Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Halloween: Resurrection is the eighth movie in the Halloween series. At the end of the seventh film, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (the dumbest title in the series, but the second best film), Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) beheaded Michael Myers. And now three years later she’s in a sanitarium, in lock-down. Because guess what? She killed the wrong person. Michael Myers had done a little switcheroo, and took the place of a paramedic, changing clothes with him while no one was looking. Sneaky little bastard. So Laurie killed the paramedic, not Michael. And now she hasn’t said a word in three years. What she does is hide her medication and look out the window. What she sees out there is Michael Myers.

Yes, Michael is back, and on the sanitarium grounds. Somehow he got his mask back (it was on the decapitated head of the paramedic). Or did he purchase another, identical one? He also bought an identical mechanic’s suit (the paramedic was wearing his when he got beheaded). Why is he so particular about his clothing? What a weirdo.

Anyway, he kills two guards, putting the head of one into a washing machine for some reason. Then he breaks through the door to Laurie’s room, but she’s ready for him. Well, ready or not, Michael gets her this time. Yup, Laurie Strode falls to her death after being stabbed (and after saying, “I’ll see you in hell” – not the best final words ever spoken). Michael then hands the bloody knife to an inmate who is fascinated by serial killers and who is wearing a clown mask like Michael himself wore when he was a child. The inmate lists Michael’s credits from the first two Halloween film and from H20: 20 Years Later. (So, what, those people killed in parts 4, 5, and 6 don’t count? I bet they’d be unhappy to know that.)

Okay, so now that he’s killed Laurie, who is Michael going after? I would think Laurie’s son from the seventh film. Or perhaps that baby from the sixth movie that he was so keen on killing. But no.

We’re introduced to Sara, a student at Haddonfield University. Wow, the little town must have really grown in the last few years. She and two friends, along with three other people, are chosen to be members of “the Dangertainment team” – some reality internet show where they have to spend the night in Michael Myers’ house. But first Sara sends an email to some high school kid who has offered her tech support in the past. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: There is nothing more boring to see in a film than someone typing an email or text message, or someone receiving an email or text message.

For some reason, after the six have been chosen, they do on-camera auditions. Doesn’t really make sense. And the guy in charge of this internet program, Freddie (played by Trevor Taheim Smith, Jr., who goes by the incredibly stupid name Busta Rhymes, and can’t act worth a damn), is totally obnoxious. So then Sara and her female friend go shopping for clothes to wear on the show. In the mirror at the store, Sara sees Michael Myers. But he’s not there.

Then we see the high school boy again, along with his friend. The main boy, Myles, is going to watch the internet show, but the other one is upset because they’re supposed to go to a big party that night. He says: “Do you have any idea what it means for two freshmen to get invited? It’s like never happened before.” Who cares?

The Myers house is really run-down, which is odd, as a family had been living in it for a while, until they were killed by Michael in part 6, The Curse Of Michael Myers (which wasn’t that long before this film). When that family was gone, did the new owners decide to restore the house to its former dilapidated look? Anyway, a guy is in there, setting up cameras, and of course Michael Myers has returned and picks up one of the cameras. When did he become interested in internet programming? There is clearly a lot we don’t know about this guy. We tend to focus just on the killings, and not on his other interests. Speaking of killing, why isn’t he hunting down Laurie’s son? Or that baby? Well, Michael films his point of view while killing this other guy. It’s really stupid. More stupid is Freddie telling reporters that no one will be allowed to leave the house until the show is over.

So basically six people we don’t give a fuck about are going to spend the night in Michael Myers’ house. Could things be any easier for Michael Myers? He doesn’t even have to leave home to get a good night’s killing in. And each of the six being equipped with a camera means we get lots of crappy, shaky, fuzzy footage. Great.

The six people talk about how it’s not a house you’d put on the market. Except that it was on the market. In fact, there was an entire scene about it being on the market in the sixth film. And the family that moved in were some of the main characters of that film. By the way, does the film crew have any right to be in this house?

