A Little Game

This film was made 50 years ago when psychotic kids with guns was a rarity or nonexistent.

A typical TV movie for its time as far as quality. It might have been a thriller then but now it is pretty benign. I think it is worth a watch if only to see lovely Diane Baker after her film career was over.

The kid in this movie is every adult's nightmare. The boy pulls one heinous trick after another, including murder, to get his way. As usual, another character suspects the kid of wrongdoing, but no one believes the little darling is capable of mayhem. One of the best creepy made for TV movies from the 1970's.

This was such a great movie, I can still remember being 11 years old and watching it on Halloween. The thing that REALLY stuck with me is that the main character (a BAD little kid) was being portrayed by the kid who did the voice of LINUS in the original Charlie Brown shows. Until I saw this movie I had a somewhat romantic view of military school, but this crushed any notion of that. I sure wish I could see it one more time but since in 1971 there were no VCR's in peoples living rooms, that is pretty much an impossibility. Christopher Shea played the role of a youth from a dysfunctional family who seems to be getting away with murder at his military school by making them look like accidents. "One of our boys just fell off the quadrangle!" The picture had the most Hitchcockian feeling for a "made-for-TV" movie, a sleeper that would have done excellent at the box office for sure.

A Little Game is decent enough for a TV movie, although it's a long way from being brilliant. The film takes obvious influence from the likes of The Bad Seed, in that it follows a young problem child with murder in mind. There were some really good seventies TV movies, so while this one is OK in its own right, it pales in comparison to some of its counterparts. The main problem with the film is that the problem child fails to be intimidating and comes off as being more pathetic than frightening. Mark Gruner was clearly the wrong kid for the central role - and that's a shame as the film really rests on his shoulders. Obviously, you can't expect great things from a film like this; but unfortunately this one does little more than merely tell a story, and the story itself doesn't have much more to it than just the central theme. I imagine that this may have been better when caught on TV in the seventies than it was for me watching it on DVD at home, but basically it hasn't aged well and there isn't much to it. I'm not saying it's not worth bothering with - but it's certainly not worth going out of your way for either.

For some bizarre reason, and ever since I was a young and irritating little kid myself, I've been most fascinated by horror movies/thrillers that deal with murderous, psychopathic children. The younger and crazier, the better! So, naturally you start with the classics in the genre, like "Children of the Corn", "The Bad Seed", and "Village of the Damned/Children of the Damned". When you get a little older and begin to dig a little deeper, you stumble upon the more peculiar titles (like "Who can kill a Child", "The Pit", "The Children of Ravensbeck" and "The Other") until - eventually – you fanatically seek out the most obscure and undiscovered gems ("Friday the 13: Orphan", "Cathy's Curse", "The Godsend", "Devil Times Five"). Then, just when you assume there isn't left to discover and you already accepted the fact that the newly released killer-children movies are vastly inferior, you come across this modest but very effective made-for-TV production and never knew it existed! It's small and insignificant triumphs like these that make life just a tad bit more fun!

"A Little Game" is slick and curious 70s TV-gem about a recently married couple who are nervously awaiting the homecoming of the wife's 13-year-old son Robert from boarding school. Robert's real father was his true God, but he died in a car accident that his mother caused and since then Robert has been very rejecting towards another male role model in his life. From the first moments that they meet, Robert behaves aggressive and rude against his stepfather, but his mother is convinced that he only needs time and extra affection in order to adapt to the new situation. When stepfather Frank begins to have good reasons to suspect that little Robert is, in fact, a genuine psychopath who may has killed a fellow student at his boarding school, the mother naturally doesn't believe him and tension mounts in their relationship.

This film, courtesy of Paul Wendkos who also served us "The Legend of Lizzie Borden", "Terror on the Beach" and "Haunts of the very Rich", is full of clichés and shortcomings, but I vastly enjoyed the tense and foreboding atmosphere. It owes most of its impact to the genuinely evil nature of the youthful protagonist and the adequate performances. You better don't contemplate too much about the one- dimensional characters, the dumb decisions they make and how badly they communicate with each other…

The four lead characters only have one particular characteristic, but each of them surely excels in extravagantly showcasing this characteristic! Robert is psychotic in every sense of the term! He talks and stares aggressively, dominates his supposedly best friend, terrorizes the maid, manipulates the mother, openly threatens to kill the father and actually aims loaded guns at them! Robert's alleged "best friend" Stuart – or Stu, as he prefers – is a weak and wimpy kid without backbone. He allows for Robert to reign over him, even though physically speaking he could easily beat him, and he covers up his weakness by talking endlessly. He can be manipulated by everyone; by Robert primarily, but also by the stepfather and even an insignificant wannabe Humphrey Bogart private detective. Then you have the stepfather, Frank, who's clearly supposed to be the normal person in the bunch, but he's seriously – by lack of a better description – stupid! He comes across as completely powerless when he gets threatened by a 13-year-old skinny kid and doesn't even succeed in persuading the mother that her son has some serious issues. I mean, at least try to record all the evil things that he says or do something! The mother is naive and almost single-handedly brings naivety to a whole new level! She's literally blind for the terror that goes on in her own house and defends her son without even listening to her husband's cry for help. She thinks it's totally normal for a young teenager to demand that she divorces and – as the ultimate icing on the cake – she considers an authentic hunting rifle is the ideal Christmas gift for a 13-year- old. Seriously, the highlight of the film was this piece of dialog: "Frank, honey, I know what you could buy Robert for Christmas. A rifle! Coming from you, it would be the perfect peace offer". That was pure genius! I know the situation is different in the United States compared to here in Europe, but come on… You don't give a lethal shotgun to a 13-year-old; let alone a borderline 13-year-old. It gets even funnier, because the stepfather initially refuses and then she just decides to buy the rifle herself. "Oh Frank, you should see how happy he is!" Awesome, awesome, awesome!