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Random Movie: The Children (1980)

Written by: PBF

You've heard the phrase "Hugs not drugs," right? Well, I urge you not to heed that advice. I am not advocating the use of drugs by any means, but just beware of hugging. Allow me to explain.

The Children is a delightful waste of time that begins at a nuclear power plant. The only 2 employees that are there must go find a drink so they leave. I assume that they have neglected something in their job description as some kind of leak happens and a big toxic fog forms. We then have a bus full of about 5 kids, having a merry time, singing the praises of the bus driver who approaches the dense mysteriously out of place fog with reckless abandon, and goes right through it. Later on, Sheriff Billy Hart finds the bus on the side of the road, engine running, but empty. The Sheriff then visits the parents of the missing kids to see if they have come home. They have not. What they have done, is turned into some kind of mindless gang of zombies, whose fingernails have all turned black (except for one kid, which I will get to in a minute). These kids then seek out their families and give them hugs, which burn them to death. But only their flesh, not their clothes or anything that would make sense like that. The majority of the film is us watching as the Sheriff and John Freemont (parent of Jenny, one of the hugging killers and Clarkie, who is unaffected because he did not go to school) discover bodies and piece together what is going on.

I fear that this review will not give you an accurate representation of how bad the movie is. It is laugh out loud horrible. It even screws up the most basic horror movie traits. You know the old "person is creeping around looking for someone, and gets scared by a house pet" trick that is designed to startle the audience? Well they try that, but the music and the animal are out of sync, so the dog shows up, the person jumps and there is split second of violin all in that succession. Embarrassing. Also, they try a similar gag where someone catches their reflection in a mirror, but there is no music that time, and the acting is so poor it just looks really awkward. Not one person in it can act. The audio is such garbage, it even has that clichéd record album sound where you can hear all the pops. The film skips in spots also. One thing about this film that I did not understand, is that all the kids but one, Janet, turn evil right away. She does not until near the end of the film. There is no explanation for that, but she does turn evil at a mighty convenient part of the movie. Also, AND THIS IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE SPOILER FOR THIS MOVIE: when John's wife gives birth to a baby, it's fingernails are black. What the fuck? How is that possible if it wasn't exposed to the radiation? Also, why doesn't the mother's flesh burn when the baby touches her? And speaking of the baby, possibly the most hilarious thing in the movie: While pregnant, John's wife lights up a cigarette, takes a huge drag, looks at her belly, rubs it and says, "Sorry." That scene and others displaying the deplorable behaviors of the killer children\'s parents serve as, I guess, the "moral" of this film. One kids parents are smoking pot, and as the mother says, "do not rise before 10." One kid's sister apparently is a slut. So I guess this is some kind of commentary on bad parenting. Well, The Children, I have a comment for you. Usually, when someone is shot or their hands get chopped off, there is blood. I mean, you can\'t fit corn syrup in your budget?

While this movie is utterly useless and has no redeeming qualities, I enjoyed watching those silly, huge grin wearing little psychopaths burn their parents alive. I saw this movie when I was very young and was never able to remember the name of it. Thanks to Jesusflix, I was able to stumble upon it, and gladly surrender 90 minutes of my life one more time.

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