Acoso mortal

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!

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.

Devil Times Five is basically your basic seventies horror flick about a bunch of people in an isolated location being terrorised by psychos; except this one has a twist, and that twist comes in the form of the psychos themselves being young children. The most famous film to use the idea of psychotic children is probably the 1960 classic Village of the Damned; but it has been done many times since. Devil Times Five is perhaps something of an oddity within the genre as it doesn't particularly focus on the idea of the children being psychos, but instead puts its focus on the sleazy adult characters and gory death scenes. The plot focuses on a group of people staying at a snowbound lodge. Meanwhile, a bus carrying a group of psychotic children slips off the road; allowing the kids to escape. After taking out their guardian, the kids descend on the lodge where they are taken in by the people staying there. Shortly thereafter, the adults start turning up dead...

The film is a real piece of seventies grindhouse with the main focus being on the sleazy atmosphere. Immediately we are shown that not all of the main characters are angels and it sets things up nicely. Often horror films involving kids will be toned down a little; but that's not the case here either. The kids themselves are vicious enough and that is complimented nicely by a grisly set of death scenes that include things such as a woman in a bath being eaten by piranhas, someone being set alight and a vast assortment of mêlée weapons being put to good use. The snow setting provides a good location for the action to take place as it provides a good atmosphere of isolation to ensure we're always aware that the central characters are in trouble. It does have to be said that the film can't really be taken seriously; it's not particularly well written or acted and the story has no depth whatsoever - but it's not important anyway for a seventies horror flick and the film does provide ninety minutes that are worth seeing.

In the 1970's, Conservative America was afraid of the young. The counter culture, the civil rights/anti-Vietnam protesters, all added to this underlying fear, perpetuated like the communist '"threat" in the 1950's. "kids" weren't towing the line. They were "sticking it to the man". Or in the infamous case of the Charles Manson lead "family", they were killing the rich - "The Man", so to speak. They were also giving it a little closer to home, and this of course meant the family. In the cinema this was reflected in the horror genre. From the time in 1968, - when the little girl kills her parents with a trowel and eats them in George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, and Mia Farrow quite literally gives birth to the Devil in Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby - the movies began to depict children and adolescents as quite evil, untrustworthy 'elephant's in the room'. In the '70's, this trend was reflected in two large budget, Hollywood 'blockbusters', William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973), and Richard Donner's fun but flawed The Omen (1976). Sat somewhere between these two studio efforts is Sean MacGregor's Devil Times Five (also known as Peopletoys).

A group consisting of work colleagues and family, headed by self-evident pack-patriarch, Papa Doc (Gene Evans), have congregated in an isolated house. The snow is falling heavy and thick. A group of kids escape a van that has crashed in the wilderness, that was transporting them from a state mental facility. The kids make their way through the forests until they come across the vacation home. They infiltrate with the image of innocence, but one by one, the occupants are murdered. After trapping one victim in animal 'Conibear' traps, the kids skip around him, mocking his death, with the xylophonic music of 'Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush' on the soundtrack.

The film is no missing gem. It is however, quite a well-made movie. The 'devil' kids are not too bad. The nature of the adults in the film, - arrogant, pessimistic, and odious - only make you happy that these calculated (and clearly more hauntingly intelligent) kids will kill the lot of them. Whether this was intentional is not clear. I never really enjoyed the company of the adults. The kids are playful, spiteful, and a little fun. And they act better. It's no masterpiece, but it has charm, and is more sophisticated than many of the same sub-genre of exploitation films of the time. It does have a slightly chilling end, (not exceptionally so, but on thought, it could be perpetually cyclical) the kids stand round all the dead adults sitting round tables, and on sofas, they complain of the loss; the game is over; but they are comforted by their leader, Sister Hannah (dressed as a nun), when she advises that they will soon have some new 'toys' to play with.

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