Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 31, 2020

Franchise longevity is not exclusive to the Horror genre but it is within that genre that one will find, perhaps, the most plentiful examples. The Children of the Corn franchise has sprouted a bountiful harvest of films, beginning with the 1984 original, birthed from the mind of prolific Horror novelist Stephen King, and following on through with nine additional films, not including a scheduled 2021 remake. It is the third film, Urban Harvest, which is the concern of this review, a 1995 direct-to-video picture directed by James D. R. Hickox that follows an evil prepubescent youth hellbent on destroying his foster family and the urban community around him.

The evil, fanatical Eli (Daniel Cerny) and his older brother Joshua (Ron Melendez) have been taken into foster care following their father's mysterious and grisly death. They are plucked from the familiar comforts of their rural Nebraska life and dropped into Urban Chicago to proud parents William and Amanda Porter (Jim Metzler and Nancy Lee Grahn) who are eager to start a new life with their makeshift family. Joshua is excited about the prospects of starting over. He branches out from his old and familiar ways and slowly but surely begins to fit in at school. He even finds himself a girlfriend in the beautiful Maria (Mari Morrow) and a reliable friend in Maria's brother Malcolm (Jon Clair). But it quickly becomes obvious that Eli is holding fast to his evil religion, and it is not long until he begins making urban converts, threatening the strict religious structure at his school and Father Nolan's (Michael Ensign) spiritual guidance. Eli plants corn nearby, which William believes to be of great financial value, but Eli has other, more nefarious purposes for it as a key cog in corrupting the world around him to the ways of the rows.

For William and Amanda, things get a bit creepy -- literally -- when Amanda opens Eli’s suitcase to find it crawling with bugs. In reality, he’s brought some corn from home. But it’s the first of his many creepy, and deadly, manipulations as he tries to build an evil agricultural empire in downtown Chicago. The film’s move away from the typical rural setting and into the city offers a fresh dynamic while still clinging to some of the essentials, like the newly planted rows of corn and the grisly murders that follow. The gore is humorously cheesy and the visual effects don’t hold up particularly well, but there’s enough skin crawling ooey-gooey yuk spilling from people’s mouth and springing from gaping wounds to make even some of the more stalwart gore hounds a little uneasy.

The acting is surprisingly rather good for a movie of this caliber. Daniel Cerny brings just the right blend of creepy magnetism and evil persona to the lead role. Of course his is the most vital to the movie, and the actor's ability to emote as much with his eyes and physical demeanor as with his speech more than satisfies the character's essential needs. Ron Melendez is believable as the older brother who wishes to take advantage of the new environment not for evil but for personal growth, to enjoy the benefits of romance and friendship and fit in with his peers. He and Mari Morrow share positive screen chemistry as their romance builds. Jim Metzler is good as Eli's and Joshua's foster father who becomes increasingly obsessed with selling Eli's corn and himself falling under dark, demonic influence.

Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest arrives on Blu-ray with a 1080i presentation framed at 1.78:1. The picture is not perfect, but it at least holds tight to its filmic roots. There's a nice grain structure in play, mildly coarse at times but essentially flattering and true to the source. The picture is bothered by the random splotch and speckle but nothing that destroys any scene and certainly nowhere near to the level of rendering the picture unwatchable. Details are fairly strong, offering good basic clarity and well rendered elements, including basics like skin textures, close-ups of corn, and various urban environments, whether back where Eli has grown the corn, out on the playground, in school classrooms, or within the sanctuary where Father Nolan preaches his sermons. There are some crummy low-res optical effects shots that show severe artifacts and appear to be of a lower inherent resolution, but given the film's budget constraints and its visual ambitions it was seemingly a necessary trade-off. Colors are not particularly robust but neither do they appear dim or faded. The image holds to a fairly steady, reliable output, offering good green corn husks and yellow corn proper. Bloody gore is adequately saturated and the colorful 90s clothes bring some splash to the screen with a fair level of loud tonal output. Black levels are not poor, ditto skin tones. There's a little room for improvement here -- the picture could have benefited from even a modest clean-up and a 1080p resolution -- but as it is for a decidedly midlevel and low budget genre picture that's a quarter-century old and released by a budget-minded Blu-ray publisher, it looks fairly good all things considered.

Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest slices onto Blu-ray with a paltry but generally passable DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack. From the opening titles forward -- the music and the scythe running back and forth along the screen, wiping away the titles -- there's a decided lack of depth, vigor, and intimacy but there is a fair amount of stretch out to the edges, whether the scythe's move from end to end or the way the choral music pushes out to the far edges. Various of the more intensive sound effects, such as when a character is chased through an urban corn field by living tentacles around the 45-minute mark, deliver relatively healthy feels for space but, again like the opening titles, little in terms of serious depth. It's effective but far from perfect. A few minutes later, a nightmare yields some additional examples of the track's more than proficient spacing, creating a fairly airy, even eerie, result across the front expanse, which follows as the dreamer walks down a school hallway in a daze. A large, expansive scream a few minutes later also reveals the track's proficiency in taking advantage of its limited speaker availability. Modest city atmospherics are sufficiently integrated into the track, offering a fair sense of spacial location along the front with good essential clarity. Dialogue delivery is stable and clear and images well to the center, never sounding lost somewhere in the space between middle and the edges.

Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Echo Bridge Blu-ray release of Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest contains no supplemental features. The top menu screen only offers options for "Play" and "Chapters." No DVD or digital copies are included. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest is a surprisingly watchable film that features a magnetically evil lead and spins a halfway interesting yarn that blends rural terror with urban influences. The gore is over the top and the optical effects are not great, but once the audience falls under the story's spell the visuals more or less work in harmony with the whole. Echo Bridge's Blu-ray is featureless but delivers capable, though far from perfect, 1080i video and two-channel lossless audio. Worth a look for franchise and hardcore genre fans.