One of the guys finds a big knife in a kitchen drawer. They also find a baby’s high chair with a chain on it. Come on! What is Michael waiting for? Kill these fucking people already.

But instead, holy hell, the movie cuts back to the high school boys at the party. Every time I manage to forget about those characters, the film irritatingly reminds me of their existence. There are a couple of great big furry coats in that party scene, which I appreciate. The boys are dressed as characters from Pulp Fiction. I hope Quentin Tarantino was paid for that. By the way, the two in the furry coats are simultaneously upstairs and downstairs. Good for them.  Myles sneaks into another room to watch the internet show on someone’s computer. And soon everyone at the party is in the room with Myles watching the internet show. Some party. Myles explains to the others: “See, they’re looking for clues – you know, something that might explain while Michael Myers went bad.” Yes, thank you. It’s a good idea to explain what’s going on in the movie every few minutes.

One thing I do like is that the film has one character explain to another the difference between the words “continuous” and “continual.” A lot of people think those words are synonymous, so I appreciate the effort this film makes to correct that.

On the other hand, I hate all of the video camera footage. You can’t really see anything. It’s annoying, not at all scary. After the group finds an old coloring book, one of them intelligently points out that it’s not right that all that stuff is still there. Instead of telling the other characters, he should have said that to the writers. Well, two of them find a secret cellar or something with a chain harness, and so they surmise that Michael was kept down there. No. He wasn’t. Watch the original film. Michael was a normal kid who snapped. His parents were not abusing him. (For bullshit like that, watch Rob Zombie’s piece-of-shit remake.) But of course anything these people find in the house could have been planted by the dipshits in charge of the internet show, and it turns out that at least some of it is.

One good thing is that Freddie dresses as Michael Myers to scare the six people in the house and boost the show’s ratings, so that once they realize that, their guard is then down, which of course gets them in trouble. The problem remains, however, that we don’t care at all about these people. Perhaps in a way this movie is attempting a critique of idiots who watch so-called “reality television.” Or perhaps I’m giving the filmmakers too much credit.

And guess how Sara stays alive? Myles sends her text messages from the party letting her know where Michael is, based on the information he gets from the various cameras still running in the house. Geez, that’s really terrifying. Text messages. Thanks, movie. There is nothing more exciting than watching someone frantically type. Then Sara finds a chainsaw (really?) and attacks Michael, saying, “This is for…” and naming the other characters. Ugh. Freddie, who was stabbed, is still alive and shouts, “Trick or treat, motherfucker!” Seriously. Anyway, the house burns down, but fire didn’t kill Michael Myers in the second film. So guess what.

Children Of The Corn: Revelation (2001)

From Stephen King’s twenty-nine-page short story, Children Of The Corn, nine films have been made. Children Of The Corn: Revelation is the seventh. It begins with an old woman having a nightmare of a fire in a cornfield. She wakes and rushes outside, shouting, “Where are you?” There’s no answer. Instead, we get the opening credits. Hey, Michael Ironside is in this one. I get excited for a moment, until I recall that earlier sequels had Naomi Watts, Karen Black, Fred Williamson, David Carradine, Stacy Keach and Charlize Theron, and none of those films were very good.

A taxi drops Jamie off at the building, the driver wishing her luck. The building is rundown, and two creepy blond kids get on the elevator as she heads up to the fourth floor to visit her grandmother. By the way, whenever I meet creepy-looking children, I just immediately stab them in the neck. Better safe than sorry. Jamie lets herself into her grandmother’s apartment, but can’t find her grandmother. So she goes to the police. In this film, there is actually a police station with police officers and detectives, instead of just one sheriff as in previous films. For some reason Jamie changes her clothes. It’s still the same day, for she says to the cop, “I came out from California today, and she’s gone.” But she must have thought a V-neck sweater and pants more appropriate for a police station than the turtleneck sweater and skirt she had on earlier.

