The Devil Within Her (1975): or, The Little Things Hurt the Most

In case you're not aware of the fact, dear parishioners, the inimitable and irrepressible Emily I. has been hosting a ♥February of Horror Shorties♥ over at her wonderful webstop, Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense (which if you're not already following, I suggest--nay, INSIST!--that you do so right now). In this shortest of months she's been paying tribute to the shortest of killers, be they implacable infants, demonic dwarfs, eeevil elves, or the titular deadly dolls. (I can only assume Malevolent Mannequins and Grumpy Golems are disqualified due to height limits.) Since I have a soft spot in my withered, blackened briquette of a heart for little people of the sinful variety myself, I could not pass the opportunity to throw my own comically tiny hat in the ring.

As luck would have it, Netflix instant offered up a doozy for me, a previously unknown-to-me flick from the seventies that not only boasts the formidable acting talents of Donald Pleasence, Joan Collins, and B-Movie royalty Caroline Munro, but also offers TWO tiny terrors for the price of one! Ladies and gentlemen, hold onto your pram handles for the wild 1975 killer kiddie flick with a difference, The Devil Within Her.

The liquor waited patiently. "Soon," it thought. "Very soon."

We open to find former exotic dancer and socialite Lucy Carlesi (Collins) in the midst of an extremely difficult labor. Thrashing, sweating, and howling like a bear-trapped she-wolf, Lucy writhes under the watchful eye of the world's creepiest OBGYN Dr. Finch (Pleasance, natch), who, try as he might, just can't dislodge the bundle of joy from his patient's uterus. An exasperated nurse sponges the doctor's brow and asks, pointedly, "What's wrong, sir?" To which Dr. Finch replies sagely, "This one...DOESN'T WANT TO BE BORN!"* Which opinion I'm certain went miles toward relaxing the vaginal death-clamp Lucy had on the little tot up to that point, what?

*This line of dialog reflects the film's original title, I Don't Want to Be Born, which I assume was scrapped because nothing in the subsequent story supported the idea that the baby baddie was anything but thrilled with its nativity. Still, that title makes more sense than the official IMDb title of the film, Sharon's Baby--since not only is the mom's name Lucy, but no character named "Sharon" appears anywhere in the film in ANY capacity. A rose by any other name?

Did I say "little" tot? Well, that is perhaps an error. Finally wrenching the infant free with a set of heavy-duty, chrome-plated forceps (*ssshhhhhhhmmmPOP!*), the doc immediately sees what the problem was: the kid's the size of an 18-month-old toddler! Still, all's well that slides shrieking through the Glistening Gates of Life, and with the mother out of danger and the child dutifully decanted, Doc Finch stumbles out into the waiting room to give new father Gino Carlesi (Ralph Bates, veteran of such Hammer horrors as Taste the Blood of Dracula, The Horror of Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde, and Vicar-ious formative influencer Lust for a Vampire**) the good news.

"Banged Joan Collins, did you? Good show, old chap!"

**It is solely Bates' good fortune at having stood next to Yutte Stensgaard at one point in his life that prevents my holding his truly awful Italian accent in this film a cockpunchable offense.

Not so fast, though: as soon as Lucy attempts to nurse her newborn son, the tyke repays her motherly leanings by clawing blood from her face! It appears that in addition to being abnormally large, the baby also possesses the strength of TEN BABIES! Which is still not much, I guess, but hey. The befuddled parents wisely switch over to bottle-feeding and install their child in a truly hideous yellow-and-brown themed nursery. The kid makes his displeasure known by biting the housekeeper Mrs. Hyde hard enough to draw blood, and thereafter trashing the room like a member of Mini Kiss! Shocked that a less-than-month old baby could rip the head off a Raggedy Andy doll and toss the changing table around from the confines of its crib, the parents start looking for explanations.

From JC Penney in 1975: the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Wallpaper Collection

Now this is where things get a little wacky.

Over afternoon cocktails and cigs with her BFF Mandy (Munro, looking SMOKIN' HAWT as usual), Lucy relates via ponderously voiced-over flashback some strange events that occurred just before she left England to marry Gino in Italy. Lucy used to be a showgirl before Gino made a (more-or-less) honest woman of her, and regularly brought in the crowds shakin' her money-maker(s) while sharing the stage with her partner Hercules--A DWARF. To give you an idea of the level of sensual artistry we're talking about here, check out Lucy and Hercules in full regalia, giving the people what they want:

In the Jingle Jangle mornin', he comes murderin' you...

