Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest 1995 - Review

The third installment in the Children of the Corn series that has spawned a total of 9 films including a remake of the original.  The original story was written by Stephen King, and as most of his work it falls nothing short of creepy and downright frightening.  All of the sequels do lack the writing and sheer terror that Stephen King was able to deliver but that does not mean they are not good movies. 

In Gatlin, Nebraska Joshua (Ron Melendez) is running from his drunken father through the corn field.  By the scarecrow he finds his brother Eli (Daniel Cerney) who tells him to go ahead and he will be right behind him, he was going to handle their Father.  Eli puts his bible in the ground and calls upon “he who walks behind the rose” to protect them.  Their Father is overtaken by Eli’s powers and is turned in to the new scarecrow for the corn field.  Without a Father now the boys are adopted by a couple in Chicago William (Jim Metzler) and Amanda (Nancy Lee Grahn) Porter who have no idea what they are in for.  Immediately Amanda takes a liking to Joshua and William takes a liking to Eli.  Joshua is the more naive kind while Eli knows exactly what he is doing and is very evil.  Shortly after moving in Eli plants his corn seeds in an abandoned factory that is almost connected to the backyard of the Porters.  Within 6 weeks the cornfield is fully grown and is time to harvest.  Meanwhile, at school Eli has alienated almost the whole school and made the students his followers.  Joshua has started to put everything together by now and is not interested in being associated with Eli.  Eli needs to be stopped before he takes over all of urban Chicago and his corn gets exported all over the world through William and is trading deals he has set up.

This was the last movie in the Children of the Corn series to be released in the theaters.  Having said that it was not in the theaters that long at all.  Urban Harvest did receive negative reactions from the critics.  The acting is not terrible, but is not the best either.  This is a slasher film made in the 90’s, a decade when slashers were few and far between.  The plot of the film and is put together well and it does a good job of carrying on the storyline from the original film with the flashback scenes that links Eli to the first one.  The only terrible thing about the movie was the ending.  I am not going to spoil it but it is laughable and will leave you thinking, did the really just happen.   This is also the film debut of Charlize Theron who plays one of the followers of Eli.  She does not get a whole lot of screen time but it is more than a few scenes.  Urban Harvest premiered theatrically on September 12^th, 1995 with a limited run.

Out of all the sequels I think this one the best.  Aside from the ending Urban Harvest is a fun horror movie that is loaded with great death scenes, lots of blood and a very evil undertone.  I really liked the characters and their development.  Joshua’s character was naïve and did not have a clue what was going on at the beginning of the movie but by the end he realized what an evil bastard Eli is and how to take care of himself.  If the ending was not such a joke I would say this whole movie was great as it is I can only say most of the movie is great.  Stephen King may not have written the sequels but for the most part they did not let down in keeping with the original storyline.  Stay twisted everyone!