¿Quién puede matar a un niño?

Everyone who thinks that the "Children of the Corn"-films or boring stuff like "The Children of Ravensback" are cool horror movies about kids killing adults hasn't seen this movie.

It starts off quite harmless, an American couple on vacation in Spain leaves the mainland to escape the other tourists. They go on a little island. What they (and the viewer) don't know is that the children there have started to kill all adults on the island for no apparent motive.

The story may sound strange and hardly making any sense. Obviously, the German distributors of this gem didn't understand it at all: the German video version got the title "Tödliche Befehle aus dem All", "Deadly orders from space", which is absolute nonsense because there is no science fiction in it! But the motive of the children is only secondary here. The film is a subversion of the thinking standards of people all around the world: Children are always innocent and adults destroy the world. And all this is made with an uncanny and creepy atmosphere that makes this film thoroughly unique. The only other "killer kids" film that is - positively - comparable with "Quien Puede Matar a un Niño" is the fourth and last segment of Jeff Burrs very good anthology horror film "The Offspring" (aka "From a Whisper to a Scream").

Just as Serrador's earlier masterly horror film "La Residencia" (see also my comment on that), this undoubtedly unpleasant film was ahead of its time and will forever stay a unique and unusual horror film.

In one of the featurettes on the Dark Sky DVD, director Serrador claims that he should have put the footage about atrocities done to children -- more than seven hard-to-watch opening minutes about concentration camps, children in Vietnam, Korea, Biafra, starved, burned, tortured -- at the end of the movie. Of course he's wrong: It would have spoiled the whole movie, especially after the very last sentence that spins the film in a direction known from a lot of cheap zombie flicks: The script robs itself of its mystery, though it's a minor letdown in an otherwise perfectly crafted, well-shot (by Jose Luis Alecaine, who also worked with Saura, Luna, Faenza, Almodovar, you name it) and relentlessly gripping story that never lets go, until the ultimately bleak and depressing ending -- the only possible conclusion to this unjustly forgotten gem of Spanish 70s genre cinema. If you hate children, this is the film for you; and if you hate adults, too.

I rather liked Who Can Kill a Child. It relies a great deal on mood, suspense and strong, strangely frightening images. It is not a typical horror film, having a Picnic at Hanging Rock-vibe to its eery, daylight desertion. For especially the images are what makes the film with the excellent photography of surreal horror. That being said the mood is really what drives the film as little quality in the field of writing or acting shines through for the most part. Especially the writing suffers. The dialogue just doesn't flow naturally possibly because the scriptwriters were Spanish. Especially the wife character is given some truly cringe worthy lines besides not having to do much so as to advance the story. The husband, the protagonist for by far the most part, often acts eerily illogically. This occasionally results in unintentionally humorous moments because of both the writers' and actors' shortcomings. However this is mostly during the first half were the couple's banter is in focus. The other, being much more action oriented works much better and the couple is much more appealing leading to some truly distressing scenes. Perhaps this occurs because there is a better translation of themes (as fear is a universal feeling, whereas it is difficult to characterize the ordinary, but specific). As such it is a film the qualities of which surpass the anachronisms and general writing and acting problems. It is a very imperfect great film.

While on vacation, a man and his pregnant wife visit an island that the former knows from his past. They arrive to find that the place is not how he remembered. In fact, it appears to be quite deserted aside from several children. It isn't too long before they come across an adult. Pity the kids get to him first, killing him and stringing his body up for use as a human piñata. You see, adults are no longer welcome on this island. At least not if they're still among the living.

For my money, "Who Can Kill a Child?" is a masterpiece of the genre. It makes other killer kid films look like jokes in comparison. Originally seeing it via the "Island of the Damned" cut, it's a very tense and unsettling film with some interesting socio-political subtext as relates to child violence. The likable main characters really struggle here, both physically and morally, in a picture as bleak as they come. It has such an impeccable mood and atmosphere to it. The closest comparison I can make is to that of Werner Herzog's short documentary, "La Soufrière". The isolated, disquieted feel of the island is very predominant.

It's unfortunate that director Serrador faded into the land of television after this film. He clearly had a lot to offer the genre.

It is hard not to be suspicious about where Stephen King might have got his "inspiration" for "Children of the Corn" when you witness the striking plot similarities between his novel/movie and the little-known but notable spanish movie "Quien puede matar a un nino?", which was also based on a novel. The subject of children who become a menace has been treated several times in horror cinema(e.g. Village Of The Damned, The Exorcist) because the idea of seemingly-innocent beings hiding dark and murderous forces within them is especially mind-bending and terrifying. Director Ibanez-Serrador (who later became more famous in Spain for directing TV game shows (!)) tries to make the most of this concept, and, although the final result suffers a bit from poor acting and lack of budget, he is altogether quite successful; He intelligently uses a sunny and placid holiday setup which gives us no clue about the horrors we're about to see, and builds up suspense so the film becomes more and more scary as it advances, reaching really sick heights of dementia towards the end. This is definitely a movie to discover for all Horror-cinema-lovers.