SASSY, isn't it?

On the night of her farewell performance, Lucy is bidding adieu to Hercules, when the Little Person starts getting Big Ideas of a sexual nature. These he acts upon, feeling up Dame Collins with his dexterous little hands. She admits that, "Maybe, for an instant, I was fascinated!" and thus indulges Hercules so far as to cup a bit of side-boob. When the novelty of tiny fingers wears thin, she rejects the little Lothario with extreme prejudice and banishes him from the fleshy delights of her undercarriage for good. Then she promptly invites club owner Tommy (John Holmes-lookalike and Sleaziest Man in Britain 1974 finalist John Steiner) into her un-dressing room for a little slap-and-tickle before she's off the market in Rome.

Lucy's a bit of a slut, you see.

Open for Business

 As might be predicted, Hercules does NOT take this well. When Lucy stumbles in a drunken, post-coital stupor from the club for the last time, the dwarf steps out of the shadows and pronounces this curse: "You will have a baby--a monster that grows in your womb! As big as I am small, and possessed by the Devil himself!"

Which explains a lot, you'll agree.

Only Lucy seems to forget her story immediately upon telling it, and begins searching instead for a genetic explanation for the baby's giantism and muscular prowess. Since she and Gino obviously come from pure upper-crust breeding stock, she settles on the only scientifically plausible hypothesis: the baby is Tommy's, and thus she has to find out what genetic abnormalities her former lover may have planted when he strewed his seditious seed in her fertile gynecological garden. Because that will help, somehow.

"...so I says to the bird, 'Weasel? I fought it were a bluddy paintbrush!' HAW-HAW!
...
Anyway, that's when they slapped the cuffs on."

Of course the child is no genetic freak, but is actually supercharged with the awesome power of a sexually frustrated dwarf--because Little People can do that, apparently. As Lucy, Gino, and Gino's sister Albana (Eileen Atkins)--who is actually Sister Albana, a nun--try to figure out what (the fuck) is wrong with the baby, this pre-verbal Pazuzu goes on a horrific, adorable rampage. He wrestles a priest, trashes his room a few more times, bloodies Tommy's nose, drowns two expendable extras, drops a dead rat in Mrs. Hyde's tea, and somehow learns to tie a noose and sharpens a shovel blade to razor-keenness! All without his parents ever quite catching on! Though to be fair, being rich AND English AND parents in the 1970s, they do both seem to stay drunk most of the time.

They're all there, thank God.

There's so much to talk about with this movie, I'll never encompass it all--but here are a few things that made me happier than they should have. For one, we never actually see the baby in full-on It's Alive rampage mode--we only see the tragic, hilarious consequences, which I found even more satisfying than an animatronic tot could possibly have been. Joan Collins overacts as much here as she did in any full season of Dynasty, emoting with such emphatic projection you can almost see the spittle fly. Director Peter Sasdy's TV career focus comes through as well, since the movie often feels like a made-for-TV affair--though a rather lengthy sex scene between Gino and Lucy late in the game gives the lie to that presumption. The director does manage a rather disturbing nightmare sequence though, and if you can't appreciate little touches like Lucy periodically hallucinating Hercules in the crib instead of her child, well, all I can say is you must be made of stone.


The movie does raise some unanswerable questions however. We never figure out exactly how Hercules was able to command the powers of Satan, or if in fact he was in league with the devil at all. For all we see, his curse's efficacy might simply be the result of some dread power Little People have tamed that we full-sized folk could never harness. For his part, Hercules seems to have forgotten all about his curse, returning to work at Tommy's club where he gets to cavort nightly among half-clad Cockney girls; nice work if you can get it, so long as no Italian nuns who minored in Dwarfen Exorcism at St. Olaf's Cloister and Finishing school take it in their heads to start fighting your mojo.

"Is it-a hott in-a here, or is it just-a ME?"

Horror-wise, The Devil Within Her touches on several raw socio-cultural nerves--young parents' fears that something might be wrong with their baby, the age-old Otherness of the Differently Sized, the battle between medicine and religion, and the wages of past sin repaid in the present. It also provides buxom showgirls, costumed dwarf dancing, baby on the rampage, and Joan Collins shedding her top and swallowing the scenery whole. One could ask for more, I suppose--but that would just be greedy.

