Children, The (1980)

... aka: Abrazo mortal (Mortal Hugs)
... aka: Children of Ravensback, The
... aka: De si gentils petits... monstres! (So Sweet, Little.... Monsters!)
... aka: Toxicke deti (Toxic Children)

Directed by:
Max Kalmanowicz

The killer kid movie has been a genre staple for quite some time now. The ball first got rolling back in 1956 with the classic The Bad Seed. Based on Maxwell Anderson's successful stage play, the film focuses on blonde-haired, blue-eyed 8-year-old Rhoda Penmark, a cute and spunky pig-tailed moppet who also happens to be a cold-blooded, calculating little murderess. Because the original film allowed Rhoda to get away with her crimes (and resulted in the death of her mother), censors demanded the end be changed to punish the little psycho via divine intervention (a random lightning strike). The next notable film in this category was Village of the Damned (1960), with its legion of creepy, emotionless, blonde-haired alien kids causing havoc in a small British village being a popular enough concept to result in the sequel Children of the Damned three years later. The brilliant Henry James adaptation The Innocents (1961) focused on a repressed governess (Deborah Kerr) who believes the two young children in her care are possessed by spirits. LORD OF THE FLIES (1963) depicted the level of savagery a group of young boys could be reduced to when stranded on an island and left to their own devises. Numerous other popular films in the 60s carried on the killer / evil kid theme, most notably the stylish ghost tale Kill Baby Kill (1966), Mia Farrow's creepy pregnancy in ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) and the trowel-wielding zombie girl in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), but the real explosion of these kind of movies happened the following decade.

Though there were numerous other examples prior to its release, it was The Exorcist (1973) and its famous depiction of cherubic little Linda Blair being possessed by a foul-mouthed demon that launched a whole spate of similar films hoping to shock audiences with "innocent" children doing all kinds of horrible things. Excluding the numerous Exorcist copies primarily produced in Europe over the next few years, Larry Cohen gave us IT'S ALIVE (1974), which involves a mutant infant that begins its killing spree right out of the womb. That same year, the one-of-a-kind DEVIL TIMES FIVE (1974) mixed drive-in exploitation with the killer kid theme to surprisingly good results. Soon after there was ALICE, SWEET ALICE (1976), which laid suspicion on a series of brutal murders on a young, disturbed Catholic schoolgirl, WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? (1976), which featured a whole island full of killer children, and The Omen (1976), a huge hit that centered around the 5-year-old Antichrist and was followed by a whole bunch of sequels (plus an awful remake). Other 70s releases featuring killer kiddies of note included the TV movies ALL THE KIND STRANGERS and Bad Ronald (both 1974), THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE (1976), Audrey Rose, CATHY'S CURSE, THE CHILD (all 1977), Halloween (1978), The Brood, Salem's Lot and THE VISITOR (all 1979).

Things didn't slow down one bit in the 80s with The Godsend (1980), The Appointment, Bloody Birthday, Kiss Daddy Goodbye, Nightmare, The Pit (all 1981), Don't Go to Sleep, Trick or Treats (both 1982), Children of the Corn (1984) and numerous others. All the 90s and 2000s have proven is that they are never going to stop making these things. It's gotten to the point now where it's hard to even watch a horror film (especially ones dealing with ghosts or the supernatural) without it including some glum, precocious little pasty-faced "creepy" child. The Children pretty much mixes up what went down in Village of the Damned with a dash of Night of the Living Dead's killer zombie child, but this low-budget offering at least offers up an amusing twist to the standard formula.

Worried about not getting paid for overtime, a couple of construction workers leave their job investigating pressure drops at a nuclear generating facility a bit prematurely. There's a leak, a cloud of toxic smoke forms and then is blown off by the wind to the small town of Ravensback. A school bus with five children on board end up driving right through the cloud. Soon after, Sheriff Billy Hart (Gil Rogers) stumbles upon the bus abandoned by an old cemetery with the motor still running but neither the driver nor any of the children are anywhere to be found. He then goes to ask the parents (most of whom seem curiously unconcerned) if any of their young'uns have made it home. With a resounding no from pretty much everyone (one even suggests the driver “took them on an impromptu picnic or something” and finds the prospect of her daughter being kidnapped “exciting”), Sheriff Hart has his dimwitted young Deputy Harry Timmons (Tracy Griswold), who seems mostly interested in getting in his girlfriend Suzie's (Joy Glaccum) pants, put up a roadblock so no car can enter or leave until the mystery is solved. But never fear, the kids finally do show up... except they aren't quite the same when they do.

