, a potentially good horror film is ruined by substandard characters, a poorly conceived sub-plot, and a week ending.
As pure blood & death exploitation, Children of the Corn III has a lot to offer. There’s a crucifixion by corn (with the victims eyes and mouth sewn shut), a water pipe through the back of the head (with first water, and then blood, pouring from the victim’s mouth), a beheading, and plenty of impalings.
Eli is a suitably creepy kid, and while a cult of urban teens in a factory lacks the potential chills of murderous children in a faraway cornfield, it is still an unsettling concept.
But much of the film abandons all the fun slicing and dicing, and gives us Joshua’s trials in fitting in at school, and how he doesn’t want to disappoint his brother. It is every bit as much fun to watch as it sounds.
Hey, but if you need entertainment, you can play the “spot the actor who will never be in a film like this again” game. Nicholas Brendon, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, is “Basketball Player One,” and Charlize Theron, from The Devil’s Advocate and an Oscar winner for Monster, is a teen sitting in the church.
The other films in the series are Children of the Corn, Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice, Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering, Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror, Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return, Children of the Corn: Revelation.