So what are you waiting for? Get to Netflix Instant and queue this one up. You'll be glad you did. 2.75 thumbs. And thanks to Emily I.--everyone's favorite Horror Shorty! ;) --for being my dwarf-addiction enabler!

"Yay! Breastfeeding time!"

A few more photos from The Devil Within Her (1975): 

"All right, it's true--I've been hitting the bottle."

"I must break you."

"I'm afraid I'll be home late, my dear. I have some reports to sodomize. What?"

Sister Albana goes merkin-shopping.

Bedside lamp, or death ray?

Everyone's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed dwarf

"OMG Vicar! Put it away!"

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

The Boneyard (1991): or, All-Out Zombie Poodle ATTACK!

Wow, what a fun flick!

Even though it was made in 1991, writer/director James Cummins' zombie seige flick The Boneyard plays like a drippy slice of pure 1980s horror-film goodness. With its offbeat comedy, Ancient Chinese Magic folklore, goopy practical effects and rubber-suited monsters, it's got a little something to please everyone who ever loved a Full Moon feature or chuckled in glee at Big Trouble in Little China. Add meaty roles for TV's Mr. Roper Norman Fell and hall-of-fame comedy queen Phyllis Diller, and you get nothing but a big heaping plate-full of Vicar love.

The movie opens with police lieutenant Jersey Callum (Ed Nelson) and his inexperienced partner Gordon Mullen (James Eustermann) visiting the house of retired psychic investigator Alley Cates (Deborah Rose). Scarred by the horrors of her visions and the notoriety of being the PD's Resident Psychic, Cates has become a shut-in at her derelict house, burning her old newspaper clippings in the fireplace and completely rejecting societal pressures to "do the dishes" or "not sleep under a pile of unwashed laundry." She also tries to forget the visions that still haunt her; when Callum asks her to come out of retirement for one last case, she quickly shoots back, "Why? In case I get the urge to help you dig up baby bones again?"

"It was...the salmon mousse!"

Still, Jersey needs Cate's help--seems the police recently found the bodies of three children locked in the back room at a local mortuary. There was evidence that the Chinese mortician, the seemingly crazed Mr. Chen (Robert Yun Ju Ahn), had been feeding the children pieces of his "clientele" while keeping them captive. Callum wants Cates to use her powers to find out who the kids were, who their parents are, and exactly what (the fuck) was going on down there.

Cates initially refuses, but after a vision of her own decomposing daughter (whose death signaled the onset of her unwanted psychic powers) implores her to help them, she shakily agrees to cooperate.

Alley wonders if she's breastfed too long

Down at the station, Cates watches a video of Mr. Chen's investigation, and things go from "yuck" to "what the fuck" in a hurry. Chen claims the dead children are "kuei-shen," Chinese demons that his family has been cursed to keep contained for the good of mankind. "They are becoming restless," Chen explains, "Harder to manage!...If they are not fed, they WILL FEED!" The cops cart Chen off for psychological evaluation, but soon we learn that thanks to a lapse of watchfulness on the part of a guard and an unsecured service revolver, Chen punches his own ticket on the Ancestor Express.

Cates needs physical contact with the remains in order to kick her ESP into gear, so she and the cops take a trip to the city morgue--affectionately known as "THE BONEYARD"--in the middle of the night, naturally. Night porter Mrs. Poopinplatz (Diller, who else?) gives the cops and their charge a hard time, all while stroking and coddling her toy poodle Foosums. When they finally get down to the morgue, coroner-on-duty "Shep" Shepard (Norman Fell, sporting a ponytail and a Wilford Brimley moustache) pulls out the badly decomposed children's bodies and puts them on display. A comic relief corpse-delivery-man shows up to let them know the hydraulic doors on the lower floors (where the bodies are kept) are out of order, and the elevator is the only way in or out. If you think this might become important, go get yourself a cookie.

Norman Fell in the shocking, unaired final episode of Three's Company

While Cates fondles a lock of a deceased child's hair for vibrations, Jersey and Gordon watch Shep perform an autopsy on a recent arrival, a young girl assumed a suicide. Turns out there's been a severe clerical error, however, as at the first incision the girl sits up and screams! I kept expecting her to be part of the upcoming zombie plague, but nope--it seems she was just very unlucky and the EMTs uncharacteristically lazy. The girl, Dana (Denise Young) quickly takes a shine to Gordon, forgetting all about the crushing depression and pointlessness of existence that led her to take a bath with her hair dryer on--some guys got it and some guys don't, I guess.