Jamie is alarmed because she found a copy of The Bible next to her grandmother’s bed, though she’s been a lifelong atheist. Jamie wants something done immediately (though, again, she took the time to change her clothes, so it’s not really urgent), but the cop says nothing can be done for twenty-four hours.

That night someone throws food at the window, so Jamie goes out to investigate. She hears the laughter of children, so decides it’s a good time to take a walk and pick up some groceries. The creepy kids from the elevator are in the store. She gives them a quarter so they can play an arcade game, The House Of The Dead. The kids enjoy the game, but the store clerk tells Jamie, “They ain’t normal.” And look, Jamie has changed her clothes again. Her sweater is the same color, but went from a V-neck to a crew neck. This must be her investigating-things-in-the-night sweater.

She then comes across a priest bent over a pentagram. Hey, it’s Michael Ironside. It’s some sort of hopscotch version of a pentagram, with numbers in various segments. Ironside refuses to speak to Jamie. When Jamie gets back to the apartment building, she finds that someone has written “Jamie Go Home,” each word in a different color of pastel chalk. The kids took a little time to be creative with their message. But Jamie doesn’t heed the instruction.

Then we get one of my favorite things to see in any film – someone typing an email. Yawn. In the subject line of her email, Jamie indicates she’s in Omaha. I guess Gatlin is left behind in yet another sequel. Poor Nebraska. Is there no town that is safe from creepy children there? While Jamie is typing, she hears children playing in the hall, so she goes out to investigate. They’re not there, but instead of going back inside and finishing her message, she wanders down to the basement. A cardboard sign says, “Do not enter,” but we’ve already established that this chick doesn’t follow hand-written directions. And hell, maybe her grandmother is playing with the kids down there. But what she finds is a sort of greenhouse. In the basement.

Jamie then gets to know her grandmother’s neighbors, including Angry Wheelchair Guy and a stripper named Tiffany. She tells Tiffany that her parents died in a fire. That’s a nice getting-to-know-you detail. The guy who runs the building invites Jamie up to the roof for a meal. But the creepy kids throw him off the roof before she gets there. When Jamie arrives, they refuse to answer her questions, but do a little teleportation trick for her.

Finally Jamie goes to bed, and immediately has a nightmare, in which her grandmother wanders outside and onto the tracks and is hit by a train. Then cornstalks shoot up in the spot, and a little girl comes out of the corn.

The next day Jamie returns to the police station because it’s been twenty-four hours, and now they should be able to start an investigation. The detective is already on the case and tells Jamie her grandmother survived a fire when she was a kid. Grandmother was a member of a cult of children, and their revival tent caught fire, killing all the rest of the kids.

Tiffany, the stripper, takes a bubble bath, and suddenly one of the creepy kids is in her bathroom watching her. This, of course, is the most normal thing these kids have done. I’d watch her bathe too. But he drops some magic corn kernels into the tub, and some kind of corn monster grows and kills her. Her screams draw the ire of Angry Wheelchair Guy, who pounds on her door and tells her to quiet down. All of this happens while Jamie and the detective are driving back to the building. It must be a long drive, because they were already on their way before Tiffany even arrived home.

Anyway, the detective gives Jamie the file on what he’s learned about her grandmother, and then Jamie begins reading parts of it out loud to him as if he hadn’t just given it to her. She says, “Hey, listen to this.” Why doesn’t he say, “I know, you silly bitch, I’m the one who prepared the file, so just read it to yourself”? The fire where the kids died took place in the spot where the apartment building stands. The fire was sixty years ago, so it took place in 1941 (forty years before the murders in Gatlin, so I guess Isaac wasn’t the original boy preacher).

The detective asks Jamie out on a date, and she accepts. Meanwhile the kids kill Angry Wheelchair Guy and get a good chuckle out of it. Their sense of humor is clearly a bit warped, but living in Nebraska could do that to anyone. Jamie is wearing a light pink turtleneck sweater, but a little later when she sees someone from her window, she has changed to a darker scoop neck top. She hasn’t even been in town for two full days, and she’s worn six different outfits if you count her sleepwear (but not counting the various vests and jackets). How much clothing did she bring with her? That is one magic little suitcase she has. It's the size of a carry-on. Forget trying to make money on these silly Children Of The Corn movies; instead, the filmmakers should market these magic carry-on suitcases they invented. Especially with all the airline restrictions, and how most airlines charge now for checked luggage, these things would sell like crazy.

