'Id love a ride on that machine of yours.'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘Oh, it’s the children’
We’re looking at 1980’s The Children,
':et get a beer.'
following a leak at a power plant, a school bus driver and his personal fan club...'
#Here's to the bus driver, best of them all.#
drive into a cloud of strange smoke,
shortly afterwards Sheriff Billy Hart finds the bus,
abandoned and empty the engine still running.
‘I really don’t think there’s anything to be alarmed about.’
This is the film’s initial problem,
cos it’s not a bad set up but the level of worry amongst parents and local law enforcement is oddly low,
‘How serious is this business?’
‘Molly, I just don’t know.’
5 children are missing,
‘There ain’t nothing to worry about.’
and the driver,
‘He probably took them for an impromptu picnic or something.’
that would still be concerning.
Yet the Sheriff takes time to stop and fix a car,
‘Here let me have a try.’
and as for the parents.
‘A kidnapping in Ravensback? Oh Jack, how exciting.’
In fact the children are hanging out in a local graveyard with black fingernails,
but don’t worry, they haven’t become goths,
just nuclear zombies, and their effect on people is established early on.
Repeatedly.
'Ellen’
#Scream#
as the children embark on an apparently unmotivated killing spree.
‘Daddy’
‘Ahh’
Uhh… I’ll leave it pumpkin.
'Paul! by god!'
Despite a really unnecessary perviness…
This section of the film does summon up some genuinely creepy moments.
'Mummy'
The characterisation is terrible with some no more than cut-outs.
‘I take it you don’t know who I am?’
While others seem to be setting up a story that never happens,
‘I want you take a couple of codeine and rest.’
so it’s impossible to care who lives and dies, but you can’t have everything,
‘Perhaps you could tell me what the problem is.’
I think it starts when the Sherriff finds one of the missing kids,
'What's that?'
more by luck than judgement and…
At this point, they still don’t know the children are responsible,
this is a man reacting to child reaching towards him,
‘She tried to attack me’
they then leave without the girl.
This is still a missing a child, what do you plan on telling the parents?
‘Is one of you going to tell me what is going on around here?’
Eventually they do establish that the kids are somehow killing people,
'Oh am I glad to see you kids.'
#Scream#
#Scream keeps going#
and it’s not just here in Ravensback.
‘It’s happening all over the place Billy.’
What, did every school bus drive through a radioactive cloud?
On the bright side it means you can reach out to other people,
find out what’s going on, get some plan for how to deal with the kids.
Okay, that was a kneejerk, instinctive reaction; heat of the moment.
This on the other hand...
...is a shooting gallery.
‘Damn it, they keep getting up.’
I want to be quite clear about this; these are children they know –
one of them is the daughter of the couple in this house,
'Daddy!'
'Daddy.'
there’s clearly something wrong with them,
something very wrong,
but still something wrong and the parental attitude doesn’t 100% ring true to me.
‘She’s our daughter.’
‘She was our daughter.’
They don’t consult a doctor or scientist.
They make zero effort to trap the kids until they can figure out how to help them.
They have one plan.
Turns out guns don’t work, but…
'He's dead.'
One minute later,
‘Whatever’s happened to the children, maybe it’ll go away.’
I’ll have to have an awkward conversation with some parents but I can do that.
But this attitude is short-lived.
The Sherriff is way too into this,
#Screams#
This is just super-disturbing.
Good. But now, having lost two kids today, the wife goes into labour.
‘Go boil some water, we're going need towels and a sterilizing knife to cut the umbilical cord.'
Has this town not heard of doctors!
We now get an interesting juxtaposition,
between the sounds of childbirth and the sight of violent dismemberment.
I imagine the vibe they were going for was, as life exits the world so new life comes into it,
but what you get is a vibe of; kids?
Easy come easy go.
And I don’t think they would have had this section if they didn’t want this ending.
This stupid, nonsensical ending.
‘I can’t figure it!’
So this film has two problems that stem from the same issue;
at the start, no one is concerned about the missing kids,
and then no one even considers helping the kids as opposed to brutally slaughtering them.
I think this was made by someone who hated kids.
'So when do I get my ride.'
Thanks for watching. For a slightly different take on horror, check out my books,
there’s a link in the description below.
Who are the best creepy kids on film? Let us know in the comments below.