A somewhat surprising entry into the early 80’s SOV genre. ‘Suffer Little Children’ is a bit of an interesting experiment. It’s 1983, you’re a rock promoter who’s just lost it all in a divorce and your best friend (and future wife) owns a drama school…You have experience shooting promo pieces and music videos and your friend has access to a derelict house and a small army of children and young adults ranging from 8 to 30. What do you do?

You make a fairly gory Possession/slasher flick and release it RIGHT as the UK is about to pass the ‘Video recordings act’ that makes it nearly impossible to do ANYTHING remotely gory LETALONE with children. As you can imagine, this film went through the ringer when it came out in 1984. Which is a shame. Because, given this is a VERY early example of distributed SOV cinema (I believe this is the first UK SOV film to be professionally distributed) Its actually pretty well put together.

The plot concerns the mysterious appearence of a young mute girl at a childrens home. The staff take her in and try to medically assess her, but they cant find any evidence of where she’s come from, and after a visit to the doctors, they confirm that nothing is *physically* wrong with her, and that her mute-ness may be down to either trauma or some kind of psychological block.

They try to intigrate her into the home, but strange happenings begin to occur. some of the kids start getting hurt badly and in a particularly dramatic sequence a kid who walks with a stick either falls os is pushed down a flight of stairs, landing in directly in ‘intensive care’

as the weird violence starts to escalate further and further, the carehomes staff ‘Morris’ and ‘Jen’ begin to become increasingly suspicious of Liz…but will they figure out whats going on before it’s all too late?

And honestly, given this was an experiment to see if shooting a film on video tape, and having almost every aspect shaped by its child cast, would be profitable. I think this things basic…but enjoyable.

The scripting is decent, engaging and entertaining. I think it sags a bit in the middle and theres a bit of repetition that goes on. the tone is a bit all over the place as well, sometimes presenting as just a straight horror film, but rarely it also dealves into the supernatural. With a dream sequence involving zombies being particularly unsettling and ‘otherworldly’ It feels out of place in this film…which in many ways makes it fit in perfectly.

The pacing is slow boil. Which is a bit problematic. The film clocks in at just over 75 minutes…and I feel it could have been 15 minutes shorter than that and a LOT better for it. But then…that would have put it under feature runtime…so it wouldnt have sold.

The 3 act structures a bit sloppy too. the opening and closing 15 minutes are fine and really open and close the film well I feel. but everything in the middle feels inconsistent and frankly…odd. Its like the film doesnt really know what to do to help build tension ready for the 3rd act. So it manufactures an off screen event, and then just repeats a few scenes 2-3 times to get us up to runtime. Which was a bit dissapointing.

That being said, the dialogues decent enough, the gore shots, I feel could have been better spread out (they all seem to be bunched up in the 3rd act) but they’re very effectively executed and the finale is great fun and VERY surreal.

The direction and cine are all fairly basic. in fact; barring the 3rd act finale which REALLY feels like the director pulled out all the stops. Most of this film just kind of feels like a film makers first outing. shots are fairly competently composed. But a little simplistic and overly constructed, this is a rare instance where I feel like a director tries to show us TOO much rather than just telling us.

Part of me feels the slow and basic plodding of the direction was intentional to get it to runtime, but part of me does just think this was someone who was only vaguely familiar with film pacing, getting to grips with 3 act structures in real time.

That being said, the cine while a bit flat and basic IS consistent, has fairly decent blocking and B-roll to help bring the scenes to life and in the 3rd act is genuinely impressive given there was maybe less than 6 SOV feature films in existence by this point in 1983/84?…and non of those 6 had made it over to UK shores by the time these guys were filming this. So its BEYOND interesting to see the director and the cast get to grips with set blocking and layout on the fly over the course of this films production.

Theres some attempts at coloured lighting use, they do experiement with angles and transition cuts which is fun. But even so, it doenst exactly push the envelope.

And the editing is a real dissapointment all things considered. Given they were cutting tape for this production, and given how few people were ABLE to cut on tape at this time, its miraculous the thing looks as good as it does. However, broadly speaking, cuts are clunky and awkward…there are moments where the blanking on the tape appears because they didnt match the frame cuts properly and some of the early video effects do fail quite badly in places. its all part of the charm. But its SUPER obvious 40 years on.

The cast are all fairly solid. its a bit of a mixed ability room, but given these are all drama school students or friends of the crew….it was always going to be a little hit and miss. I can say catagorically there were no BAD performers here…just good and ‘less than good’.

All this is matched up to a superb soundtrack thats heavy on rock and synth scoring, but it doenst feel as tinny or thin as other SOV flicks. this sounds richer and more engaging. It punctuates the film nicely and I feel really gives it the edge that JUST manages to tip it into being a solid end product.

‘Suffer Little Children’ I feel was an interesting experiment. I’d go as far as to say its a successful one. Its rudimentary in it’s execution. But it has BUCKETS of charisma and a really solid atmosphere about it. Its a fun and unique look into the very early day of SOV cinema AND an insightful look at just how creative and interesting kids can be when they’re given control of the film production process, with the adults just helping to tangibly bring to life what the kids wanted.

I’d recommend checking this one out at least once if you have even a basic interest in the film making process, purely because its an interesting insight into seeing how people who have never made a movie, but have *some* experience in shooting things, go about making a movie. If you can overlook the wobbly production and minimalist approach. I think you’ll really get on with this DIY horror production. I’ll absolutely watch it again!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/suffer-little-children/