Stephen King: Ranking His Films From Worst To Best

24. Children Of The Corn

Based solely on the amount of sequels it's spawned, Children Of The Corn is one of the most successful movies in Stephen King's oeuvre. Which doesn't mean that it's any good. At all. The short story is a cool little riff on any number of urban legends, as a young couple explore a bizarre rural town after a car accident. All that pagan horror that slowly builds up in the short story has a lot in common with The Wicker Man, that classic of the horror drama that holds an eerie calm until its final, violent moments. The film, meanwhile, is of the worse kind of crummy horror filmthat probably should have gone direct-to-video (as the majority of its eight - seriously - sequels have). In fact King wrote the original screenplay, which focussed more on characters and atmosphere. It was immediately kicked to the kerb in favour of George Goldsmith's take, which had a more conventional structure and way more violence. But not much of a plot, or anybody to sympathise with, or good dialogue, or anything else.