The Child

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.

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...

`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...

Alicianne is hired to look after creepy 11-year-old Rosalie in her family's remote and gloomy house.It soon becomes clear that Rosalie has psychic powers and can make things move just by thinking about it-and she can also use those same powers to raise the dead,reanimating corpses in a nearby cemetery to take revenge after her mentally ill mother dies...A spooky and atmospheric opening scene gives way to a sluggish and wholly predictable zombie movie that has little new to add to an already over-crowded sub-genre.Technically,it's a mess and the acting is as dire as you'd expect,yet it does occasionally manage to display flashes of that creepiness that informed the opening scene."The Child" was released by exploitation king Harry Novak("Axe"),so fans of low-budget 70's horror should be pleased.This film has its share of flaws,but give it a chance.7 out of 10.

Of course not much was to be expected of this movie but that doesn't make the viewing experience of it any better. It's an obviously cheap movie, that got poorly put together by an also very obviously inexperienced cast and crew.

I'm taking into consideration the budget and time that went into this movie and in that regard it really isn't an horrible picture and on some levels actually quite an achievement but the overall end result isn't exactly anything that I would recommend to anybody.

Thing with this movie is that it's storytelling never really flows pleasantly. The movie has an hard time finding the right pace and its story and writing isn't helping very much. It often is all over the place and is heading in all kinds of different directions. The one moment it's more of a psychological horror, the other a gory slasher and then the other suddenly a weird sort of zombie flick. Not a very consistent movie with its horror, nor with its story. It does not only confuse me, it also annoys, which is arguable even worse.

But something that annoyed me way more (next to its acting) was the absolutely horrible soundtrack this movie had. It was so incredibly noisy and without rhythm or tone that it almost caused my head to explode at several points throughout the movie.

But these cheap sort of '70's genre movies are not without its charm really. It actually only adds to the movie its atmosphere that this isn't a perfect looking movie and features some shaky camera-work and cheap effects in it. If you can enjoy these sort of movies, this one is still worth giving a go.

For everybody else; just skip it!

4/10

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