The Children (1980)

A warning right at the start: Don't let yourself be fooled! This is not a film about a school bus full of zombie children as some suggest, but a movie that uses elements of the apocalyptic zombie film to build a different creature out of them, a creature more insidious than a flying zombie head in a fridge.

It all starts when the school bus of an American rural community called Ravensback drives through a cloud of gas that has evaded the high security standards (read: there are none) of a nuclear plant.

As we all know, exposure to radioactive gas is seldom a good thing. Promptly, all six children of Ravensback turn into grinning, hug-loving fiends wearing black nail polish whose touch kills their victims with something I think looks like the producers of this fine film thought radioactive burns look like. Very soon, only the winner of my highly sought after "Worst Sheriff ever" medal, Sheriff Billy "the Toupet" Hart (Gil Rogers) and John "local guy with a child" Freemont  (Martin Shakar) are all that stands between the town's at least ten inhabitants and the death hug. The heroic everyday guys even manage to find the children's weak point: The only way to kill them is...no, not decapitation, that would be crude, dehandification is what's called for here.

 

Friends of American local filmmaking rejoice! This fine piece of crap is surprisingly not brought to you from far away Florida. This time the beautiful state of Massachusetts is the one responsible.

But don't be sad, people from Massachusetts can also have a finely developed sense for making bad movies. On a technical level, The Children is somewhat more competently made than films of its ilk usually are. There's not a single boom mike in view, the sets are filmed so efficiently that the illusion of looking into very boring houses is never in any danger and even the film stock looks like real film and less like it's cobbled together from the rests of reels that weren't put to full use by another production.

This kind of visual brilliance comes with a price, of course, namely a certain unwillingness to move the camera (which is in some scenes overcome to startling effect - shaking the viewer awake with a vengeance!) and a great fondness for long shots.

The first half of the film can be something of a drag, what with not much happening in excruciating detail. I hope you like seeing cars drive down a road. And watching people standing around. Or watching the Sheriff search for missing children by not searching for them and definitely not using a telephone.

Fortunately, my career in surviving bad movies has taught me that patience with a slow-starting film sometimes pays off nicely, and so I am happy to report about the sudden change in entertainment value (if not in quality - it's a film about death-hugging children who can only be stopped by hacking off their hands, for god's sake!) I experienced. As soon as the "dramatic" part of the film starts, the acting performances transform from boring-bad into hilariously inept hamming of the highest degree. I was especially fond of the way Gil Rogers' performance suddenly blossomed into a flower of pure ham with some choice bug-eyedness (supposedly suggesting panic?) thrown into the mix.

The scenes of badly faked violence are getting more hilarious as the film goes on; it is rather endearing seeing the badly panic faking adults fight against the "terrifying" children (who look like their having the time of their lives), like an anti-Who Can Kill A Child.

Some of the actors also provide very creative death screams that make the Wilhelm Scream sound plain boring.
And yes, two or three scenes manage to be a little creepy, as usual in films like this.

 

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