pumpktoberfest #35 - harvesting crap.

film: children of the corn 3: urban harvest
beer: sam adams harvest pumpkin ale

when it comes to horror films, i have somewhat of a proclivity towards those that are part of sequel-spewing franchises. if you're able to take a concept & run with it for multiple films, especially if you're able to drag it out to the point of hilarity, i'm all for it. with that said, somehow i haven't seen a single children of the corn film even though there have been nine of them, including a TV remake of the original that came out this august. for today's pumpktoberfest pairing, i opted for the third film in the series--children of the corn 3: urban harvest--a direct-to-video gem that focuses on two farm boys who, after an incident on the farm, get adopted by a family in chicago & have to go to the city for the first time ever.

the children of the corn franchise, based on a short story by stephen king, focuses on an evil entity called "he who walks behind the rows." those "rows" are of the corn variety & this evil entity's "thing" is getting children to murder all the adults. in the first film, a creepy boy preacher named isaac encourages the other kids to do the entity's bidding. in the third film, the entity enlists the help of a creepy boy named eli who, after moving to chicago with only a suitcase full of ears of corn, unleashes corny evil on the city. he starts by heading to an abandoned factory & sowing corn kernels from the aforementioned suitcase corn. within days, a shitload of corn plants have sprouted up. from there, "he who walks behind the rows" is IN DA HOUSE, urban stylee.

with his corn plants in place, eli's ready to take care of business. first up is a hungry homeless dude who gets lured in by the thought of eating corn. then eli unleashes a bunch of roaches into the school lunch, a development that directly affects the school priest, who becomes struck with nightmares of children all a-murdering. soon after, eli talks during one of the priest's sermons & the priest asks eli "do i bore you? would you like to try it?" duh, priest...he's a creepy religious kid who put bugs in your stew. of COURSE he wants to address all the students with his corn-influenced teachings...so he does & all the school children start dressing in black & listening to eli's rants about how the adults are ruining the planet. trivia! charlize theron's totally one of the kids.

while all this is going on, eli's home life is a bit nuts. his brother starts acting all urban & his new dad tries to go all businessman and sell eli's crazy, fast-growing corn & his new mom is totally creeped out by him. rightfully so, since she soon experiences death via corn plant. in fact, corn plants do a majority of the murdering in this film. the kids don't even get much of a chance to pitch in on the murdering, which is too bad because they had to sit through all those creepy kid sermons. by the time harvest time rolls around & the flimmakers whip out the amazingly low-budget CGI ridiculousness, it's CRYSTAL clear as to why this film went direct to video.

for today's pumpktoberfest brew, we've got the sam adams harvest pumpkin ale & before i go any further, i'm going to use three CAPITALIZED words to describe sam adams & their beers: LOW. HANGING. FRUIT. as a product of new england & boston in particular, i really want to like sam adams brewing. i really do but after sam adams' beers took the place as my first ever craft beer love back in college, my palate's became more refined & i realized that while their beers aren't crap, they aren't good either. i guess they're fine if you don't know any better but the way they brand themselves as "brewing masters" rubs me the same way that miller's "great taste" slogan does. plus, sam adams founder jim koch sort of seems like a dick. don't even THINK about stealing sam adams' stupid glass design or employees. while they have a point in the first case, the second isn't as clear cut. still, both examples wreak of a company that grew out of its "craft beer" status & is now flexing its muscle with lawsuits.

the harvest pumpkin ale is their addition to the pumpkin beer fray & it's just plain awful. i mean, it's not like jack's pumpkin spice ale bad but it's pretty terrible. it's a transparent, amberish-colored beer with a scent that's definitely one of pumpkin pie spices. somehow, those spices don't really show up in the flavor though. in fact, nothing much shows up in the flavor. there's no hop or pumpkin content worth speaking of. i mean, it has the body of, um...the invisible man. no no no...of a pre-pubescent child. no no no...of someone in a save the children ad who isn't sally struthers. weak sauce. i don't know if sam adams was trying to avoid being one of those beers overloaded with pumpkin pie spices but regardless, they've produced a bland pumpkin beer that's not worth trying more than once...the low man on the totem pole this pumpktoberfest season.