Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest

NOTE: I did use an African poster (Ghana, if I'm not mistaken), but that's only because...well, look at it.  It's just as zany as the film itself.  Yes, zany.  If I didn't know any better, I'd believe that modifier was created for this thing.  1995's Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest was directed by James Hickox, brother of Anthony and son of Douglas.  It was a filmmaking family.  I'll let you decide who inherited the most talent.  Now that I've ruminated for longer than two seconds, it was probably sister Emma, an editor.  Crimeny, I'm shitting all over the poor guy and I enjoyed this vacuous kernel!  Watch your step, for there may be other corn puns potted in the soil.

The franchise moves to the big city when adopted brothers Eli and Joshua...sorry, that sounded way too much like the back of a video box.  I miss video boxes.  Anyway, Eli is the younger kin.  He's the evil one.  It takes his family a sweet while to suspect that something unnatural is astir.  What tipped you off, Joshua?  Was it the cornfield that your little bro-bro planted next to an abandoned fucking warehouse?  Seemed shady, did it?  Alright, I'll call it quits with the rhetorical questions.  This whole flick is bonkers.  The school that our children (y'know, of the corn) attend educates multiple grades, but we only ever see older teenagers.  Even if Eli's stature is on the diminutive side, his classmates come off as a wee bit mature.

Whatever.  The acting is substandard.  Heh, I guess I should explain why I prize Urban Harvest.  This is b-movie verdure, pulpy entertainment of the finest caliber.  The pacing is a breeze, the gore is squishy and every ten minutes or so, we get what I call a "spook sting."  Not quite a jump scare.  You've seen them hundreds of times.  It's when a genre nugget (and they are usually dumb nuggets) feels like it has to remind you that you're watching a horror film.  Because remember, the studio deems you doltish, and your intelligence will be insulted.  In the case of Urban Harvest, I don't mind.  It simply adds to the carnival vibe.

I can't express how easy it was to view this scroungy sequel.  I'm making it sound base and tawdry, but in all honesty, it was produced reasonably well.  Hickox is no slouch behind the camera.  Urban Harvest had the slender, yet comfortable budget that any other direct-to-video Dimension property was afforded.  It's all very felicific.  In particular, I loved the scene where Joshua's buddy is attacked by roots and stalks in a nasty, spine-stretching way.  A few of the death sequences reminded me of 1995's Night of the Scarecrow, but I'm not crying ripoff.  After all, Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest was shot in 1993.  Why it fermented on the shelf for two years, I have no idea.

Fun motion picture.  I don't know if it's on your favorite streaming service, you entitled millennial, but hey!  HEY!  Give it a whirl.