Because of the poison gas, the kiddies have been transformed into pale, bloodless zombie kids with black fingernails who have the amazing special power to cause anyone they touch to start smoking and essentially burn to death. The epidemic of children lurking around with outstretched arms and smiles on their faces giving deadly hugs soon starts claiming the lives of nearly everyone in town. Seemingly the only parent in the area who even gives a damn, John Freemont (Martin Shakar), teams up with the Sheriff to find out what's going on when his daughter Jenny (Clara Evans) doesn't come home. The two learn this isn't just an isolated incident in their small town but is happening all over the Tri State area. The kids eventually trap both men, plus John's very pregnant wife Cathy (Gale Garnett), who gets so stressed out, she takes a drag off a cigarette, pats her stomach and apologizes to he unborn baby (!) and their little (unaffected) boy, inside.

A very dumb but pretty memorable low-budget film, this has lots of unintentionally funny / corny dialogue that makes the otherwise OK cast look bad and drags in the middle with a bunch of repetitive and off-screen kills, but the premise remains a lot of fun and there are both laughs and a few mildly creepy bits. Most hilarious of all (well, if you have a certain sense of humor) are scenes with the surviving adults shooting the little monsters with a shotgun from the window and the big finale where our heroes run around armed with an axe and sword dismembering the combustible kiddies (the only way to kill them) right and left! They even throw in an amusing, albeit predictable, little twist at the very end.

The cast includes Shannon Bolin as a general store owner and Rita Montone (Maniac) as an airhead mother who goes topless. The music is from Friday the 13th composer Harry Manfredini, who I'm beginning to suspect only actually composed one score during his entire career because all of them sound exactly the same. Co-writer / producer Carlton J. Albright (whose children Sarah and Nathaniel get to play two of the nuclear tykes) and co-writer / associate producer Edward Terry (who also plays a small role as a redneck) later teamed up for Luther the Geek (1990). Both it and this one were released by Troma, whose full-screen “remastered” 25th Anniversary release is pretty much a joke but does contain some good extras like a commentary track from Albright. The extras reveal that this film was also, amazingly enough, the basis for an off-Broadway musical!

★★

Final Terror, The (1983)

... aka: Angst
... aka: Bump in the Night
... aka: Campsite Massacre
... aka: Carnivore
... aka: Creeper, The
... aka: Forest Primeval, The
... aka: Horror at Mill Creek
... aka: Three Blind Mice

Directed by:
Andrew Davis

One of many campground / backwoods slashers that went into production shortly after Friday the 13th proved its box office might in the summer of 1980, this one comes with some pretty big names attached to it. For starters, director Davis would go on to make big budget films like the critically-acclaimed The Fugitive (1993) starring Harrison Ford and a bunch of (not acclaimed but financially successful) Steven Seagal movies. And then we have co-writer Ronald Shusett, who'd previously scripted and helped produce the huge hit ALIEN (1979) and went on to write other horror and sci-fi favorites like Dead & Buried (1981) and Total Recall (1990). In addition, this boasts a cast of up-and-coming familiar faces, among them Joe Pantoliano (The Sopranos), Adrian Zmed (T.J. Hooker), Rachel Ward (The Thorn Birds) and Daryl Hannah (just a few years before Splash). All that combined may lead one to expect more than business as usual but that turns out not to be the case at all. This is strictly by-the-numbers, predictable filmmaking that offers up nothing at all memorable.

