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Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest More at IMDbPro »

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71 reviews in total

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10 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Cerny was brilliant, 7 July 2003

Author: colinwhitefan

Children of the Corn III is one of my personal favorite horror films, the two brothers from Gatling are sent to foster homes in Chicago. The little brother, Eli (Daniel Cerney), who murdered his own father, is a disciple of the dreaded "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" and has brought a few corn seeds with him so his evil mentor will have a place to stay. The seeds grow and soon the demon is harvesting a fresh crop of recruits to do his murderous bidding. Daniel Cerny as Eli was one of the most evil characters I have ever seen in a horror movie he was great. Children of the Corn III was better than the rating it got, but those turned off by gore and bloodshed may want to stay clear of Children of the Corn III.

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
epitome of tacky horror, 1 May 2009

Author: leandros from Istanbul

Apart from the Texas-sized loopholes in the script, this film is one of the corniest horror films I have ever watched. Stephen King is credited as one of the writers, and this is surprising to see as it is unclear if he has actually contributed to the script or this film was inspired from King's initial novel. The acting is quite mediocre, but the special effects are of record tackiness, with human puppets of the amazing quality of voodoo dolls. The gore factor is satisfying, even unexpectedly high. The reference to environmental issues as a contemporary premise to any evil we see on screen is flimsy and ephemeral. Overall, spare a few bucks to rent this on a Saturday night in with your friends and pizza.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Ambitious and Surprising Sequel, 26 November 2001
Author: Eric Ashley (idlehands2k) from Elkhart, IN

After the disappointing "Children of the Corn II", the 1996 direct-to-video sequel subtitled "Urban Harvest" moves the setting from a rural Midwestern town to the Windy City of Chicago. A change of atmosphere gives the "Children of the Corn" franchise a much-needed boost and this entry is sometimes scary, often imaginative and boasts some unique special effects.

A couple (Jim Metzler and Nancy Lee Grahn) adopt a pair of abandoned teens. The older one (Ron Melendez) is conflicted with his Gatlin, Nebraska past, while the younger one (Daniel Cerny) prepares to recruit an all new batch of followers to resurrect He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

The movie is pretty tense and actually works on many levels... but the finale -- while planned out well -- looks really cheap onscreen and brings about lots of unintentional laughter.

"Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest" is one of the strongest entries in the franchise, and for the first 85 of its 91 minute running time, it proves to be a first-rate thriller.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Almost good..., 28 November 2005

Author: José Luis Rivera Mendoza (jluis1984) from Mexico

...but ruined by the ending. The infamous ending of the third part of the Children of the Corn series feels like a disaster of epic proportions that kills what otherwise could be a near perfect movie. Nevertheless, this movie has many good things that are worth a watch.

The plot is a very good twist to the well-known saga of "He Who Walks Behind the Rows". After the horrifying events in Gatlin, two brothers, Eli(Daniel Cerny) & Joshua(Ron Melendez) are sent to a foster house in Chicago. Their new family is very eager to have children and gives them a warm welcome, but Eli & Joshua feel the cultural shock as they try to get used to the urban environment. While Joshua tries to fit in, the younger Eli begins to plant corn in order to bring the cult of "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" to the world.

It is indeed a very good script, and for the most part it works. It is a huge improvement over the past sequels and in my humble opinion, sometimes it even surpasses the original. Daniel Cerny's performance is outstanding and one wonders why he suddenly stopped working when he was one of the very few child actors who could give a believable performance.

The eerie atmosphere is back and there are great moments of suspense and surrealistic imagery. This is what Children of the Corn movies should be. The direction is pretty good, and it handles the script with perfection and lets it flow with good rhythm.

If all these is so good, what can be so bad that makes the movie fail in the end? Without giving spoilers, let me just say that even when the SFX are top-notch for a low-budget movie; the ending pretends to be of epic proportions and ends up being one of the biggest SFX disasters ever.

