What happens when you mash together ‘The Village of the Damned’, ‘The Ambassadors of Death’ and ‘The Toxic Avenger’?! well! You get ‘The Children’ a regional cult horror classic that mixes campy surrealism with a genuinely unsettling premise.

The plot? Well, due to deregulation, two slackers at the small backwater town of Ravensback’s local nuclear facility completely forgot to secure one of the radioactive pipelines, which in turn causes a rupture, leading to thousands of liters of radioactive mist to seep deep into the surrounding woodlands. By the time the leaks at ‘Critical mass’ its chucking out time at the local elementary school, and while taking the kids of Ravensback home to their parents, the school bus drives head on into a cloud of the mysterious deadly fog. Transforming the children into mindless pale zombie like beings with jet black fingernails who’s touch causes any living recipient to burst into a radioactive smoke and fry alive.

A short time after the incident, the ever clement ‘Sheriff Billy’ passes by the now abandoned bus. He decides to investigate, but only finds the school kids possessions and the hat of the bus driver. Concerned; He decides to visit some of the parents in the area to see if the kids have made it home, only to find that a majority of them are in fact missing…Leading to the beginnings of a suspected manhunt to find the kidnappers who’ve taken the children.

Little do the townspeople know, the children have only one thing on their minds, and it involves rendering the majority of the town a burnt up radioactive slag heap. Thus kicking off 2 remaining acts of cat and mouse drama where the Sheriff and townsfolk try to piece together why their fellow citizens are suddenly and abruptly winding up dead in random places looking like they’ve fallen into a nuclear reactor, and how this could possibly tie to the dissapearence of the children!

On the bluray release for this, theres an introduction from Lloyd Kaufman who (tongue in cheek) suggests that the same radioactive chemicals that create ‘The Children’ are the exact same ones that made Toxie from ‘The Toxic Avenger’…and the more I think about that, the more I actually kind of do want that to be the case. The idea that the barrels of toxic waste Melvin falls into in ‘Toxie 1’ are from the cleanup operation from ‘The Children’ not only feels kind of satisfying, but given they both use identical effects for the radiation burning. It feels like this film slots in quite nicely, and that Toxie is some kind of spiritual sideways sequel/spin off to this. I mean, these kids just got a lungful, Melvin got swirlied in it…

Given this was a first time watch, I cant say hand on heart that I absolutely LOVED ‘The Children’…Its quite slow burn and the kills in it are spaced out a little far from each other. But what this film does have going for it is a very unusual and unsettling vibe that really helps carry the thing for the majority of its runtime.

The scripts plot itself is fun, killer kids movies can kind of go either way, but ‘The Children’ seems to know what side of the fence it wants to sit on in terms of tone, and that really helps keep things quite light and able to shift between some more humerous comedic moments and very dark sequences.

I really enjoyed just taking in the ambience of this film honestly, strange choices like having characters like the identical, balding, horny twins ‘Frank & Hank’ were just, oddities you didnt really see that often in films like this at this time…Not unless it was a fully fledged comedy horror.

The characters themselves get a pretty nice range to work with, they almost go for a ‘dream-like’ quality to the characters, everything feels a bit…off for lack of a better word. the characters behave in the same way characters would in a dream, saying things in strange tones, doing things that dont feel like they make sense , but they KNOW it doesnt make sense adn they’re going to take you along for the ride anyway.

In fact, other than the aforementioned pacing issues (long drawn out sequences of folks just chatting about random stuff that doesnt really help progress the film), and the fact the film seems to spend a bit too long in the second act trying (and fumbling) to set up all the chess pieces for the finale. I actually really quite enjoyed this. Its a film that knows what it is, knows what to aim for and, for the most part achieves it.

The directions pretty nice, the directors seeming ‘go to’ for suspense is quick cuts married up to slowed down footage. ‘Friday the 13th’ did this quite a bit and came out about a month before this film did, I get the feeling there was inspiration from that on this to a degree. But honestly? Who can say. ‘Gentle’ is probably the way i’d describe the direction on this one. It only really goes manic during the actual kill sequences, and outside of that, it kind of feels like Sheriff Billy is giving us a tour of Ravensback. Which means lots of very nice and idillic sequences of the surrounding woodlands and the mountain ranges…Does this creative style suit a horror? I dont 100% think it does. But! that IS what gives this film a bit of distinction, because its the contrasting ‘tour guide’ vibes to the direction married up to shots of childred irradiating their parents to death that makes it feel so dream like and strange.

To that end, the cine is solid. as mentioned it all feels a bit ‘Tour guidey’ but the location work is largely rich, deep and well composed. Its nice to see a film barely out of the 70s not afraid to embrace colour and the coding therein. But rather upsettingly, it looks like only the first 2 reels have survived in a condition that allows the remastering process to get the best out of them. With the later reels becoming increasingly more damaged and ‘red’ to the point that all that lovely colour and depth is lost, and we end up in a reddy brown murk up to the end credits.

As for the edit? its rock solid pretty much, a couple of pacing issues on cuts is about as bad as it gets, the film (for the most part) breaths easy on sequence structuring, and it seems like a good amount of B-roll was captured for this one. Which I think was essential, especially for the kill scenes to help really bring them to life.

As for the performances? Gil Rogers and Martin Shakar as Sheriff Billy and one of the childrens father John Freemont play a fantastic double pairing. Billy is a warm and professional character type, we spend most of the movie with him and because he’s given a good range to work with. we as the audience warm and want to invest in him. and Gil plays that with JUST the right kind of charisma to really help sell you on the portrayal. He’s delightful. Martin by contrast is approaching things from a much more fraxious position (as his kids missing) but equally gets a decent range to work with, and essentially pairs up with Billy well, getting to effectively play deputy the Sheriff, allowing him to do things that the Sheriff cant legally do, but will look the other way in this case. He’s fab.

I dont generally comment on child actor performances, so I’ll keep my opinion on the children in ‘The Children’ brief. But I liked what they did, and I think they did it well for the most part. As for the supporting cast? Excellent. just, excellent. This feels like a pretty nicely fleshed out town. I could believe all these characters actually existed. they’re all given just enough complexity to make them interesting, but they leave enough unsaid that makes you really want to know more. Its the perfect position to leave your audience in, because I really DO want to know more about ‘Frank & Hank’ or the diner waitress, or the general store lady. they all have a charm to them that really makes me wish we’d spent a bit more time with them. which is just the right place to leave it.

And as for the soundtrack? It sounds like a rip off of the ‘Friday the 13th’ score…again, the two films came out with about a month gap on each other. But ‘Friday’ would have likely started advertising WELL before this thing got a release, so I could FULLY believe they scored this with ‘Friday’ in mind to try and get ahead of what they believed would inevitably be a ‘good thing’.

And, for the most part it works! it feels a bit cheaper than the ‘Friday’ score, but its largely orchestral and synth pieces that drop in exactly when they’re needed, are perfectly punctuated across the runtime…and while I dont personally gel with this score, I cant deny that it does absolutely work for this film, and that its been handled well.

I really quite enjoyed ‘The Children’ I feel with a couple more watches it could easily gain another half star on the overall rating. I think it would pair up quite well with something like ‘Village of the damned’ or maybe even something a bit harsher like ‘The Beast Within’

Definitely worth checking out if you like creepy children in your horror, and an absolute must see if you like cult horror with a slight surreal edge.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-children-1980/