Pale white, rail thin, squatting.  Eating corn raw, straight from the cob in a cornfield.  This is how we meet our protagonist(?).  This strange individual with seemingly psychic powers of some kind meets a parade of eccentric and memorable characters.  A fat man mimics his motions and has an usual fixation with a clown painting on the cornshukker’s wall while lecturing the cornshukker about his own mythical origins.  We discover that the cornshukker not only eats corn but also pisses corn.  He terrifies a girl scout with his distorted bulbous head.  He is serenaded by Grateful Dead fans.  He is tormented by crawdads.  A lady selling cosmetics attempts to make him pretty.  We discover he also uses corn as currency when he pays the air-headed pizza guy from Smegma Pizza.  He dances the tango with a Spanish woman.  He praises Jesus with a fiery black preacher.  When a drunk old man confronts him, throwing rocks at him, the cornshukker is forced to kill to protect himself.  Despite hiding the body, a nosy cop comes sniffing around and before long the townsfolk have put together a lynch mob to deal with him.  Worry not for the cornshukker though.  An Elvis impersonator with a mean mullet is due by any minute on his motorcycle to take the cornshukker away to paradise in the harvest.

Willfully strange, intermittently goofy and amateurish.  The acting is mostly awful (although some fare better than others).  It was shot on 16 mm but all we have left is a transfer from grainy VHS which in a way feels appropriate.  This is a movie that is probably best watched stoned, but since I’m one of those guys who don’t partake of the illicit substances (yea, I’m a square…what of it?), I watched this sucker stone cold sober.  Hoo boy, this one was a doozy.  Despite the low-rent nature of it (the director in the interview on the blu-ray mentions that it cost $5000… where’d that money go?), it’s oddly watchable just because it’s a constant parade of weird nonsense.  The press material for it makes comparisons to David Lynch and particularly Eraserhead and while budgetary-wise and in general odd tone, it might be superficially similar, Lynch’s film seems to have much more to actually say while The Cornshukker seems to be content to screw around and wallow in absurdity.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing really.  I just wanted to draw the distinction.  

New Vinegar Syndrome partner label VHShitfest brings this oddball, mostly forgotten film to blu-ray in clean but obviously compromised format.  According to a disclaimer the original 16mm film negative has been lost and all that they could find to use for this release was a VHS (probably one of the few that were distributed back in 1997 when it was first distributed).  It’s a shame that the original negative is gone but like I stated previously, the movie doesn’t really suffer much from it.  On the audio front, it’s about as expected of an extremely low budget film with sketchy mic placement and lots of cheesy overdubs.  From a purely technical presentation standpoint, we aren’t in Top Gun Maverick territory here.  Still blu-rays are more resilient than DVDs so despite not really gaining anything technically by pressing a blu-ray release, The Cornshukker will exist longer for future generations to enjoy.  

As far as extras, we have a few to compliment the film including an audio commentary from writer/director Brando Snider as well as an 8-minute interview with him as well, mostly talking about a few things not covered in the commentary.  Honestly the commentary was a little hit-or-miss.  While there are some interesting tidbits occasionally, there’s also a lot of just describing what’s on screen and even empty air time.  We are given little nuggets that give a glimpse of some of the motivations behind the production though like on the day the Grateful Dead guys were being filmed, the director thought he was probably high most of the day.  And that drunk old man throwing rocks at the cornshukker was legit completely wasted to the point he could barely stand, which I guess makes sense why he was one of the more convincing performances.  The interview featurette has Snider mostly talking about the distribution of the film and it’s staying power 20+ years later.  We also have a music video from some rando band that uses clips from the movie (and that sounds SUPER ‘90s) and a trailer for Snider’s follow-up film Myth (which doesn’t look nearly as interesting as The Cornshukker).

So where did I land on this dorky, strange cryptid flick?  Honestly it was pretty fun to watch, and I would especially recommend it as a potential party movie.  Get some friends to stop by, boil up some corn on the cob and enjoy.