At almost the same time, Cates gets a vision of a black magic ceremony taking place in Ancient China, where a pair of grieving parents hire a sorceror to raise their deceased spawn from the dead. (Presumably one of Chen's transgressive ancestors, bringing the curse into our plane.) After that she flashes forward to the body storage facility, where from the corpse's point of view she can see Jersey, Shep, and the rest through the plate glass window. The three corpses on the slabs begin to rise in a very creepy, atmospheric scene, and Cates snaps out of it, desperate to warn her friends.

"Let's play Hide and Seek. You first."

After a tussle with Poopinplatz for the elevator key that brings all of them down below (including Foosums), Cates arrives in the bloody aftermath of a zombie rampage, with several of the staff gutted and eviscerated, and the child zombies sitting over them, scooping their guts out like pudding cups! She's found by the survivors--Shep, Jersey, Gordon, and Dana--and they lock themselves in a room and prepare for the seige. Diller gets cornered by one of the ghouls but manages to knock a shelf of acid over, disintegrating it--but not before the undead menace pulls a piece of rotting flesh off its own skull and stuffs it down her gaping pie-hole!

Of course this sets up the us-versus-them climax, with the increasingly battered survivors trying to find their way out of the locked-down building, all the while fending off the hungry and vicious undead children. It plays out almost the way you would expect, but with a couple of WTF-worthy twists and one out-there plot development that I think must have been an inspiration to Ang Lee in one of his more divisive modern projects.

LEGEND

There's a lot to like in this movie, starting with the aforementioned goopy effects. The child zombies are very gross and creepy, and move in a jerky, shambling gait that calls to mind Stuart Gordon's re-animated dead. Cummins doesn't skimp on the squishy sound effects either, which really pays off when the zombies are feasting on the all-you-can-eat buffet in the morgue.

The movie is also a bit of a horror-comedy, as you would expect with people like Fell and Diller in the cast. However, the comedy is never overly broad (except in one instance, about which there will be more to say in a moment), and for the most part it works. The atmospheric lighting and scene composition also add to the movie's substantial creep factor. The dissonant, Danny Elfman-meets-Richard Band score helps as well.

"Olley olley all-come-free!"

The performances run the full gamut from good to meh. Diller is surprisingly effective in her mostly straight role as a wise-cracking battle axe, toning down her larger-than-life comedy persona to the realm of believability (she even appears without her trademark flamboyant wigs). Nelson as Jersey Callum is a bit TV sit-commy for my tastes, and Eustermann and Young are frankly awful. It's fun to see Norman Fell in an atypical costume if not an atypical role. The real heavy hitting is done by Deborah Rose as the psychic heroine, however. She's not your typical movie-star heroine--she's middle-aged, overweight, and smokes like a chimney--but she brings a simultaneous toughness and vulnerability to her portrayal that is a pleasure to see.

It's in the film's climax that things really get MAD, however. For instance, have you ever wanted to see Phyllis Diller as a gigantic flesh-eating zombie? Well brother, now's your chance:

Killer Diller

Once the rubber-suited mayhem starts it just doesn't stop, as Foosums gets a taste of one of the slain zombies' goo and hulks out to mammoth (which is to say, man-sized) proportions and terrorizes the survivor's in the wild and cottony climax. I feel a little bad spoiling the visuals for those who haven't seen the movie, but since the poster and VHS box had the giant zombie poodle plastered all over them as a selling point, I think somehow we'll all survive:

Don't make Foosums angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.

It's not a perfect movie--there are a couple of momentum-killing exposition/soul-baring scenes that strike me as serious directorial missteps--but that's a minor quibble when put up against everything the movie gets right. 2.75 thumbs for this relatively obscure monster romp from the 90s with one foot firmly in the day-glo 80s. Seek it out, parishioners--you'll be glad you did.

A few more images from The Boneyard (1991):

"Hell no, I don't know anything about a sexual assault on your pet chicken! Do you, Mullen?"

The Fell of Dark, Not Day

Madman 2: The Bride of Marz

"Gotcher nose!"

"Duke, NOOOOOO!"

