Children of the Corn  | 1984 | USA | Fritz Kiersch

One of the newer films to have been caught up in the video nasty scare, this adaptation of a Stephen King short story has now become a cult classic, spawning a lengthy franchise that has become much loved amongst horror lovers. Couple Burt and Vicky are heading to Seattle when they accidentally run a young boy down next to the fields of the sleepy town of Gatlin. Going into the streets, they find the town almost entirely abandoned, with the exception of some children who are engaging in strange ritualistic behaviour. The horror slowly begins to unfold as it transpires the adults of the town have been ritualistically murdered by the children, all of whom now pledge allegiance to the controlling Isaac and a deity only known as ‘He Who Walks Behind the Rows’. Upon release on VHS, the film was involved in quite a scandalous predicament after the police seized the film from dealers in the Isle of Wight, intending to prosecute the film as a video nasty, presumably due to the involvement of children in the narrative. Only when police discovered that the Thorn EMI video was more censored than the BBFC-approved cinema cut did they drop the entire affair.