Les Démons du maïs 3 : Les Moissons de la terreur

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.

People who write about this movie say it's terrible. Man, this movie is a masterpiece compared to all the other Children of the Corn films. This is what the others SHOULD have been like. There are a lot of cheap, "jump"-type scares, but they're more than made up for by the overabundance of surrealistic special effects (check out the suitcase full of worms) and over-the-top, gory death scenes. Sure the plot is stupid, but when has the plot for ANY of the Children of the Corn movies NOT been stupid? This movie is a visual treat for gorehounds. There's a few disturbing dream sequences, a giant demon that looks like a malformed popcorn kernel, limb dismemberment, head impalement, an EXTREMELY graphic decapitation/spinal cord removal, scarecrows made from decomposing bodies with sewn-shut eyes and mouths, a particularly nasty head-melting sequence, eye-gouging by corn stalks, a few split-open, roach-infested heads, and a bloody crucifixtion. Definetely the goriest and most disturbing of the series.

...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

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.

This movie is pretty much weird, but the performances were well. Daniel Cerny who plays Eli did a well job. The movie deals with pure evil it seems like. The gore parts are rather weird as well and have no purpose, to me killing people and worshiping a harvest or corn is rather spooky. But since I've seen scary movies this one came out to be rather weird and not so much disturbing just really. I know I say weird a lot in this review, but some of the graphics were weird too. I'm surprised they made a whole bunch of sequels to Children Of The Corn based upon the Stephen King novel "Children Of The Corn".