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

All the Kind Strangers (1974): or, Ignore Your Better Nature

Horror movies have a lot to teach us. Not just folklore, myths, and legends, but practical stuff, things you can apply to your everyday life. For instance, they teach us you should never be part of a group of people who plan an elaborate prank to embarrass the weirdo in your town/class/camp, since such plans always tragically backfire and lead to your clique's bloody deaths. They teach us that when you're getting threatening calls from a mouth-breathing psycho, they're always coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE. They teach us that whenever you hear a strange noise at night or see a meteor crash nearby, it's NEVER a good idea to go investigate.

But perhaps the biggest, most overwhelming lesson that modern horror movies have to teach us, the one that they come back to again and again as if they can't emphasize the point enough, is this: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. Or, as I like to phrase it, "Being nice to other people is for suckers."

That's definitely the take-away lesson from Burt Kennedy's 1974 made-for-TV movie All the Kind Strangers. That, and never make a DVD cover without watching the movie first.

Photojournalist Jimmy Wheeler (the inimitable and un-mustachioed Stacy Keach) is on a cross-country road trip from New York to California, looking for new subjects on which to turn his lens. On a country road five miles from the nearest town he espies a tow-headed waif slogging along the side of the road, toting a bag of groceries almost as big as he is. Loosing the compassion and kindness in his big, beefy heart, Wheeler pulls over and offers the kid a ride to his backwoods home.

"Come on kid, work it! Give it to me!"

The kid's name is Gilbert, and he's happy to accept the ride, pointing the Keachmobile down a bumpy dirt road into the deep dark heart of hillbilly darkness. Wheeler is more worried about the possible damage to his brand-new, SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLAR car occassioned by passing through a shallow creek than he is about the kid's vague, elusive answers to pleasantries about his parents, a materialism and lack of curiosity he'll soon come to regret.

They roll up to the family farmhouse just as a thunderstorm is rolling in, and in gratitude for the ride Gilbert invites Wheeler to stay to supper. Keach declines, ready to get back out on that open road, but the kid is insistent that he come in and meet the family. Said family consists of six other children ranging in age from 5 to 18, the most notable being 15-year-old sharpshooter John (teen heartthrob Robby Benson, who seems to equate "hick accent" with "tardspeech"), 16-year-old Martha (Arlene Farber) , who is mute, pubescent, and horny, and oldest brother Peter (John Savage of The Deer Hunter and Godfather Part III fame), an intense, glowering teen who rules the rest of the family with an iron fist.

"We ARE saying 'cheese'."

Gilbert has already told Wheeler that their mother died birthin' Baby, the youngest ("Ma died when he was born, so he didn't get no other name."), so The Keach is understandably confused when Peter introduces him to "Ma" Carol Ann (Samantha Eggar of The Brood and Demonoid), busy makin' biscuits in the kitchen. Realizing immediately that this hot young lass with an English accent CAN'T be the mother of this particular brood, Wheeler pumps her for info, getting nothing but top-volume pleasantries from the obviously frightened woman. Secret messages in the flour only serve to confirm his (and our) worst fears:

"Help...I'm out of buttermilk!"

Yes, what we have here is basically Children of the Corn meets Texas Chainsaw Babies--the odd, violent, hickish family with no parents has made a habit of kidnapping kind strangers and forcing them into the roles of "Ma" and "Pa," keeping them prisoner with locks on the outside of the bedroom doors and a pack of ominous, snarling hounds who've been trained not to let them leave the property. It's not long before Peter has sunk Wheeler's car in the deepest part of the swimming hole and started encouraging him to discipline the other kids like a good Paw should. The other cars in the water along with a closet full of differently monogrammed clothes lets Wheeler know he can and will be replaced if he refuses to live up to his parental responsibilities.

Director Kennedy does a good job of generating a lot of ominous suspense in the early going here, aided by excellent performances from Keach and Savage. Every word from young Peter's mouth is tinged with barely concealed menace, and as the difficulties of his situation become more and more apparent, Keach vaccilates between fear and outrage, using his Mean Daddy voice to intimidate the kids as much as he can while trying to figure a way out of this mess. Also worth noting is the evocative score by Ronald Frangipane, which effectively juxtaposes country-fried folk tunes with dissonant, Kronos Quartet-style stings to create an oppressive, dangerous-feeling atmosphere. Some nice directorial flourishes (such as hand-held pov shots during Keach's escape attempt) and creepy, shadowy lighting in the old house at night also help matters.

