Tochter des Bösen

In spite of its ultra-low budget, clunky, overdubbed dialogue, and not-so convincing "acting", THE CHILD still manages to cultivate a cold atmosphere of constant dread. There are also some fairly gory set pieces.

As for the titular terror tot, Rosalie Nordon (Rosalie Cole), she's not a bad representative of the "killer kid" sub-genre. How can you go wrong with an eeevil girl who can create a murderous scarecrow AND raise the dead to form a mob of undead ghouls?

Add this to your horror roster...

Alicianne is hired to look after creepy 11-year-old Rosalie in her family's remote and gloomy house.It soon becomes clear that Rosalie has psychic powers and can make things move just by thinking about it-and she can also use those same powers to raise the dead,reanimating corpses in a nearby cemetery to take revenge after her mentally ill mother dies...A spooky and atmospheric opening scene gives way to a sluggish and wholly predictable zombie movie that has little new to add to an already over-crowded sub-genre.Technically,it's a mess and the acting is as dire as you'd expect,yet it does occasionally manage to display flashes of that creepiness that informed the opening scene."The Child" was released by exploitation king Harry Novak("Axe"),so fans of low-budget 70's horror should be pleased.This film has its share of flaws,but give it a chance.7 out of 10.

A pretty lady is hired as the nanny of a spooky little girl called Rosalie. The girl is a bit of a loner, mostly hanging out in the woods that surround her house and grieving over her dead mother. Thing totally go awry when Rosalie starts to act more and more like a little psychopath, drawing morbid pictures of her family and hiring her "friends" from the woods to kill people that get in her way. There's some eerie atmosphere in "The Child" as well as some ominous guiding music and macabre scenery. The pacing is slow, though, and there's much too much weirdness going on that remains unexplained. The kid is okay, I guess, but not half as creepy as the juvenile murderers in "The Children", "Bloody Birthday" or "Village of the Damned". The budget obviously was very limited, resulting in poor editing and cheesy make-up effects. Not a bad little movie, but you'll forget about it pretty soon.

Despite an interesting premise, this film doesn't deliver. Attempted as a period piece(probably because someone was able to get a-hold of some vintage 1930's cars)set in the 30s/40s, this flick involves a young housekeeper hired by a farmer to care for his house and young daughter after his wife's death. The daughter, Rosalie, apparently shares a penchance for telekenesis with her departed mother, and uses her unusual mental powers to reanimate putrid corpses and use them to hack apart people she doesn't like. The naive young housekeeper gradually becomes aware of Rosalie's strange abilities and eventually runs afoul of the little girl's graveyard friends!

This film doesn't really succeed in the period detail department, primarily because the housekeeper spends nine-tenths of the movie in peasant dresses, not exactly the going fashion in 1939 or whenever this movie was supposed to be set. A quibble to be sure, but come on, the wardrobe people could have tried more. The flick does have some nice atmosphere, with dark woods, brooding sunsets, and lots of dark interior shots. And there is a half-baked attempt to establish a romance between the housekeeper and the farmer's adult son. Nothing in the way of camp or bad acting to recommend it, but probably not a bad way to kill ninety minutes

This overdubed, somewhat disjointed horror film is probably more of a late to scene "Omen" rip-off than a zombie film; but if you are in the right mood you may find it creepily effective. There is an excellent scene about a half hour into the film where the old creep grandfather starts laughing at a horrible accident and the kid joins in. The other two don't know what to do, haven't we all been there? The disjointed sound actually may work in the film's favor, though you wonder if you are listening to the same people you are seeing on the screen. So it's hard to fault the performers too much. It's the kind of thing you might have seen at a faraway drive-in or late one night on cable and never quite shook. The Something Weird DVD gives you a chance to live it all again.