Children of the Corn III and IV, Urban Harvest / The Gathering - 1995, 1996

In my drunken stupor and in my quest to see as many movies and put them on this blog as possible, I totally forgot that I even finished Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering.  I had this whole thing planned out about saying how CotC V had Eva Mendes and compare that to CotC IV which has Naomi Watts.  Of course, an actress or actor getting their start by being in horror is not a new thing, but it's always cool to see it in process.

In fact, apparently Charlize Theron has a tiny cameo in CotC III, which makes CotC a pretty successful series in terms of casting.  Especially once you consider that Linda Hamilton was in the first CotC movie before she was in The Terminator series.  None of the names in CotC II jumped out at me, especially.  Just had to check CotC 6, Revelation, and the newest Genesis.  Nope, no new actors.  See at some point it became the thing to instead cast some has-been actor instead, like Stacy Keach or my OG Billy Drago.

The plots to these movies are pretty different from each other.  Urban Harvest is the classic "same story, new location" thing like in the Leprechaun series.  It works though because the child actor Daniel Cerny as Eli is really good as a passionate kid preacher, who, along with his older brother, moves to a city after their parents die.  Eli is evil, he starts to grow corn and kill people, including his adopted mother.  His brother doesn't follow him anymore and actually turns good.  Eli turns all the neighborhood kids to his side and combats a priest at the local church, all while his bro grows more and more uncomfortable with Eli's agenda.

What CotC III has that makes it good is a good couple actors, a couple good kills, and adequate pacing.  It was more enjoyable that CotC IV and V.  In fact it may be the best one since the first CotC, which I don't remember as much but I will re-watch for this blog.  I think I'll probably see them all for you, my nonexistent reader.
Urban Harvest gets 3 stars.

Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering takes us back to the farm, where Naomi Watts comes to live with her mom Karen Black.  The kids in the town are having these freak fever attacks, Naomi Watts is a doctor or nurse or something, and begins to help.  A couple of the kids turn evil, some deaths happen, etc. Intermixed in there is a black man who is around when a death happens and is blamed for it.  Blah blah blah.

This one is more like a regular horror movie.  It's not like it's bad, it's just not original really, more of the traditional slow horror movie.  It's a lot of dialogue, attempts at atmosphere, and occasionally something cool will happen (by accident).  Naomi Watts is hot, but doesn't show her sweet body in this, which would've earned it another star on top of the 1.5 I'll give it.