Also interesting, though not developed as much as I personally would have liked, is the tension between Peter and his oldest siblings, John and Martha. The mute sister is clearly in the throes of silent teenage passion, and imprints on Keach as more than a daddy figure, IYKWIM. Her longing gazes over dinner and clear jealousy of Keach's bonding with Eggar are well drawn, and Arlene Farber is to be lauded for creating such a complete, complex character with only facial expressions and body language. And while Benson's performance is a bit clunky and Gomer Pyle-ish for my tastes, his idolization of his older brother and desire to become the man of the house as well ring true.

"Mind if I call you Sugar, Daddy?"

Unfortunately the tension can't be sustained throughout, as the rest of the flick involves no less than three failed escape attempts by Wheeler, who gets lost in the woods and returned by shotgun-bearing Pete and his pack of hellhounds between commercial breaks. The threat of violence, so palpable in the early going, never materializes into anything truly menacing, and when it becomes clear that nobody's going to get offed, the air goes out.

Still, there are a few cool scenes scattered here and there--for instance when Martha sneaks one of Gilbert's pet rattlesnakes into Carol Ann's room in hopes of removing her as sexual competition. Also suitably tense is a 12 Angry Men-style "vote" the children hold to decide whether to keep their new parents or get rid of them and go hunting for newer ones.

Stacy Keach is great here, as he often was--he plays Wheeler as a basically selfish person who's clearly congratulating himself on doing such a nice thing for a kid, only to get angry and confrontational when his kindness is rewarded with kidnapping and imprisonment. The real force in the flick though is Savage, whose steely expression and quietly menacing line deliveries make him a believably deadly villain. Eggar doesn't really bring much to her role here, though, and Robby Benson's "aw shucks" performance is mostly embarrassing (though not as embarrassing as his plaintive vocals on the movie's folksy theme song, which plays over a montage of Peter stalking angrily through the cornfield). The dogs, however, deliver a knockout performance. Them's some scary mutts.

"Not tonight, John-boy. I got a headache."

As usual with made-for-TV fare from the 70s, All the Kind Strangers feels a lot more polished and serious than similar stuff we get nowadays, further cementing my belief that the 70s were the golden age of Straight-to-Network filmmaking. Still, the film's anticlimactic non-ending and lack of any delivery on its meticulously built threat of violence keeps it from attaining the giddy heights of Bad Ronald or This House Possessed. A C-average, 1.5 thumbs rating for this one.

And remember folks--let that little fucker walk home. It's good for him, and better for you.

"No, I don't have a moustache in this flick. Why on earth would I want to grow a moustache?"

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

Bloody Birthday (1980): or, Death Wears Garanimals

A few days ago I reviewed a killer kids movie that (purposefully) left the origins of the kids' murderous natures unexplained. For some reviewers this was a refreshing lack of spoonfeeding, but for me it neglected an opportunity to give the proceedings added depth and meaning, either literal or metaphorical. It's been said again and again that horror films are perfect vehicles for symbolically addressing deep-rooted cultural fears--about science run amok, the dangers of the unrestrained id, or the terrors of an unchecked Communist menace--and it's not for nothin'. While I'm not necessarily advocating a Diary of the Dead-level Baseball Bat of Significance-style thrashing, I think it *is* nice when a filmmaker at least gives us a hat-tip to something bigger than the monsters-meet-characters-and-turn-them-to-hamburger raison d'etre.

And it doesn't take much. Case in point, today's killer kids movie from 1980, Ed Hunt's Bloody Birthday. Three kids are born in the same town within minutes of one another during a lunar eclipse. As a result of the malefactory alignment of planets at the hour of their birth, they are born without a sense of compassion or conscience. With their tenth birthday drawing near, this birth defect begins to manifest in increasingly bloody ways. A commentary on human nature reflected in the perversion of childish innocence? A warning about the dangers of lax parenting? A testimony to the importance of astrology in our day-to-day lives? The possibilities are unlimitless!

The wild death scenes, copious nekkidity, and summarily MAD plot developments are just icing on a delicious, poisoned cake.

Don't go 'round tonight

We open at a hospital in Meadowvale, California, on June 9, 1970. A slumming and somewhat confused-looking José Ferrer arrives for work (he's "The Doctor," as the opening credits have already informed us) to find that not one, not five, but THREE of his patients are getting ready to drop slick, steaming piles of joy in the maternity ward. "Well, you can forget about watching that eclipse!" he tells the nurse on duty, and they duck inside. Luckily *we* don't have to forget about it, as we get to enjoy time-lapse stock footage of the celestial event under a soundtrack of baby-squeals and Ferrer announcing, "It's a boy! It's a girl! It's a boy!" It's actually kind of soothing and disturbing at the same time, like Koyaanisqatsi without all the chanting and garbage.

