CHILDREN OF THE CORN Blu-ray

Walking the VHS rows as a kid, I’d always fascinate myself with all the chapters and sequels of all those venerable horror franchises. I’d daydream and hyperbolize just how good the first film in each franchise must be to spawn so many sequels. Everyone knew about the quality of the originals when it came to Psycho or Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street, but for every series spawned on a classic, there were a dozen or so that weren’t. The Amityville Horror, Ghoulies, Witchcraft, Pumpkinhead, and even Saw today, each have spawned never ending franchises on by most accounts terrible first films. Unlike drama or action, it’s not the strength of the cast or crew that makes these franchises last, but instead the mere strength of the concept. A possessed house, people forced to kill themselves, a punishing farm demon, goblins that come out of the toilet. Well, okay, not even the concept works in Ghoulies’ favor, but part of what makes horror so intriguing is the way franchises just never seem to die.

Not only does it happen with quite regularity that horror franchises reach the five film landmark, but it’s often the case that many of those sequels are completely different than the others. It’s always the roll of the dice with franchise horror. Sometimes you get sequels that have nothing to do with their originals – Troll 2, Halloween 3, Zombi 2, and sometimes you get sequels that by all accounts eclipse the originals – Ghoulies II, It Lives Again, Dawn of the Dead. Becoming a horror aficionado means taking the pledge to sift through the endless sequels in search of those diamond in the rough follow ups. It’s a hell of a sift for those brave enough to visit the Children of the Corn – seven films later and it’s still thriving on the direct-to-video market. What about the one that started it all? Anchor Bay’s released it twice before on DVD and now it hits the disc a third time on Blu-ray. The 20th Anniversary DiviMax has been upgraded with new features on Blu-ray for the 25th but is this franchise father closer to Amityville than it is Halloween? Time to start the harvest and find out!

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DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK Warner Archive DVD

There’s a sub-genre of horror films that is all but extinct today: Housewife Horror. With women’s lib in the late sixties and early seventies, it seemed like women truly would get a fair shake in society. Yet, old customs, preconceptions and prejudices have made the journey to absolute equality a much longer battle. To address those cases of progressive minds stuck in homemaker houses was the genre practically birthed by Polanski with Rosemary’s Baby. Others would soon follow, like Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, Images, Season of the Witch, and The Stepford Wives all in the early seventies. Television certainly wasn’t off limits either, with two notable entries fusing female frustrations with tiny tormenters. Many remember the second, Trilogy of Terror, for the segment where Karen Black is tormented by a possessed Zuni fetish doll but before that there was an entire telefilm devoted to that same concept. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark has long been a TV movie favorite and now finally, like favorite Bad Ronald before it, it’s finally coming to DVD via the Warner Archives. Is it worth dusting off, or should this sleeper stay bricked in the fireplace?

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HARPER'S ISLAND DVD

Whodunit television as we know it today was probably conceived when pop culture the world over wondered just who shot J.R. on popular nighttime soap Dallas. After that cliffhanger, they coddled the mystery for another four episodes, leaving people guessing, in suspense and just generally frantic to figure out how it would all come together. It took about ten years, but Twin Peaks finally took that Dallas plot thread and pushed it to the center, where the entire series was solely about discovering who wrapped young Laura Palmer in plastic. Of course with David Lynch behind it it ended up becoming so much more and less all at the same time, but regardless of how surreal it got, fans still demanded an answer. Special Agent Cooper’s appraisal of pie certainly had its followers, but quickly pop culture tired of Twin Peaks when it strayed away from the formula that brought it first into the mainstream.

While there were certainly shows since inspired by the Twin Peaks mold, like Push, Nevada, it proved more to be a creative one-off than the lasting genre that showed so much promise in the Dallas days. Along came Harper’s Island earlier this year to change all that, though, with the simple premise of a murder an episode as a killer stalks an island wedding party. No season cliffhangers, just a slasher whodunit spread lightly over 13 episodes. The formula seemed to work for TV, but how does it transition to home video. Does it become the most long-winded slasher in history with redundant recaps from episode to episode, or does the guaranteed quota of grisly deaths it still translate to good entertainment? Let the island lighthouse shine light on the truth!

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