Kleine Teufel

I found this movie disturbing. Young girl putting a piranha in a woman's bathtub, while the others hold her down. The sheer frustration of the triumph of evil over good. The hopelessness of fighting an evil that outsmarts you every turn, with no weapons either. I had to stay up a while after seeing this movie. I just found it disturbing.

This is a good little quirky horror-thriller set in a snow-bound area. A family gather in a house for a winter break, while at the same time a bus carrying some kids crashes off the road. Five of the children escape unharmed but it turns out these are seriously disturbed kids and they are soon to come into contact with our friends in the holiday home.

Devil Times Five is a strange little movie. It sometimes gives off the relaxed and warm feel of a 70's TV movie but this is misleading as its subject matter of sociopathic children is not exactly a very cosy theme. This combination of TV-style melodrama with slasher movie subject matter is one of the things that makes for distinctive viewing. It's just a little bizarre. The snowy setting is good too and gives the flick a nice feel. The murders are all varied and occasionally quite inventive such as the bath tub demise replete with piranhas. Admittedly, the first murder is a pretty confusing affair – not only do we have trouble knowing what is going on but it's not even that clear who is even being attacked! But it's still a pleasingly weird scene with slow motion visuals and sound, and through a monochrome lens. Aside from all this, the movie is not above throwing in a totally unnecessary cat fight too. And what could be wrong with that? You could do a lot worse than this one. If you are a sucker for early 70's proto-slashers then this is one that should provide some entertainment.

A few scenes go on for too long (that slow-mo beating scene could have been trimmed down a bit, couldn't it?), but all the adult characters are wonderfully unlikable and morally reprehensible which makes it fun to see these kids throw piranhas into their bathtubs and catch them on fire. It's a pretty dark and cynical film, so be sure you're in the right mood before you partake.

This is one of them seventies horror films your grandfather would tell you about while settling you down to sleep when you were a toddler. Five crazy kids escape from a mental institution and play the scared kid card at the house of Papa Doc, who is currently playing host to all sorts of unlikeable adults, so, basically, you can tell where this is heading. What got me about the Devil Times Five is the way that the first hour passes almost lightheartedly, before heading for Grimsville. When the kids start wasting the cast, a kind of darkness settles on the film and never let's up. I don't know if it's just the playful way the kids massacre people (hence the title: Peopletoys), but I was left with a bizarre bad taste in my mouth after watching this. I guess that's the whole point though. You don't really get that from watching modern splatterfests. This is seventies horror in a nutshell, this film.

Plus, for UK viewers, check the name of one of the producers of this film (the IMDb won't let me use his second name here). I bet he's glad he didn't go to school in Glasgow!

DEVIL TIMES FIVE suffers from barely-competent direction and editing so bad, you wonder if it was done by trained simians. What could have been a genuinely chilling movie about child psychotics victimizing a group of unsuspecting adults is sabotaged by some glaring continuity problems, most noticeably a minor character who is played by one actor in outdoor scenes and an entirely different actor in indoor scenes and Leif Garrett's famous goldy locks being natural in some scenes and a wig in others. Psycho children are scary, but we don't get any back stories to heighten our horror. Maybe that was the point. This flick has some pretty nihilistic adults, spouting soap opera exposition about failed marriages, infidelities, and non-committed relationships. It may be like trying to polish a cow pie, but it might be observed that the adults and their trashy grown-up "games" are a revolting counterpoint to the homicidal "games" of the junior wackos. Both are disgusting, but the adults and their "games" are socially sanctioned. I just wish some details were followed up on. Leif Garrett is shown engaging in some behavior that may have been filmed to establish a split personality element that the director abandoned or didn't explore. I won't detail what it is, but it's something that, given the theme of the movie and the fact that a pubescent boy is doing it, still serves to give viewers the creeps.