Peopletoys

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.

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!

Five little evil bastards escape a van crash that most assuredly would have killed them had they been normal children. After a little wandering the five find themselves at a remote chalet where three couples and a mentally challenged handyman (try figuring that one out) are spending time in yelling at each other and getting drunk. Sounds like most of my Christmas'. Soon the incompetent adults are dispatched by the little tykes deathtraps that never seem to fail followed by an annoying Pop Goes the Weasel score. Aren't you scared yet? Watch for the catfight when at the end Lovely's robe is only partially open then the next glimpse it is wide open exposing the only things worthy of notice in this film.

What a disaster of a movie! It's not without promise but this could have been done so much better. The editing is so poorly done that it is hard to know who certain people are in the film such as the mystery man that emerges from the van wreck. Was it a clown car for chrissakes? This is rated R and yet the death scenes make me wonder if the director decided to pull back on the gore. The five plus minute slo-mo black and white death scene is so painful to watch it defies belief that the director would stoop to this to extend the runtime. Leif Garrett's hairstyle changes inexplicably from a goofy wig to shoulder length from one scene to another. The children refer to a character twice that is no where to be found such as when David kills Harvey and blames it on this mystery "Greg". How can you be so lax? On top of that the murders are so lame that only an idiot would fall for them and yet this chalet is packed with idiots. One scene in particular has two of the kids drown Lovely in the tub while dropping Piranna fish in. The fact that these kids are exposed to the large breasted Carolyn Stellar to begin with is a little disturbing but the scene is followed with all the "devils" dragging her naked body through the snow. One more juicy tidbit is Carolyn Stellar is the real life mother of Leif Garrett and Dawn Lyn who plays Moe. One of the writers is John Durren who plays Ralph the retarded handyman (I wonder if he wrote this channeling his character?) who in a very cringe inducing scene is sexually harassed by Lovely. I would recommend seeing this once with a bunch of friends and adult libations just to laugh at the sheer silliness of this movie. Aren't "peopletoys" marital aide products?

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.

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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