Child's Play

Apparently at this exclusive Catholic prep school even the civilian teachers have to be officially celibate. In Child's Play the focus of the film is on an intense rivalry between a pair of civilian teachers who have no outside attachments, save for James Mason and his dying mother. So they indulge in this rivalry for the approval of the students. And Robert Preston who dusts off a bit of his Harold Hill persona from The Music Man is winning hands down.

Child's Play, a David Merrick Production on stage ran 342 performances during the 1970 season and starred Pat Hingle and Fritz Weaver in the roles that Preston and Mason essay here. Preston is a charmer as Professor Harold Hill was, but his charm is laced with malevolence. For reasons I'm not sure whether for money or prestige Preston turns the students against Mason, he wants Mason out to move up in some kind of seniority system.

Mason makes it real easy. A stiff demanding pedagogue he's Mr. Chips before Robert Donat's marriage to Greer Garson humanized him. He's way past the age of retirement, but other than a terminally ill mother this guy has no life. Going to teach gives him an excuse to get up in the morning.

Both these guys are a pair of real closet cases. Both are obsessed with the young male preppy kids they teach, Mason just does not know how to relate to them. Preston does and he uses his influence with them to produce some terrible consequences.

Caught in the middle of all this is new gym teacher Beau Bridges who once went to this school. He knows both men from his years there, but learns a whole lot more once he becomes a faculty member and learns disturbing stuff about both.

Child's Play is smartly directed and photographed by Sidney Lumet. Pay attention to some of the deep focus cinematography involving all three of the players I've named in joint scenes. All three register facial expressions that help move the story along immensely.

I think a lot was left out of the play coming over from Broadway, but still Child's Play is a fine film with great performances from the leads.

I confess, I've always loved this film since I first saw it decades ago. I was always amazed that with its strong pedigree, both behind and in front of the camera, that it seemed to be totally forgotten with no official release.

Needless to say, I was THRILLED when I heard that Olive was releasing the Blu-ray. I've had a fairly nice print that I got from television many years ago, but now it is awesome to have this unique film available on Blu-ray.

You pretty much have the general plot from the other reviewers here, so I won't waste your time on that. But, I will say that one of the primary things I really like about this movie, and that I like most about good Horror films, it is all about MOOD & ATMOSPHERE! Seriously, there is a very low-key but strongly oppressive mood over this film as these boys are mysteriously getting maimed. What is behind it...? Well, that is one of the things this movie (actually Sidney Lumet) does very well. And, that is really being vague and ambiguous about the source of the Evil that is happening. It is most definitely there and you feel it, you just don't quite know where it is coming from 😊

And THAT to me makes for a great film! I'll just leave it at that and say that if you are the kind of person who enjoys mood and atmosphere most in Horror movies like this, and appreciate an oppressive slowly building Evil, and you don't mind a Slow-Burn, low-key build up, there is a good chance that you may very well like it...

This is an excellent film. Unfortunately the word subtle, which applies to this film, is used as a negative by the only (at this date) other comment on "Child's Play." Subtle it is, and those who like character studies and evocative camera work, a sustained mood and a finely wrought battle between good and evil will be delighted. If you like the garbage that passes for horror in most of today's bloodfests and loud, non-stop, effects-driven films, well - don't bother.

Robert Preston and James Mason, two A-list actors, knew good material and both give performances that rank highly with the best of their careers. This film was directed by the great Sidney Lumet, and reveals what is usually best about Lumet's work: great acting, sustained mood, the ability to confine the action to one setting and exploit it for all it is worth, attention to detail and precise pacing that builds exactly as it should. This unheralded gem deserves a DVD release soon!

There's evil afoot in one of those boy's schools were the boys are all played by actors in their early twenties. It makes you wonder at what age pupils graduated from American high-schools. "Child's Play" was adpated from a successful Tony-award winning Broadway play and was directed by Sidney Lumet. It's certainly not one of his better films but it's a nice grisly entertainment nevertheless about the feud between two senior masters, (James Mason and Robert Preston, both terrific), and a seemingly inexplicable eruption of violence amongst the boys.

Basically, it's a high-class horror film with possible demonology lurking in the chapel and would be more effective if the 'boys' weren't so clearly young men. Beau Bridges is the new young gym teacher and former pupil torn between loyalty to Preston and sympathy for Mason and David Rounds is good as a fairly liberal young priest. It's nonsense, of course, but the cast give it a real kick and Mason, in particular, might convince you that you're watching something serious. Understandly it isn't much revived.

In CHILD'S PLAY, from way back in 1972 and not involving a red-haired serial killer doll named Chucky, the development of the characters drives the suspense, and for today's standards, this could seem like a slow-moving, over-brooding, thrilless arthouse thriller, or a stage play adapted to the big screen. But what's really intriguing are the similarities with THE EXORCIST, which was being filmed when this hit theaters, but the book had been on the stands for several years...

So for anyone who hasn't seen or doesn't want to see William Friedkin's brilliant and timeless GODFATHER of horror flicks, that opened the door for a number of slowburn Catholic-centered horror-thrillers, there are three particular characters: an old priest, a younger priest, and a possessed young girl. Replace the girl with an entire Catholic School of mostly bullying boys who, as we witness their odd behavior, are in some sort of... spell, or something... adding Mystery to the myriad of genres...

We learn of everything through token white rabbit Beau Bridges, a former student who had returned as a teacher and greatly admired Robert Preston's vivacious, progressive English teaching priest, Joseph Dobbs, while immensely fearing a bitter old coot - Jerome Malley played by James Mason - who seems to be our primary antagonist, but as "the case" unfolds he could very well be a temperamental red herring...

Leading to the best scenes involving conversations between Beau's pivotal and, for the most part, eventually ambiguous Paul Reis with the polar opposite instructors while the kids are but a sporadic break that really need no escaping from...

For CHILD'S PLAY is more of a "Courtroom Drama" without a court and gavel. Bridges proceeds over the "testimonies" of both men although one is sold as being far more likable from the onset; yet this opinion remains more decided by the students than we, the hyper-alert audience, anticipating a twist to occur, especially with a character (Preston) so flawless.

Meanwhile, we're (through Bridges) the Jury being swayed, maneuvered from one side to the other: Preston is charming and understandable on a universal level as Mason has a tortuous life that can be pitied, even beyond the death of his mother. And the characters develop from there.

Director Sidney Lumet channels his signature New York gritty realism into the Gothic school where statues and cold walls keep that heated far-off reality as distant from the lens as it is the students, inhibiting a power, or perhaps merely channeling a hypnotic strength that needs no real explanations like, say, a ROSEMARY'S BABY.

Leading to a conclusion with so much buildup it begs for palpable closure. And yet, CHILD'S PLAY clings to words beyond action and an enigmatic dark aura over nail-biting suspense. In some strange way, there doesn't need to be any end at all. You can hear these two men speaking for days.

Sure there could have been scarier moments here and there, or even a dugout of fellow priest/teachers introduced to individually buy the farm when they wander off alone through the spooky campus. (Alright, that's very 1980's, but there are pockets of downtime when a few deaths would have livened the picture.) Hell, even THE EXORCIST had palpable "gotcha!" moments: cinematic caffeine never hurts.

But CHILD'S PLAY centers more on the dark hypnosis than what derives from it. Adding to one of several films using THREE main male leads to override a more conventional formula, intriguing enough to keep the viewer tuned in even after the purpose becomes all too clear.