Soon Michael Ironside sneaks up on her in the building and speaks his first line of dialogue in the film (with only twenty minutes left). He then forces her to drink wine, and tells her she should never have been born because her grandmother should have died in the fire. That’s according to He Who Walks Behind The Rows (yes, he’s finally mentioned). Ironside also mentions Gatlin – “a whole town murdered by children possessed.” Jamie asks what that has to do with her grandmother. He tells her her grandmother is dead, and that her only chance of survival is to leave. And then he himself leaves the film.

Okay. But if the children are after her because she never should have been born, why are they killing the other tenants of the building? And why didn’t they kill her already, instead of playing video games? The ghost kids sure like to play video games. Well, they take Jamie to the basement, saying they know where her grandmother is. The tomatoes that were growing down there have been replaced with corn. And all the ghost kids are hanging out down there. They want Jamie to join them. She pretends to  agree, but then sets a fire.

It’s not a bad ghost story, but really has little to do with Children Of The Corn. In fact, if you cut out the one scene where Michael Ironside talks, it has basically nothing to do with the original film (except for the corn grabbing Jamie at the end). By the way, there are some very cool-looking ghost faces rising out of the fire at the end.

The next Children Of The Corn film was simply a remake of the first one. And the ninth film… well, I’m not sure about that one. I think I might be done with this series, at least for now. I do enjoy bad movies, but there is only so much I can take.

Children Of The Corn 666: Isaac’s Return (1999)

Let’s be clear about something right from the start. Children Of The Corn 666: Isaac’s Return is not actually the six hundred sixty-sixth movie in this series. It is in fact the sixth. The title is a bit misleading. See, what they did is add those other two sixes to make people think of Satan. And why not? There was already one six there. They were already a third of the way to the number of the beast. Pretty clever, eh? The folks that come up with this stuff are obviously in a mental realm far above the average person. Of course, the movie doesn’t really have anything to do with Satan. But, whatever.

This movie has to do with Isaac. You might remember Isaac. He was the leader of the murderous children in the first Children Of The Corn film. He died at the end of that movie. That doesn’t keep him from showing up in this one.

Hannah has written a letter to her mother and reads it to us in voice over at the beginning of the film. Don’t worry – it’s nothing very private. Just acknowledgement of how her mother had worked to protect her, and that she’s now going back to Gatlin, where she was born, a town that’s haunting her visions. She picks up a guy named Zachariah who’s having car troubles, then looks at an old flyer about a “boy preacher admitted to Gatlin county hospital.” For a moment, I think it’s referring to the preacher boy from Children Of The Corn: The Gathering, but it’s actually referring to Isaac. Zachariah then vanishes from her car after she makes a small pro-choice statement. And then her keys vanish too. But when Hannah looks up, she sees a female cop is holding them. When did she show up? And how? The cop looks at her driver's license, and says, “It’s her.” She drives Hannah to the Gatlin hospital, where patients are running around and Stacy Keach is the doctor.

Stacy Keach tells her he was born in Gatlin and lived his whole life there. He also remarks that Hannah’s birthday is tomorrow, and that tomorrow is Halloween. Wow, this movie is pouring it on a bit thick, eh? A patient attacks her, saying only she can stop Isaac. The patient drags her to Isaac’s room, apparently so she can stop him. But all Isaac is doing is lying there, so it’s unclear just what she’s supposed to stop him from doing. Well, Isaac has been in a coma for nineteen years, and now wakes up. The cop tells him, “Isaac, you have a son.” So apparently he hasn’t been one of those inactive coma patients you’re always hearing about. The cop tells Isaac she prepared his son, so maybe the son will be dinner that night.

