Os Meninos

"Quién Puede Matar A Un Niño?" (I know there should be an inverted question mark at the beginning of the title, but try telling that to my keyboard) is an obscure Spanish cult movie from the Seventies. I say 'obscure' because the movie hasn't been seen or released that much, even though it has a good reputation. The biggest culprit here may be the film's subject: murdering children. The movie starts with several minutes of news footage, showing us how badly children have been treated, contrary to common belief that noone wants to harm children. There aren't many films that'll start with footage of WWII's concentration camps, wounded children in Vietnam and African infants starving to death. The accompanying soundtrack of children chanting seems awkward, almost perverse. After seven minutes of hard-hitting history lessons the movie starts with kids enjoying themselves at a beach. Up to the moment waves carry a woman's corpse to the shore. "Quién Puede Matar A Un Niño?" has started: enjoy yourselves.

Like so many other European films from the Seventies, "Quién Puede Matar A Un Niño?" (released in 1975) has more titles than anyone can remember: so far I've come across 'Who Could Harm A Child?', 'Who Can Kill A Child?', 'Could You Kill A Child?', 'Trapped', 'Island of the Damned', 'Island of the Dead', 'Scream' (I kid you not), 'Todliche Befehle aus dem All', 'Les Revoltés de l'An 2000', 'Killer's Playground' and 'Death is Child's Play'. One title better than the other, still Quién? doesn't manage to beat possibly the best movie title ever, "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" (Bob Clark's zombie movie made in 1972). Quién's director is Chicho Ibáñez-Serrador, the son of two actors who made two movies for the big screen and two for tv. Ever since, Ibáñez-Serrador has made his living directing tv shows. The other movie he made was "La Residencia" (1969), a sleazy thriller best known as "The House That Screamed".

Quién's protagonists are Lewis Fiander (Tom) and Prunella Ransome (Evelyn), a happily married couple enjoying their holidays. Ransome is best known for being in "Alfred The Great" and John Schlesinger's "Far From The Madding Crowd". Lewis Fiander has the best cult credentials from being in Hammer's underrated film "Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde" and the Phibes sequel, "Dr. Phibes Rises Again".

Back to our film. Tom decides to visit a nearby island he remembers visiting when he was very young. This is the biggest mistake they could've made. They take the boat to a little village that seems to be deserted. The ice cream is runny and there's noone in the pub. The couple can only spot a handful of kids. So what has happened? Where is everyone? You don't need too many clues to figure out that the children have started killing adults and there aren't that many left. Some people are killed onscreen and this is quite upsetting: to the children, murdering someone almost seems like a game. And perhaps it is.

I can't tell you more without revealing too much of the plot, but there are still a few things to be said. "Quién Puede Matar A Un Niño?" is a horror movie, but don't expect it to be gory or you'll be disappointed. I'd describe it as psychological horror, which is why the few gory bits are all the more unsettling. The movie has been compared with "Children of the Corn", based on a Stephen King novel and many think King must have seen the Spanish movie before writing his book. This could have happened, but one shouldn't forget there have been more movies and books where children end up taking over the world from adults (some of John Wyndham's books spring to mind, especially "The Midwich Cuckoos" - made into two movies as "Village of the Damned"). "Quién Puede Matar A Un Niño?" is a far better film than "Children of the Corn", so it's a damn shame the movie is only released on DVD by a Spanish label who couldn't see the use of adding subtitled to please the rest of the world. If you're lucky, you might find a French dubbed version of Quien? under the title of "Les Revoltés de l'An 2000", but you'll probably hear of the movie while reading a specialized cult movie magazine. Maybe that's part of the charm of the movie: that I myself own it twice, but only as a lame VHS copy of a copy dubbed in French and as a Spanish DVD without subtitles. I've seen the movie twice now and it isn't always easy to understand what it's about, but here we have a movie so clear in image language that it doesn't really matter you won't understand most of the dialogues (and to be honest, many scenes don't have dialogues as the couple find the only inhabitants of the village, the children, are far from talkative).

"Quién Puede Matar A Un Niño?" does not need dialogue to be good. The film succeeds in being both entertaining (in the way psychological horror movies entertain) and asking an interesting question: what would happen if children stopped being innocent victims? So obscure, relevant and good: movies don't need much more to end up being cult.

This remarkable and unusual horror film contains many powerful sequences, but one in particular stands out in my memory: The young husband, who's just beginning to realize that something about this island is very wrong, is attracted to a doorway by the sound of children's delighted laughter. He peeks through a crack in the door and observes a number of happy youngsters, all looking upward and swinging sticks, pinata-fashion, at something suspended from the ceiling. Then his gaze drifts upward, and we in the audience share his profound shock as he sees what the kids are swinging at.

This film hasn't received nearly the public or critical attention it deserves in the U.S. and isn't an easy film to find, except from off-the-beaten-path video companies. It is, however, well worth the patience of any true horror fan. Look for it!

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.

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.

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.