Just finished watching my latest the 'Flix entry, a largely-unknown little gem of a Spanish movie called Who Can Kill A Child?, from 1976. I'd actually never even heard of this one until about a month or so ago, when I came across mentions of it while reading Vinyan press. Vinyan, for those who actually pay attention this here blog (all five of you), is a flick from a Belgium-bred filmmaker, Fabrice Du Welz, who I'm becoming more and more fond of. It's his second project, and should hit limited American screens early in '09, but it looks like pure Matt Barone-serving goodness, of the dark and twisted varieties. Being that it centers heavily on spooky killer kids, Vinyan is said to owe tons to this here film, Who Can Kill A Child? And all of the praise I'd been reading about Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's '76 sleeper, I just had to check it for myself.
And shit, am I glad that I did. This is one of the never-talked-about flicks where I can't comprehend just how it hasn't been heralded in louder fashion by cinephiles and genre press-heads. It kicks ass, and definitely exceeded the mild expectations I'd bestowed upon it. Not even sure why, but I wasn't anticipating this film to fully win my "thumbs up" war, but it did.
Plot-wise, real quick: you have these two English tourists (Tom, and his pregnant wife, Evelyn), who are painted out to be like the sweetest, most loving, most unassuming married pair ever. Genuinely nice, smiling and laughing at every turn. For some strange reason, while on vacation on the coast of Spain, Tom has a bright idea to take a boat out to a remote island known as Almanzora, so they do. Only, once they arrive, shit just doesn't seem kosher....no adults can be seen, in what appears to be a deserted village. But then kids start popping up, speaking extremely little and only giggling and smirking with pure sinister glee. And then adult bodies start turning up. And then the kids being exhibiting some sadistic behavior. And then our couple realizes just how fucked they really are. Nice idea on that additional trip, Tom!
Patience is a virtue I can proudly own up to, and its one that best serves me when watching movies like Who Can Kill A Child? (and. by the way, just how great of a title is that?) Serrador takes his time here, saving the true mayhem for the last 40 or so minutes (film is an hour and 50 mins total). For the first half-hour, very little happens, save for a couple grown-up bodies washing up on shore in TKTK. But our couple of protagonists aren't aware of the soggy bodycount, of course. Once they get to Almanzora, the tension ratchets up nice and slow, with Serrador utilizing some slick tricks: giggling kids in the distance, gory corpses in only the camera's sight and not the unsuspecting couple's, mysterious phone calls to a diner where our couple is eating.
So when the shit really hits the wall, the viewer is nice and tightly-wound with anxiety. And hit the wall the shit surely does here. My two fave moments: a group of happy kids playing pinata with a sharp sickle, striking at a bloodied-up dying old man hanging from a rafter; and a little boy who can't be older than seven years old hiding in a barred-up window, pointing a handgun at the pregant wife's head, smiling as he prepares to fire. Only to have Tom unload a machine gun into the kid's skull, of which we see the bloody head dripping red stuff. And yes, its actually a seven year old actor being shot in the head. Oh, and I can't forget the part where this group of little boys is disrobing a dying young woman, down to her naked body as they feel her up and giggle all the way. Now, that's some shit you'd NEVER see in a Hollywood film. Neva eva eva eva eva eva!!!
And there in lies my excitement, and what I was hinting at earlier. Who Can Kill A Child? was made in a '70s era when filmmaking was a truly dangerous artform. No holds barred. "Fuck the status quo" expressionism. Anything goes. Nothing is taboo. And that made for seriously unbelievable movies. Flicks where shit happens that forces you to ask yourself, "Am I really seeing what I think I just saw?"
The last 15 minutes of this film alone are pure bliss for any sick-minded movie buff. I won't even spoil how the pregnant wife characters meets her maker, but I'll just say that I never saw the twist coming, and once it hit, I was ready to pledge allegiance to writer/director Serrador. And then her vengeance-and-escape-seeking husband goes to work on the legion of homicidal children, only to meet a Night of the Living Dead-esque last scene fate, which is then flipped on its head to further darken the concluding mood. Amazing stuff.
And then there's a sequence where our couple has barricaded themselves in a a jail-cell of sorts, with the kids continually trying to break the door down. But before they start ramming the door, they jump up and down, trying to sneak a peek through the peephole on the upper-portion of the door. And the way the eerie string music mixes with the close-ups of the children's eyes in the peephole is just seriously creepy shit. Chilling, even.
But films like this one just make me realize how fucking pussyfooted and safe Hollywood genre movies are nowadays. And it sucks. Kind of makes me wish I grew up as a teenager in the '70s, so I could've seen these films I'm rather fond of in theaters, the dirty scuzzy rundown cinemas of the "grindhouse" era. Movies were much more dangerous back then. You didn't know what a filmmaker would throw at you, but you knew it wouldn't be pretty. Or happy. Or restricted. Now, studios shake in the boots if a film even blinks at anything higher than a R-rating. Which is just another reason why I'm so in love with international cinema more than Hollywood at the moment. Much ballsier, regardless of what languages are spoken in the process.
The flick makes you wonder: "If pushed to my limit, could I really kill a child?" If it were the evil rugrats seen in this film, my answer would be "hell fuckin' yeah!" These are some demented little bastards. And what works even more for the film is that it uses actual kid actors, doing very fucked-up stuff.
It's pretty amazing just how creepy a smiling kid's face can be, when paired with the right atmosphere and soundtrack, and narrative context.
If you like Children of the Corn, this is like a far superior, smarter, creepier, more naturalistic spin on that story's set-up. And instead of all-black Amish wardrobe, the kids here dress quite normal, making it all the more realistic. There's also a comparison to be made to Nicolas Roeg's great and disturbed "parents in mourning" gem Don't Look Now, but I don't know too many people besides myself who've ever heard of that one, let alone seen it. But its another winner, so do yourselves a favor and give it a whirl some time.
Kids do the darndest things, don't they? Such as, bashing elders' heads in with clubs, shooting police officers at point-blank range, brainwashing fetuses through telepathy.....you know, typical kid shit.
[Excuse any typos that may have appeared, btw....wrote this shit at 2am, kinda tired now, not in the mood to proofread. Fuck all that.]
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