A man and his girlfriend wreck their motorcycle and then get butchered (one with a tin can lid booby tap) by an off-screen menace. Soon after, Mike (Mark Metcalf) leads a group of four “youth corps” trainee park rangers; Zorich (John Friedrich), Cerone (Zmed), Hines (Ernest Harden Jr.) and Boone (Lewis Smith), out into the same stretch of woods where the couple has gone missing. On their way, they pick up Mike's girlfriend Melanie (Cindy Harrell) and three of her female friends; Margaret (Ward), Windy (Hannah) and Vanessa (Akosia Busia). As they pull away, Windy's mother turns to her husband and asks “What about that missing couple?” to which he assuredly replies “They'll be OK. There's three adults.” Apparently these two have never seen a horror movie before. Pantoliano has a silly, overacted role as Eggar the mentally-imbalanced bully of a bus driver. With a near-constant scowl on his face, he's asked to grit his teeth, bug his eyes out and scream nearly all of his dialogue at the top of his lungs. For some reason he seems especially mad that the guys will be able to mingle, and potentially score, with some of the girls.

After a singalong of “Three Blind Mice” (at one point the shooting title because they had no clue what else to call this during production) and spending the day clearing wood out of a stream and smoking weed, the gang settle down for a little scary campfire story involving a local urban legend. Supposedly many years earlier when there was a logging camp nearby, a teen girl was raped by her own father, went crazy and gave birth to an incest baby that grew up to become a crazy adult who then sprung his mama out of the nuthouse. Both are now said to haunt the woods. The next day, Mike and Mel discover this legend may be true when someone decides to hack them up, leaving the “teens” to fend for themselves 30 long miles from civilization. They discover a shack where the killer stores body parts in jars and a dog's head in the cupboard and finally decorate themselves in mud and ferns and go all “primitive” by setting up booby traps, but the vast majority of the film is comprised of constantly-bickering characters walking around looking for people.

I was actually looking forward to revisiting a better print of this movie. All I had seen prior was the old Vestron VHS, which was so impenetrably dark you couldn't tell what was even going on half the time. Now that I finally can see everything, sadly, it did little to change my initial opinion. This simply has very little to offer outside of some admittedly nice forest scenery. There's no suspense, scares or real surprises, the plot's completely formulaic and the one-dimensional characters aren't the least bit likable. Add to that a low body count (which makes the “Can anyone survive?” tag line rather humorous... "Yeah, pretty much everybody!") and mostly off-screen kills (the opening pair of murders were added by someone else later on to up the body count for the slasher market) and the movie serves almost no purpose whatsoever. It also wasn't a wise choice for Davis, who also shot the film under the name “Andreas Davidescu” to use “available light” since most of this takes place in a heavily shaded forest. The combination of being bland and looking gloomy makes this difficult to really enjoy on any front.

Shot in 1981, this was held back for release for several years until a few of the cast members started to make names for themselves in other projects. It's “presented” by executive producer Samuel Z. Arkoff, whose daughter also plays a small role. The TV print contains an additional scene at the beginning with the first two victims at the beach not in the video or DVD prints. According to a disclaimer at the beginning of the Shout! Factory DVD, the negatives and all original film elements are lost, so this is the best they could do with what they had to work with. I really don't know the technicalities of film restoration and won't pretend otherwise but visually their release is perfectly watchable. Whether or not you should even bother is another story entirely.

★1/2

China Lake Murders, The (1990)

... aka: Killing Cop
... aka: Krimi a Sárga tónál (Crime in Yellow Lake)
... aka: Sale journée pour un flic (Bad Day for a Cop)
... aka: Un asesino en la carretera (A Murderer on the Road)
... aka: Una vacanza a rischio (A Dangerous Holiday)

Directed by:
Alan Metzger

In 1983, Robert Harmon made the short CHINA LAKE, which revolved around an unstable big city police officer played by Charles Napier who eases work-related stress by going to the desert and using his badge and uniform to ensnare and then terrorize (sometimes kill) motorists. The film helped the director land THE HITCHER (1986) a few years later, which remains the film he's best known for today. The China Lake Murders (which was made for cable TV and debuted on the USA Network) is basically the same exact story with the same exact primary character using many of the same exact shots with much of the same exact events and dialogue, only stretched out to feature length. Some call it a remake, some call it a sequel and it's sort-of both because it recaps all of the original yet expands upon it. Either way, it's clearly based on Harmon's film (and original script) and yet the director's name is nowhere to be seen in this film's credits. The screenplay is credited only to N.D. Schreiner. The link between these two productions is Beth Tate, the co-story writer and co-producer of the original short, who also is credited as co-producer on this version.

