La casa degli zombi

`A powerful combination of the evil-child subgenre and the Zombie Movie' Aurum Encyclopaedia of Horror

`Zombie Child has it all: Murderous kids, cannibal zombies and lashings of gore. Another unbelievably ghoulish offering from the legendary Harry Novak.' David Flint. Divinity

To sum up Zombie Child in two words, cheap and weird. What do you expect from producer Harry Novak? For those who are familiar with the ‘Sultan of sexploitation's work, you may remember his other horror productions, Axe, Mantis in Lace and The Mad Butcher. Don't let this put you off. Zombie Child does have the occasionally atmospheric scene or effective sets to redeem it.

Alicianne Del Mar (played by the lovely Laurel Barnett) arrives in the heart of the forestry to look after the difficult child, Rosalie. Her has broken down and she is now stranded. What are those creatures wandering around the grounds at night? Why does everybody act so strangely? It transpires that Rosalie's mother has recently died and ever since her departure, her only daughter has found comfort visiting the nearby graveyard at night. She admits that the ‘things' in the woods don't scare her because they are her ‘friends'. Alicianne soon realises that these ‘friends' are the murderous zombies who have killed everyone that have, in some way, annoyed the spoilt little girl. The climax involves the old favourite boarding up every possible entry as the horde of ghouls gather around an old mill to get at Alicianne.

Zombie Child is so peculiar, not to mention obscure and hard to find, you end up liking the film. The eerie misty cemetery scenes and some of the murders are quite well executed for a film whose low budget is obvious in every shot. You even begin to appreciate the silly looking zombies who appear like they've wondered in off the set of the terribly cheesy Astro-Zombies (Ted V. Mikels, 1969).

If you manage to find this old gem, I recommend you check it out. Just wait until you see the acting of the nosy neighbour. Especially in the scene preceding her death. I wonder what was her motivation...

Rosilan (Rosalie Cole) is a girl with some problems-like her psychic abilities that allow her to talk to her dead mother, levitate objects, and raise the dead.

From producer Harry ("Axe","Rituals", "Hitch-Hike To Hell" and plenty of soft core flicks) Novak comes "The Child", an uneven but still watchable take on the Zombie movie. The movie itself takes a while to get going, and like many movies of this type, the acting is terrible (especially Rosalie Cole, whose character is too much of a brat to be interesting or threatening), and the electronic score by Rob Wallace is grating.

Still, when the final 20 minutes kick in, the movie kicks up. There's some nice moments, and the zombies themselves, while not Romero or Fulci levels, are still pretty creepy. The make up effects are also pretty good, especially considering the movie's budget.

"The Child" is an alright Bad Seed movie, only with the supernatural and the living dead instead of a killer kid. Don't go into it expecting much, and you might sort of enjoy it. It would make a nice double bill movie with "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", I'll tell you that.

If you can get around the horrible soundtrack and cheap special effects you might actually like this movie. I did.

It's sort of a Carrie meets The Night Of The Living Dead clone about a little girl who lives with her father and brother in some isolated backwoods community. She spends her nights at the graveyard deep in the woods behind her house.

A sitter arrives from the big city to help take care of the little girl and soon discovers the rash of killings in the community might have something to do with the 12-year old. When the sitter realizes that the little girl has the power to move and animate inanimate objects it becomes crystal clear about just what she has been doing at the graveyard all those nights.

I adored this movie. The title Kill and Go Hide conjured up so many idea's in my mind that I just had to see it and I wasn't disappointed. It is heavy on the cheese factor in some scenes and actually quite frightening in others. There is a scene where the babysitter awakens from a slumber at four a.m. and looks out her window at a scarecrow hanging on a post. What came next kind of gave me a chill. I also enjoyed the stormy grave side promise from the little girl to her deceased mother. "I promise you, they'll pay."

In spite of its ultra-low budget, clunky, overdubbed dialogue, and not-so convincing "acting", THE CHILD still manages to cultivate a cold atmosphere of constant dread. There are also some fairly gory set pieces.

As for the titular terror tot, Rosalie Nordon (Rosalie Cole), she's not a bad representative of the "killer kid" sub-genre. How can you go wrong with an eeevil girl who can create a murderous scarecrow AND raise the dead to form a mob of undead ghouls?

Add this to your horror roster...

When I say the "bread and butter" of 70s drive-in horror, I mean movies like this one came and went, forgotten and/or never seen by the majority. But it was films like this that kept drive-ins and smaller movie houses in business. I am so

thankful for the age of the DVD. With the DVD era, companies such as Anchor

Bay, Something Weird Video (Image), Blue Underground, Shriek Show, and

many others have brought back lost cult classics (and not so cult classics) so that new generations can discover them, and the older generations can

rediscover them.

"The Child" has all the right ingredients for a b-horror movie. A little bit of homemade special effect gore, a soundtrack that gives you the creeps, zombies, and it set in the countryside. It may have it's slow parts, but the final 20 minutes or so deliver the goods in fine 70s b-grade fashion. You will be getting startled one minute, then laughing the next (unintentionally of course).