40 years on, 'Children of the Corn' holds sway over Siouxlanders

"No. I don’t particularly care for horror movies," Altman said. He prefers action flicks and the sort of fare that routinely tops the box office. 

"I don’t love horror movies," Bernstein LaCroix said. "I think about them way too much afterward."

And yet the two Sioux City North High grads wound up as part of the cast for a 1984 film adaptation of a short story by the so-called "King of Horror," Stephen King. Bernstein LaCroix and Altman were two of a number of Siouxland residents who filled the call sheets for "Children of the Corn," a folk horror tale about a fictional Nebraska town where all of the children, under the sway of a demonic spirit, murder all of the adults. The motion picture, which starred Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton and dropped the same year as a take on King's "Firestarter," made enough in theaters (about $14.6 million) to yield 10 additional "Children of the Corn" titles (most of which were direct to video).

"I watched maybe two and three but was not a fan of them. I never did watch the remake, I heard it wasn’t very good," said Mike Frizzell, a Sioux City resident who appeared in three scenes and got to do stunt work for Robby Kiger (the actor playing Job, one of a precious few kids to not participate in any parricide). 

Menacing and scary faces

Though the movie was framed as being set in Gatlin, Nebraska, it was largely shot in Hornick, Salix, Sergeant Bluff and Whiting, Iowa, in fall 1983. Which is how Altman, Bernstein LaCroix and Frizzell ended up in the finished product. 

"So when I was in third grade, my dad was on the board of the Sioux City Community Theatre. And I was with him and I remember him saying something about needing to stop at the theater. And so when we got there, they were doing auditions for a movie. And I must have asked my dad if I could audition and he did not know what the movie was about and said yes," Bernstein LaCroix said. "And so with the audition they took my picture and then asked me to give them my evil face. It was just a really simple audition and then I got cast."

The scene where Bernstein LaCroix is easiest to spot just so happens to be the one where the character Amos is being ritually sacrificed in a church. 

"You can see me when the camera pans to the children. My hair looked really red. And when everyone is running up the aisle, you see me grabbing this little boy’s hand and we’re like the last two out." 

Frizzell pops up there, too. "I can pick myself out of there because I’ve got corn dust in my eye and I’m messing with my eye when the camera goes by."

Frizzell and his brother, Corey, were big horror fans as kids and their mom read plenty of King's work. She was a waitress at the former Howard Johnson on Gordon Drive in Sioux City where the "Corn" crew was staying.

"They were having lunch or dinner at the restaurant and they asked her if she would like to be in the movie. She didn’t want to be but volunteered us," Frizzell said. "(I) didn’t know what I was doing but (I) looked like one of the kids who would be there."

Altman, a high school senior in drama, speech and theater, had pictures and measurements taken at the Community Theatre but never did an interview for a role. He remembered: "They called my younger brother and asked him some questions and said: We need you to look menacing. Can you look menacing?" 

His brother, Ron, heard back in a timely manner. It took Mike weeks. And when he finally got the call, the crew asked if he'd like to be in the film. 

"They didn't even didn't even ask me to come down. Still, to this day, I don't really know why," Altman said. 

He has a theory though.

In an early scene where the adults of Gatlin are massacred in a diner (which existed in Hornick as the Star Lane Cafe and Main Street Grill until a December 2008 fire), two kids enter just before the bloodbath begins. 

"I’m still convinced the primary reason they called me is that they wanted two guys who looked like brothers and we were the only two brothers with the correct age gap who looked like brothers," Altman said. 

So Altman got the part and got to be filmed taking a meat cleaver to a guy's back.

Despite the gruesomeness, Altman said his own parents weren't a bit concerned about their son being in an R-rated horror production.

"They knew that it was something I was completely interested in and at the time I thought that was direction I was going to take my life. I ended up not going that way for a variety of reasons. But they were pretty supportive of the idea and knew filming something like that is very different from watching it," he said.

It all looks the same

Northeast Missouri native John Sullivan didn't catch up with "Children of the Corn" until 1986 when he saw the movie on television at the age of 14. It left quite the impression on the longtime horror fan, in part because of how much the film's location reminded him of his own environment.

"Not a summer went by that there wasn't a cornfield that was always something I drove by or something that we always had, like a field across the street from our house. So in the summertime, when that movie came on, if they had a cornfield filled up over there, it was really strange, strange and scary to me as a kid," Sullivan said.