An onscreen timestamp next informs us we've jumped nearly 10 years into the future to June 1, 1980, still in Meadowvale. A teenaged couple stop in the local graveyard to make out like rabid minx, but after allowing her gentleman caller to get to 3rd base up against a marble cross, the girl suddenly gets shy and wants to find a place out of the open. Erection is the mother of Invention, so the boy quickly finds a suitable make-out spot: a freshly dug open grave! Proving her GGG-ness, the girl happily hops into the corpse-hole and they git awn widdit, injecting the film's first dose of boobulin. When they hear someone moving around six feet up, the boy stands to see what (the fuck) is going on, and quickly catches three shovel-smacks to the face! The spade has barely stopped ringing before the screaming girl finds a garrotte around her neck and is lifted up the earthen walls, giving new meaning to the phrase "sexual hangups." She soon expires, another few shovel blows do for her beau, and the unseen killer(s) start filling the grave with loose dirt. SCENE.

"No! Please! I can't die in this shirt!"

Next we're introduced to fresh-faced high school senior Joyce Russel (Lori Lethin), who writes the astrology column for the local weekly and serves as a teacher's aide at the elementary school in her spare time. With a boyfriend away at college and a suave married editor who seems to have more than her deadlines on his mind, Joyce is obviously our Jamie Lee stand-in here. An early scene with her strolling through the streets of a suspiciously Haddonfield-like Meadowvale removes all doubt. She does know how to rock the man-shirt and bolo-tie, though, so bonus points there.

She arrives late to the elementary, where police chief James Brody (Bert Kramer) is questioning the kids about the recent graveyard murder. It seems a broken jump-rope was found at the scene, but none of the kids cops to having lost one. Joyce gets a little suspicious of her brother Timmy (K.C. Martel), who came home late the night of the murder, but it doesn't take long before knowing glances from soon-to-be 10-year-olds Debbie Brody (Elizabeth Hoy), Curtis Taylor (Billy Jacoby), and Steven Seton (Andy Freeman) clue us in to the real culprits. Stern-to-a-fault schoolmarm Miss Davis (Susan Strasberg, on her way down the career slope that would lead in a couple of years to her turn in Sweet 16) takes a few minutes to scold the kids pointlessly and shame Joyce for being late.

After class the Eclipse Kids come up to ask whether homework can be suspended on Monday, as that's the day of their joint birthday party to which the whole town is invited. Miss Davis quickly puts the ixnay on that noise. "Homework is more important than a party! And just because you all have the same b-day doesn't mean that you're special!" Angel-faced Debbie gives her sweetest smile and nod, but it's clear from her significant looks to her two male enforcers and some overbearing ominous TV music from composer Arlon Ober that Ms. Tingle is going on The List. If I were a betting man, I wouldn't lay odds on Strasberg making it to the end credits.

"We're cooking up some fava beans just for you, ma'am."

We soon learn just how surface Debbie's sweet-and-innocent looks are, as that night at her place she charges Curtis and Steven 25-cents a minute to look through a peephole in her closet at older sister Beverly (future MTV v-jay and novelty songster Julie Brown) as she gets dressed! Years before proving that Earth Girls are Easy, Brown spends a good three minutes proving Real Boobs are Good Boobs, dancing topless in front of her mirror with a feather boa and a Coke bottle (like you do) for the benefit of the prepubescent boys and the post-pubescent audience. She even treats the future Beavis and Buttheads of the world to some FULL DORSAL NUDITY before settling on an outfit, for which a child of the 80s like me can only stand and applaud. Well, applaud, anyway.

When Bev goes out with Joyce to discuss the ins and outs of her relationship with her editor ("You've got a mind like an X-rated soap opera!" Joyce laughs), the kids decide there's no reason to wait for their birthday to get bloody. Setting up a skateboard on the back steps, Debbie calls her father Sheriff Brody out of the house, hoping to take him out Tom-and-Jerry style. When he steps around the skateboard it appears he's dodged a bullet; unforunately he doesn't dodge Steven's home-run swing, as the boy steps out from behind a bush and cracks him on the skull with a Louisville Slugger! He's OUTTA here! The children then arrange the Sheriff's body so that it looks like an accident, but are surprised by Timmy walking by. Though he doesn't tumble to what they're doing, little Debbie's narrowed eyes let us know The List just got one name longer.

