Quien Puede Matar a un Nino? (1976)
Death is Child’s Play
Island of Death
Island of the Damned
Los niños
Lucifer’s Curse
The Killer’s Playground
Trapped
Who Can Kill a Child? (This is the title you will find this on dvd)
Would You Kill a Child?
A British couple is on vacation in Spain in a lovely coastal town, they have two children but are on vacation alone. The wife is pregnant and the husband is conflicted about it. They decide to row out to a remote island with a fishing village, upon arrival discover that there are no adults to be found. Until that is, they find one being beaten to death by a cute little girl, later they see the same mans body strung up like a pinata and the kids going at him with a scythe.
This is only the beginning of the terror these kids unleash, whats worse is that the violence is only intermittent, they laugh and play in between these events. In a truly terrifying scene our hero finds a group of young boys in a church undressing a dead womans corpse. They find a jeep and try to escape to the other side of the island, but are followed. They return to the docks in the village and are once again followed, they have to decide that if they are going to survive they will answer the question posed by the title of the film.
This is a shocking, brutal and heartbreaking film. Well made and with characters you can care about, which makes it scary to watch. I would recommend it wholeheartedly. The army of creepy killer kids are fucking terrifying, tension is built at a very effective pace towards a climax that is amazing and, well, horrifying. This film has been unavailable in its original cut and almost unavailable altogether for years and its easy to see why, it is a bitter pill.
However, the opening credit sequence is a real newsreel footage montage of worldwide atrocities (famine, genocide and other real life horrors) that I found very off-putting, but it wasn’t artistically justified. It didn’t work, it just pissed me off. I would’ve given this a much more positive review had it not been there.