Since the initial viewing, Sullivan estimates he's seen the feature close to 100 times. He owns "Children of the Corn" on 10 or more formats (including Betamax and RCA Selectavision). He has posters from multiple countries (the French one calls it "Stephen King's horror kid"). He contributed to the special features for an Arrow Films remastering of the movie. And, for 17 years, he's operated the website: childrenofthecornmovie.com which is a kind of encyclopedia for the 1984 work. 

"I just wanted to have a site where everybody could go and find out information about the movie," Sullivan explained. Even now, he's revising and adding to the site.

The year he started the website (2007) is the year he made his first pilgrimage to Northwest Iowa to see where the movie magic happened.  Sullivan said so many spots were instantly recognizable to him.

"Definitely the main street in Whiting, where it was supposed to be the town hall, it all looks the same. And then you got your flagpole and things like that," Sullivan recalled. " In Sergeant Bluff at the very beginning of the movie, where it shows Burt and Vicky in their car, sitting out in front of a hotel, the interior used was Howard Johnson's in Sioux City. But the hotel that's in Sergeant Bluff, it pretty much still looks identical to the outside ... The church in Holly Springs, that was used for the church scenes, the exterior, it's no longer there but the church that was used for the interior it's in Sioux City. And the interior still looks a lot like the movie."

Having walked where Hamilton, Horton, John Franklin and Courtney Gains once trod, Sullivan got peek behind the curtain. 

"They’d turn a corner and they were in Salix and then they were in Whiting and Hornick. We thought it was funny but if you’re not from there, you wouldn’t know that," he said.

15 feet from fame?

"None of them were famous at the time. They were pretty much regular people," Bernstein LaCroix remarked about the main cast of "Children of the Corn."

Franklin and Gains, who played Isaac and Malachai, the two most prominent members of the cult, had never made a film before. Horton had been in CBS' single season take on "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" from 1982 to 1983. Production for "The Terminator," the sci-fi action epic Hamilton played Sarah Connor in, wouldn't begin production until March 1984, the same month "Children of the Corn" hit theaters. Bernstein LaCroix remembers the future star for a small act of kindness.

"Linda Hamilton was so sweet. I didn’t like the Porta Potty, it scared me, and she let me use her bathroom in her trailer," she said. 

Frizzell's memory of Hamilton is tinged with warmth, too.

"The scene where you see me running up and giving her a hug, I was really nervous about that and wasn’t sure about hugging her because she wasn’t my mom but she was super nice about it," Frizzell said.

Altman's on-set reminiscence drifts toward the filming of a scene where the kids are chasing Burt (Peter Horton) through the town. 

"The way the scene was shot, I thought I was in the scene but I see it and I realize I'm just a couple of feet off camera," Altman said. "There's one kid that says: 'You two go that way, you two go over there and the rest of you follow me,' or something like that. That kid is Dan Snook. Since they left his voice in the final cut, they had to make him a Screen Actors Guild member. And I remember standing 13 feet from him and the director kind of waving his finger over the group of guys and girls standing there, to figure out which one he's going to give the line to, and points at Dan. If he had been even 15 feet to his right, I might have gone to California with a SAG card and ridiculous dreams to see if I could pull something off."

Forty years on from those ridiculous dreams, Altman's content to attend what are now near-yearly get togethers in Northwest Iowa for the members of the cast and crew, including director Fritz Kiersch.

Sullivan got acquainted with Kenny Caperton who promotes "On Set Cinema" which allows people to see movies where they were actually filmed. Sullivan contacted Caperton three years back and asked about his interest in screening "Children of the Corn" in Whiting. Caperton was game. As were folks in the town.

"They said it was the first time the movie had ever been shown there in the town where it had been filmed," Sullivan said.

The initial event, in 2021, included a walking tour. In '22, a bus tour to the other towns was added. 

"Seeing all these people and remembering back in 2007, when I first pulled into Whiting and saw that flagpole and knowing how I felt, that’s where they filmed the movie, it was just like: Oh my gosh. And then I was one of the people who helped bring this event to Whiting and talking with all the people who were fans of the movie and they were standing by the flagpole and they had big grins on their faces," Sullivan said with pride.

Altman, Bernstein LaCroix and Frizzell have all attended.

"It very much exceeded my expectations," Altman said. 

For Frizzell, it's turned into a family affair. "It’s super fun. I take my daughter. She’s seen the movie 100 times, too."

With the 40th anniversary looming, Sullivan has hopes for a 2024 celebration of some kind.

"I’m really hoping we can get as many people back as possible for an anniversary event."