Really Awful Movies

Road trip!

Vicky and Burt are traipsing through Nebraska en route to Seattle so he can pursue a medical-related job opportunity. (Pro tip: next time, forget the scenic route and cash in those frequent flyer points, even if it’s JetBlue).

The duo is regaled with a selection of end-times hectoring on the radio, surely a sign something is…Amish (har har).

And sure enough, a kid stumbles out of the rows of corn, and the doc doesn’t take action quickly enough. But it turns out it’s not the sedan that’s sending this kid to Cornhusker heaven – you see, his neck was already sliced like deli meat.

Soon, Vicky and Burt puts the following sinister maxim to the test: a friend helps you move, a good friend helps you move a body.

They put the kid’s lifeless form in the trunk and trek it to the nearest down, Gatlin, all things considered an upstanding move, but not a smart one.

Denizens of Gatlin sport wide-brim hats and talk solemnly about the peculiar “he who walks behind rows,” and it almost goes without saying, are not keen on outsiders.

Children of the Corn features some nice atmospheric touches and an epic score, but is not exactly a barn…burner.

As a Stephen King adaptation, it ranks somewhere in the middle – only because so many awful ones have been made of late it almost looks better by comparison.

*** (out of 5)

We can trace the horror arc of mucking about with human life back to Mary Shelley. It’s basically a tale as old as time, and The Rejuvenator is certainly not alone as an IP tackling the subject. In fact, one of the more popular offerings shares a suffix and subject matter – site favorite, Re-Animator – which predates this by a couple of years.

These couldn’t be more similar: in the latter, Dr. Herbert West develops a serum to bring the dead back to life, first with a cat and then unwitting two-legged subjects. With The Rejuvenator, Dr Gregory Ashton sources neural tissue from cadavers and injects an experimental serum into patients despite frequent warnings from colleagues. He does so, in a sense, to bring the dying back to life – or, to reverse the aging process for a patron, an aging dowager/Old Hollywood-styled actress desperate for her old, or er, new face.

A low-budget regional horror (New York/New Jersey) The Rejuvenator (aka, The Rejuvenatrix) is spirited and talky, and has some pretty entertaining practical effects and some over-the-top performances.

There’s even a graverobber hiding out in a derelict industrial building, sporting a Dickensian accent.

You could take drinking game-swig every time someone says “doctor,” and end up in the hospital yourself.

Made for fans of white-coat horrors…you know, films with lab settings and scientists not heeding warnings about their controversial work.

*** (out of 5)

Check out the Really Awful Movies Podcast discussion of The Rejuvenator.