Things begin with a scene-by-scene recap of the short, with many of the exact same scenes. It's made obvious right from the beginning that the director watched Harmon's film before making this one because a lot of the shots are even identical. Starting at a police station meeting, we're informed that Officer Donnelly (Michael Parks) is away on vacation at China Lake, a place he visits every single year at around the same time. We next see him driving his bike down in the desert dressed in full uniform. He pulls over Lynn Harrelson (Lara Parker), accuses her of being drunk, makes her do a sobriety test, gets her to turn away from him, then grabs her and stuffs her inside her trunk; leaving her there to die. Next, he's off to a gas station where he changes into regular clothes. In this version, with just a few alterations he can easily turn his police bike into a regular motorcycle. Since the short didn't have a hero, we get one here in the form of compassionate new-sheriff-in-town Sam Brodie (Tom Skerritt), who's on the case once Lynn's husband (Tom Dahlgren) shows up to report her missing.

Next we're treated to the same diner scene from the short, where Donnelly chats with lonely waitress Kitty (Lauren Tewes, from The Love Boat) and has a violent fantasy of burning an obnoxious customer's (Jack Kehler) hand on a grill. He even sees the “Cement Workers Stay Hard Forever” (nyuck nyuck!) bumper sticker as he leaves. The only real difference is that the tongue burning bit has been left out. Naturally, Donnelly will later cross paths with the cement worker in the final scene recycled from the short. Before that happens, Donnelly goes to a bar, plays Pac Man and gets drunk. He steps outside to take a piss on the side of the building and is arrested by Deputy Bobby Wade (Doug Mears) for public indecency. The next day, Sheriff Sam lets Donnelly go with a slap on the wrist on the provision that he leave town. When the visiting officer's bike won't start, the two end up sharing a beer and stories back at Sam's place and then Donnelly, well, he just won't go away.

Sam, a divorced single dad, is sleeping with his secretary Cindy. She's played by athletic blonde Nancy Everhard (previously seen in DeepStar Six and Deathstone), who's 25 years Skerritt's junior. I guess that's a bit more believable than Drew Barrymore, who was 40 years (!) younger than Skerritt in Poison Ivy a few years later, though Barrymore's character at least had a motive to sleep with him! As Sam and Cindy start working on getting the old police files transferred over to computer, they notice a pattern. There have been 14 disappearances and murders in the area over the past five years and they've all happened at around the same time of year... the same time Donnelly has been vacationing in the area. For some reason, Sheriff Sam fails to link the two together and instead befriends Donnelly, gives him access to his home for use whenever he needs it and even allows him to come along on official police business. It isn't until several murders later and seeing Donnelly act like a blatant psycho that our hero finally catches on.

Not a bad little expansion on the short. While the original has better direction and camerawork and is nicer aesthetically and at capturing the beauty and desolation of the desert locations, this has its own merits. We knew little about the killer in the short, which worked for it, but the expansion on the character here to make him a little less one-dimensional also works. Parks takes a different approach to the role yet is equally as effective as Napier, plus the longer script gives him more to work with. The interplay between Skerritt and Parks adds some additional interest and the rest of the performances are fine. Like the original, this is lacking in suspense and there's next to no psychological component at work in its depiction of a cop off his rocker. Also in the cast are Bill McKinney (Deliverance), Lonny Chapman and J.C. Quinn.

After working for years as a cinematographer, the remainder of director Metzger's career has been almost entirely TV shows and made-for-TV movies. William Beaudine Jr. (son of the incredibly prolific B film director of the same name) was a producer and the unit production manager. There were several VHS releases for this one; first from MCA / Universal and then from GoodTimes, and it continues to pop up on TV from time to time.

★★1/2