Don't get me wrong, even with it's HUGE SFX faults, it still is better than average, but it breaks everything that was build up to that moment, the eerie atmosphere fill with suspense turns into a savage gore fest in the style of "Evil Dead" but without the talent. It just feels like a different movie.

Overall, it's worth a rent, especially for Daniel Cerny's performance who truly saves the film(no surprise that it's when he is gone that the movie falls down). It's good entertainment if you see it with a open mind.

7/10

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
A notch above your average straight-to-tape flick, 23 September 1999

Author: Bronis from Pottstown, PA

COTC3 is not that bad. Seriously. It is a gory, silly, watchable horror flick that, despite being a third in a series (that never should've started anyway), is a notch above your average B-horror film. I recommend it because it's got a lot of clever gore and some freaky scare scenes. Infinitely better than the last two, this one's a lowest common denominator entertainer. GRADE: B-

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
come on people, it's not THAT bad!, 6 March 1999
Author: sonya myatt (sonya640@webtv.net) from united states

mostly everyone on here has been saying that this movie sucks and that the acting is bad, but the acting actually is very good. That was what made me sit through this movie, also I'm a fan of these movies anyway, I live for horror! the best performance in ths movie was given by Daniel Cerny, the worst performance was given by Ron Melendez. so, peace out.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
strangely enjoyable, 16 November 2005

Author: snafflemonkey from United Kingdom

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Surely there can't be more children from Gatlin trying to find a new home? This entry changes the setting of the series from a small rural town to the big city and the change of location doesn't really work. The concept of the children killing all the adults because of "He who walks behind the rows" could work in an isolated town but in a large urban area the idea of the huge cornfield springing up from nowhere is just more laughable than anything.

Having said all that there is much to enjoy in this film - the acting is better than is usual for this sort of thing, the special effects - up until the end, are quite good and there are some effective horror moments and the running time doesn't drag.

As has been mentioned by others the monster at the end of the film is something to behold, it looks extremely fake but oddly it just adds to the charm of this sequel.

This entry is the last to really follow the storyline from the first 2 with any regard to a continuing plot until the dire part 6, so if you enjoy cheap horror your better sticking with the first 3.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Best in the series! (Spoilers), 21 March 2004
Author: willywants

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

PLOT: Two young Gatling residents are orphaned after the younger brother kills their father. So, the terror of Gatling goes urban when the two boys are placed in the custody of two foster parents. The younger brother (who by this point is established as the "evil one") bought some corn seeds along for the road and plants them in the courtyard of an abandoned warehouse, bring He Who Walks Behind the Rows to the city. He winds up possessing his high school peers, and soon his older brother feels called to stop him.

DIRECTING:8/10- I was very impressed with James D.R. Hickox's direction. Lots of slow-motion shots, "28 days later"-type photography, wide shots, and more. Good job!

ACTING: 9/10- Performances are all-around excellent, especially Daniel Cerny.......What ever happened to him? everyone else does great, too.

WRITING: 7/10- The script is full of solid scares and characters, Cerny's character (Eli) is given especially memorable lines.

GORE: 9/10- This is easily the goriest entry in the series. A man gets his arms ripped-off (made me cringe), his eyes and mouth sewn shut, and is then left to die, A woman's face catches on fire than litterally melts on screen (This one will give little kids nightmares for sure), a man's head is ripped off and is left on the end of a cartoonishly long spinal in the air (Gory, but more likely to arrouse laughs), a woman's head bursts open to reveal a colony of insects, a man coughs up cockroaches then dies, a man's face is torn up by a living statue of the virgin mary, a woman falls on a spicket and is impalled through her head, bloody water flows through her mouth, A man gets a scycle through his heart, a homeless man gets his eye's gouged out by vines, and a creature at the end of the film uses tentacles to mutilate many teens. There is also mild creature violence.

MONSTERS: We get a killer scare-crow creature, a giant multi-armed tentacle monster, killer vines,a living statue, and more.

SPECIAL F/X: 9/10- Effects-nut screaming Mad George (The man responsible for the gnarly effects in "Society")cooks up the goods here, and gets an A in my book. The gore effects look excellent and painfully realistic at times. Nice!

