This article is part of an AGDAILY series on the history and lore of haunted farm locations across the United States.
A classic movie that many have seen — and probably won’t ever forget — is Children of the Corn, based on Stephen King’s short story first published in 1977. The original 1984 version is the one you should watch, because the more recent versions have some pretty mixed reviews, and in some cases, downright frightening ones!
And if you’re too chicken to watch the movie, here’s a synopsis with a few behind the scenes tidbits I bet you didn’t know.
The movie starts out with a couple, Burt and Vicky, who are driving across the country. Distracted by their map, the couple hits a young boy in the road. Burt gets out to see and realizes that the boy was attacked and barely alive as he stumbled into the road before being hit. Burt covers the boy with a sheet as he investigates the nearby corn field.
On the set, when Vicky gets out to investigate what they hit while Burt is searching around, the directors told her there was a mannequin under the blanket. They told her this because they wanted a genuine scared reaction when she pulled the sheet and a live boy jumped out to scare her!
After looking around, Burt decides to put the dead boy in the car and head to the nearest police station, in the fictional town of Gatlin, Nebraska.
The real town that the movie was shot in was around Hornick, Iowa. Check out this article that talks about the houses of the Children of the Corn! And the highway scenes in the movie were shot on California’s interstates.
The small town of Gatlin had a gas station and a diner, but they appeared to be abandoned. Noticing a church that seemed to look more lively, the couple stopped, and Burt went in. Already on edge because of the grisly scene inside, Burt was then startled by the car horn outside.
He went outside to find his wife in the car surrounded by young farm kids smashing in the car windows with shovels and pitchforks. They drag Vicky out while one child stabs Burt in the arm to keep him from getting in their way.
Burt ran until he found a corn field to hide in, where he notices that there are no weeds or animal tracks, and every stalk of corn is perfectly blemish free — something that we all know would be odd to see!
While wandering around the corn Burt finds himself in a barren part of the field. It didn’t take him long to see that this barren circle was set up as a place of worship for the kids who took Vicky earlier in the day. As Burt tried to run, the corn stalks joined together in a wall so Burt was trapped.
In order to learn more about movie making and set production, a local Boy Scout Troop helped out with this scene. They dug-out trenches and barren ground in the field are the handy work of these Scouts!
I won’t ruin the ending for you, but I will say that the ending would have been much more interesting if it weren’t for a half million dollar budget cut that shorted one of the main characters, Isaac! Apparently King wanted his money upfront for the producers to use his story, which reduced their production budget by a half million. That might be the reason why in the original film, they misspelled his name as Steven rather than Stephen!
Watching Children of the Corn will make you never want to scout corn fields again, and for good reason. Many of us have experienced getting disoriented in the corn fields, or hearing critters running around close to us. Next time that happens be careful, because you never know what could be lurking inside!
Elizabeth Maslyn is a born-and-raised dairy farmer from Upstate New York. Her passion for agriculture has driven her to share the stories of farmers with all consumers, and promote agriculture in everything she does. She works hard to increase food literacy in her community, and wants to share the stories of her local farmers.