The next day The Unholy Three lure Timmy into a game of hide-and-seek at the local junkyard, and Curtis scares the rest of the players off with a realistic revolver ("It's a replica!" he foreshadows) before tricking Timmy into hiding in a freezer and then locking him in to suffocate. There are some very effectively tense scenes of the young boy, buried alive, banging on the doors from inside and slowly getting shorter and shorter of breath as his air runs out. Luckily he carries a pen light and a Swiss Army Knife with him, however, and is able to unscrew the door hasp and escape in a nick of time. Joyce doesn't believe his accounting of events, however, not even when he confesses he'd spent the evening of the previous murder feeding Debbie quarter after quarter for a look at Bev's bodacious ta-tas. Joyce finds this invasion of privacy and burgeoning voyeurism incredibly funny, and when she tells Bev later, her friend also laughs it off and doesn't even bother to cover the peephole--a move chock full of sisterly awesomeness but unfortunately one she'll come to regret.

"Tell you what--just run a tab."

A movie like this could live or die on the believability of its pint-sized villains, and this is one area in which Bloody Birthday succeeds like few others. Tow-headed tough Andy Freeman is given little to do as the silent-but-deadly Steven, but he does convey a kind of dangerous childish petulance in between kill scenes. The real heavy here is Billy Jacoby as Curtis, a playfully remorseless psychopath with a talent for electronics and a Dirty-Harryish love of handguns. (He even gets to parody DeNiro in Taxi Driver late in the movie, striking poses in front of his bedroom mirror with his weapon of choice.) Astute readers will be interested to know that Billy is the younger brother of Scott Jacoby, the wall-dwelling weirdo of the previously reviewed TV terror Bad Ronald. But the real ace in the hole here is Elizabeth Hoy as Debbie Brody, the ringleader with the sweet face and an absolutely unquenchable thirst for blood and death. Director Hunt does a great job of making the kids seem simultaneously childlike and murderous, precociously cruel in the way bright kids who realize there are no consequences to their actions could believably be.

The rest of the movie follows our trio of terror as they take out a few more locals, baffling the remaining police despite Joyce and Timmy's growing suspicions. A couple of standout scenes include the birthday party, where Hunt generates a lot of suspense over a possibly-poisoned birthday cake, and a junkyard chase scene where an eerily masked Steven nearly runs Joyce down among the wreckage. More nekkidity is provided by a van-rockin' couple making an ill-fated stop in front of the Russel residence, and the blood flows freely from Curtis's gunplay, Debbie giving her sister an arrow to the eye, and a tense babysitting assignment gone awry to tie everything up.

"Go ahead--make my play-date."

Lori Lethin as Joyce does a good job here as the confused but ultimately strong heroine, left to protect her brother while their parents vacation somewhere else for the entire two weeks of the running time. It's through her interest in astrology we learn the reasons behind our killer's spree, and her decision to skip college because what she really wants to do is become a journalist provided a chuckle. While her acting is more Facts of Life than Halloween, she does manage to make you care about her character and hope she doesn't get killed.

The script is pretty tight and moves along at a good speed, and though the TV-music score occasionally seems overly dramatic, there are a few good passages with creepy music-box like music that set the tone well. Hunt does a good job ratcheting up the tension, and though some would fault him for not going all Class of 1984 with the final confrontation, the flick does provide an interesting and believable coda with Debbie's twice-bereaved and obviously shell-shocked mother holding on to her one remaining child despite her rather hard-to-reconcile behavioral idiosyncrasies. The post-climax stinger is one that sent me out smiling and seemed earned.

In short, I found Bloody Birthday an entertaining way to spend an hour and a half, and one of the better killer kids movies it's been my pleasure to watch. It keeps the kids in focus without skimping on exploitation staples like nudity and death, and it's to be applauded for that. Never boring and occasionally genuinely suspenseful, Bloody Birthday earns its 2.5 thumb assessment. If you're in the mood for a trip to a more innocent, bloodier time, give this one a spin.

Bloody Bonus! More images from Bloody Birthday:

Bloody Bolo

"See me after class, Vicar."

Swing for the Fences, Kid

"Just attach the electrodes and press *this* button, Gramps, and zap! No more E.D.!"

Dark Night of the Scarecrow: Tarantino Version

"Let me show you something that weird Meyers kid taught me at recess."

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