Hannah meets Gabriel, who works at the hospital and who brought her car to her. And so she drives off. After she’s gone, there’s talk of some prophecy. Then a pickup truck tries to drive her off the road. Typical behavior from pickup truck drivers. Anyway, she stops at a motel to call the police, but the two people there say there’s no phone, and they give her a room instead.

Hannah tells Gabriel she’s come to find her mother. Wait, she doesn’t know where her mother is? Then where did she mail that letter she read to us at the beginning? Well, it turns out, the letter was to her foster mother, and she’s in Gatlin looking for her biological mother. She says, “They told me my mother was dead, but I’m not so sure.” So she looks for her birth record, with the help of Gabriel. Hannah was born on Halloween in 1978. (Wow, the filmmakers really want to make us think of John Carpenter’s classic horror film.) Well, she doesn’t find her record.

That night someone is in her motel room. Whoever it is leaves and gets into the pickup truck. Hannah calmly says, “So now I get to chase you,” and gets in her car to follow. Really? It’s interesting that she sees it as some sort of game of tag. If I woke up to see someone sneaking out of my motel room and getting into a truck that had earlier tried to run me off the road, I’m not sure I’d be so calm.

Well, it turns out the person driving the truck is Rachel Colby, and she goes to visit the grave of Baby Colby, who was born and died on Halloween, 1978. The cop shows up and argues with Rachel, while Hannah watches from behind a tree. By the way, Baby is an awful name to give your baby.

Rachel tells Isaac that his prophecy died with her child, that Hannah isn’t her child. Rachel was once a member of Isaac’s little band of children, but left because her husband Amos had been sacrificed for He Who Walks Behind The Rows and for some reason that upset her. Well, this might be the right time to talk about the problems with the timeline. The original film came out in 1984. The first scenes of that film, according to a title on screen, took place three years earlier, so 1981. That’s when Isaac led the children to kill all the adults in Gatlin. The rest of the events of that first film took place in 1984, for a title card indicates “Present Day.” But it seems that Isaac’s Return is saying that the events from 1981 actually occurred in 1978, or maybe it’s saying that the events from 1984 took place in 1978. Either way, Isaac has been in a coma for nineteen years (he says he’s waited nineteen years). Isaac’s Return came out in 1999, so that would indicate he entered the coma in 1980, four years before the bulk of the first film. Unless the film is supposed to take place in 1997, putting the events of 1984 in 1978, and the events of 1981 in 1975. One more thing about 1978: that was the year that Stephen King's Night Shift, the book of short stories that contained Children Of The Corn, was published. So maybe that's why this movie seems to want to re-arrange events to favor that year. However, the short story Children Of The Corn was originally published in a magazine in early 1977.

Well, Hannah assumes Rachel is her mother. And apparently she’s right, because Rachel soon tells Stacy Keach, “I never should have given her up.”

So according to the prophecy, Isaac’s son has to have sex with Hannah to father a child with her, to lead the cult into the future. He apparently isn’t that interested in sex with Hannah, and runs Hannah off the road, then gives her a shovel, so she can dig up Baby Colby’s grave. And so she does. It is empty. So it turns out no one puts Baby in the coffin. Rachel shows up, and wow, this scene is just awful. Rachel keeps walking away from Hannah, then coming back to give her a little more information. What does she want? How does she feel? Who knows?

Isaac, his son and some others begin celebrating in the corn. And then there’s a shot of the full moon. Yawn. Hannah is walking through the corn for some reason, and is suddenly surrounded by children who chant, “Destiny.” Hannah says: “What do you want? God, you guys are freaks. What is it with this place?” And then she’s with Isaac and the others. Isaac begins the ceremony, but Hannah runs off. Of course, there is the question, Why is she still there anyway? She just wanted to learn who her mother was, which she did. So why was she out wandering in the corn?

Well, whatever. Gabriel rescues her, and the two hose each other off in a barn and then have sex. I do like the idea of showering before sex sometimes, but why bother if you’re going to end up fucking in a barn anyway? Well, in the meantime, Isaac kills his son’s girlfriend. A series of clocks tells us it’s midnight. So Hannah’s nineteenth birthday is over and the prophecy failed to come true.

