Filming for Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering took place in Austin, Texas in the middle of 1994. According to Watts, she was paid $5,000 for her work in the film. Release Home media Like its immediate predecessor, Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest, the film did not receive a theatrical release. It was released straight-to-video on October 8, 1996 by Dimension Home Video. It later received a North American DVD release on October 9, 2001. Miramax later released it as part of a six film set containing parts 2-7 and on a nine film set also featuring three titles from the Halloween series. The film was released on Blu-ray for the first time by Echo Bridge Home Entertainment in a four-film set on November 29, 2011, also featuring Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest, Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror, and Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return. Critical response Matt Serafini of Dread Central gave the film a positive review, calling it "a marginally better effort than [Part III], even if it ignores the previous film's lead-in ending in favor of taking things back to rural America". He also praised Watts's performance as well as Karen Black's, but noted that the latter "doesn't have much to do". TV Guide gave the film a middling review, noting: "Overall, the film settles for genre cliches instead of any genuinely imaginative twists. A couple of gory jolts aside, the scares are predictable, as are the characters and plotting... Given such material, the performances can't rate high: Watts, so fetching as the sidekick in Tank Girl (1994), is appealing but given little to do except go through the motions; Black gives her typical mannered, eccentric performance; and Kleyla brings no particular malice to the pint-sized villain." Randy Myers of Knight Ridder News Services awarded the film a 2.5 out of 5-star rating, concluding that it "has its own morbid sense of humor and style." Rebecca Lea of Den of Geek wrote in a retrospective review that The Gathering is "a solidly made film that takes a creepy premise and crafts a few jump scares out of it. The plot ties up in a nice, neat way and there’s a decent storyline running through it. The problem is that it feels almost like a horror movie by the numbers that forgets it needs to paint crucial background with