MUSIC SCORE: 8/10- Very dark score here. Best score in the series and used to great effect.

FINAL VERDICT:"Children of the corn 3" is the best in the series, case closed. The performances are fantastic, the direction is stylish, the effects, for the most-part, are excellent (With the exception of a giant monster at the end), the score is dark and moody, and it's a good change bringing the dried-up plot to Chicago. Recommended! My rating for "Children of the corn 3"--7.5-10.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
What movie were you people watching!?, 24 August 2001

Author: Kunzait 83 from The Shinden

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Because it sure as hell couldn't have been this one! I have (thus far) seen COTC 1, 2, and this one. Two was decent, but this and the first rank up there as two of my all time favorite horror movies! I am simply at a loss for words at how maliciously and unfairly this film was trashed. Usually with horror movies that spawn sequel after sequel, each installment gets successively campy, low-budget, and (pardon the bad pun) corny. Very rarely do sequels get better than their predecessors. And this film ranks up on that very short list. This movie has better production values than the first two combined! From the creepy opening credits sequence on, this movie does not let up with the scares! I'll review this movie by each individual factor:

*WARNING! CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS!*

PLOT: The overall Children of the Corn premise is most certainly frightening. Children who worship a harvest demon, sacrifice their parents (and adults in general) to it in order to "cleanse the earth of impurity". As for the individual plot to this installment, it's pretty decent but the execution is very well done. The scenes of Eli and Joshua moving into their new home, and adjusting to their new surroundings are well directed and very well acted.

DIRECTION: Incredible camera work is perhaps this films best quality. Excellent atmosphere and great use of slow motion techniques give the movie a very surreal flow to it.

ACTING: Excellent marks all around, the stand out being without question Daniel Cerny. This incredibly talented young actor literally steals every scene he's in. It's a crying shame that he never made it as big as other child actors. Even without the excellent performances of the other cast members he could have carried this movie himself.

MUSIC: A very satanic soundtrack enhances the (already) dark and gloomy mood of this film. Very fitting for this subject matter, this score is without question the best of the first three.

SPECIAL EFFECTS: Great, especially for 94. This was definitely NOT a low-budget direct to video cheapie (contrary to popular belief, this movie was released theatrically).

THE ENDING: Ok, I just HAD to do a separate section to kill the widespread myth about this ending. Let me ask again, what movie were you people watching!? The end monster did not look THAT fake! Much like most horror and sci-fi flicks before the explosion of CGI, this movie used stop-motion and animatronic effects to create it's monster. And the effect is not bad I must say. This monster looks NO MORE phony than any other horror movie monster out there. Believe me I have seen MUCH worse. The only effect in the entire movie that DOES look fake (very very fake) is this 3rd person view of a girl being lifted off of the ground by the monster. They used a miniature of the girl to simulate the effect and it looks ridiculous. But fortunately, the shot only lasts literally a millionth of a second (seriously if you blink you'll miss it) and can be easily forgotten. Other than that I saw NO problems whatsoever with the ending.

OVERALL: Definitely a horror classic. To all who have not yet seen this film, I implore you to completely ignore every one of these unfounded negative reviews and see this movie (preferably in the dark). Even if you don't find horror movies to be scary at all, this is still a very entertaining flick.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Good movie that falls apart in the last 10 minutes. !SPOILER ALERT!, 31 December 1999

Author: LT-10 from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I know that there not the best movies ever made, but I enjoyed the first two movies in this series. I was thinking the same about this one but the part with the living scarecrow and the horrible special effects from the monster changed how I thought about this movie. !SPOILER ALERT! It would have been better if Eli was killed more slowly and then end it with a few flashes and stuff, throw the ministers bible in the flashes. That way the horrible monster effect could have been avoided. I didn't think Eli's step-mother should have died (I forget her name, lets call her the girl from General Hospital) It was a very good death scene but it should have happened to someone else. This movie really wasn't totally necessary, but it can be entertaining you just sit back and go with the flow.

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