And then there’s some fighting, and more talk of the prophecy, and… I don’t know. I just got so bored with the whole fucking thing. Gabriel says he’s is the one who walks behind the rows. What? And then he kills Isaac. Or maybe he just puts him in another nineteen-year-long coma. Who knows? Hannah’s mom then kills Gabriel, except he doesn’t die. Instead he says, “Boom,” and an explosion occurs behind Hannah and her mom as they run out.

Well, supposedly Hannah is pregnant with the child of He Who Walks Behind The Rows. So I’m guessing it’s time for her to make an appointment to get an abortion. Problem solved. The end.

Children Of The Corn V: Fields Of Terror (1998)

As I make my way through the Children Of The Corn Collection (yes, that’s what the DVD menu calls it), I can’t help but think something is seriously wrong with me. It’s 2 a.m., and I am starting another of these films. Why am I not doing some writing? Or maybe my taxes? Or trying to clean my place and organize my life? But I started watching this collection, and now I feel a need to keep going, to see it through. I’m committed, or should be.

And so the movie begins. As a hand reaches down and clutches a rose, crushing the flower, the film’s title comes on the screen: Children Of The Corn V: Fields Of Terror. Uh-oh. A moment later, Alexis Arquette’s name appears, and I get excited, thinking maybe this is a post-transition period film for her. Fred Williamson is also in this one. And David Carradine. Okay, I’m once again hopeful. This is going to be a good one.

But then it begins. A boy walks through a corn field, and comes upon a fire. Curious about it, he stands there, watching. But then the fire leaps out and strikes him, knocking him down. When he opens his eyes, the fire is in there.

Then we cut to one year later, and it’s raining. A couple is inside, having dinner. The man says he found another murdered heifer by the property line. A noise outside gets the man interested, and he meets the boy, Fire Eyes. Fire Eyes uses telekinesis to lift the man into the air, where he is struck by lightning. Children then surround the woman and kill her.

The next day – or some day, we don’t really know when – some obnoxious people in their twenties show up in a couple of cars. Laszlo (played by Ahmet Zappa, Frank’s son – Ahmet’s sister Diva is in this film too) is in the first car and has a collection of inflatable sex dolls, which he leaves like a trail of breadcrumbs along the road for the people in the second car to follow. His girlfriend, Charlotte, runs into the cornfield to gather some corn, and apparently gets far enough away in a matter of seconds to not hear Laszlo when he shouts for her. Charlotte is soon dead, and Laszlo sees some children around her corpse, and runs. Fire Eyes is in charge of the group, and doesn’t seem to have aged at all in the intervening year.

The second car crashes in a ditch at the edge of the corn, and so those four walk into town. When they get to a bar, one of the patrons fills them in on the story so far – that a bunch of adopted kids are working on a farm where there are spontaneous fires, and that they’re all religious fanatics. “They all worship some fellow they call He Who Walks Behind The Clouds, or something like that.” Close enough. Allison, one of two girls from the car, suddenly perks up, because she’s heard of this He Who Walks fellow, and smartly wants to leave immediately.

The town sheriff is played by Fred Williamson, but he’s no help to the group because the town’s one tow truck is being repaired. So they decide to abandon their car and take a bus to the city. But they miss the bus, partly due to the other girl, Kir, who is kind of a whiny bitch who can’t run in heels. She’s played by Eva Mendez (yes, that’s the spelling in the credits, not Mendes), whom a lot of guys think is attractive. I’ve never thought so, and her shitty acting in this film certainly doesn’t help matters. Anyway, they go back to their car, and find that it’s on fire. It’s actually Greg’s car. Greg is played by Alexis Arquette, so sadly he’s still a man at this point in his career.

Anyway, they decide to sleep in a nearby house and catch the morning bus to the city. They figure the house is abandoned, even though all the beds are made and there’s food in the cupboard and beer stocked in the basement. They have dinner and reminisce about their dead friend Kurt, who died in a Bungee jumping accident. “That was Kurt – he was a free spirit,” one of them says fondly. Allison then tells everyone it wasn’t an accident, that she found a suicide note, news which upsets the annoying whiny girl, Kir. And now that Allison has opened up about the suicide, she just can’t stop divulging stuff – that her father was an alcoholic, that she left home and never went back, that her brother Jacob ran away, and that her brother told her he planned to dedicate his life to He Who Walks Behind The Rows. Well, at least he didn’t become a Scientologist. (And, guess what, there’s a shot of a full moon.)

That night Allison and Greg wander out into the cornfield because they hear a noise. You know, not every noise needs to be investigated. I hear things all the time, and I think, “What the hell is that?” And then after a moment I forget about it, and go on with my day. Why do folks in horror films feel a need to look into every little sound they hear? If it's in your own home, then sure, I could understand why you might be inclined to investigate. But if it's out in a cornfield, at night, when you yourselves are trespassing, staying in someone else's house without that person's knowledge, then maybe just let it go. It's not your cornfield. Why do you care who's out there? And why would you want to call attention to your presence? You're trespassing. You're the bad guys in the immediate situation, so keep a low profile, guys. Anyway, they find the bodies of Charlotte and Laszlo.

The next day Fred Williamson tosses the bodies into the back of a pickup truck. But he thinks their deaths were from some kind of accident, that this entire group got drunk and was fooling around with farming equipment. Okay. Did the group bother to tell him that someone set their car on fire? I guess not.

Allison wants to stay so she can try to find her brother. So the four of them stick together, walking through the corn. And within one minute, Fire Eyes agrees to take them to see Jacob. That was easy. Fire Eyes leads Allison inside a house, where she meets David Carradine (finally). His greeting to her is: “The outsiders call me a monster, a molester, a lunatic.” He goes on to call himself a savior of the children. He’s also the only adult so far in the series to worship He Who Walks Behind The Rows.

Meanwhile outside, there is a very weird cut where Greg walks out of frame to the left and then back into frame in the center from a distance. It’s so odd, I had to watch it a few times. One of the older children flirts with the whiny girl, trying to get her to join the cult. He must have some kind of impact, because she decides to join the children, and then immediately sacrifices herself by throwing herself into the fire they keep at the bottom of a silo. Good riddance.

Allison finally sees her brother and wishes him a happy birthday. He tells her that’s not until tomorrow. Wow, she hasn’t seen him in years, but randomly finds him the day before his eighteenth birthday. Clearly, there should be a big dance party scene. (By the way, if I recall correctly, in other films, it was the nineteenth birthday that was special for the kids. For some reason, that was been changed for this film.) Fred Williamson then decides to help Allison, and shows up at Carradine’s house with a search warrant, while two firemen show up to put out that nasty silo fire. But Carradine’s head splits open and fire shoots out, killing Williamson. Okay, then.

Well, after a while, Fire Eyes decides it’s time for his group to drink the magic punch and join He Who Walks Behind The Rows, so he leads them to the silo. So they all would have killed themselves, except that Allison is already there with bags of fertilizer and a can of gasoline and some plan to fight fire with fire. Earlier a couple of firemen tried to fight fire with water, the more normal thing, and the fire became angry, and rushed out to greet them, killing them before they could even turn on their hoses. So judging by that reaction, I’d say water would have worked as well. Of course, Allison could have simply walked away, and these stupid children would have gone ahead and killed themselves anyway. But instead, she has a fight with ol’ Fire Eyes, and he falls into the fire, joining He Who Walks Behind The Rows. And somehow Allison’s plan of dumping the gas can and fertilizer into the fire works, and the fire goes out.

And then, because horror movies feel some pressure to end on a final scare (which is almost always the dumbest thing in the film), Allison goes to take care of the baby that Jacob’s cult wife had, and suddenly it’s eyes have fire in them.

Oh boy.