Wednesday, January 6, 2016

The Children, Annoying Parents Beware

Some might say this film crosses the line. Please!  Okay, we have children killing their parents....parents butchering their children....some bad acting....and an ending which hints at....well, you'll see.  Children of the 1980s will remember 1980's "The Children."  Those eerie kids approaching their moms, calling "Mommy," then carnage. Filmed in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and capitalizing on the Three-Mile Island scare of the 1970s, "The Children" is an eerie look at the deterioration of the nuclear family....in a literal sense.
After a leak at a nuclear power plant, a school bus passes through a radioactive cloud.  The annoying children on board are then transformed into monsters. These fiends are zombie-like and recite two words, "Mommy" and "Daddy."  When they find their way back home, they embrace their parents and their parents then burn from the inside out.  With creepy facial expressions, and black fingernails, our little monsters also fry the town skank (Joy Glaccum).  Slowly, Sheriff Hart (Gil Rogers), and his friend, John (Martin Shakar), put two and two together.  Uh oh, John's daughter was on the bus and she is headed home to put her arms around her pregnant mother (Gale Garnett) and her little brother.
As a plethora of MILFs are deep-fried, most of the town is unaware of the horror.  Unsuspecting New Englanders are eager to embrace the lost kiddos, and they do so to their demise.  As the sheriff  realizes these kids are no longer human, he embarks on a violent campaign to tear them apart.  Warning...you will see children murder their parents and children being chopped up.  As we witness the carnage, we wonder what director Max Kalmanowicz has planned for the pregnant mom and her non-monster son.

Perhaps a stern warning against the uncertain consequences of nuclear power ("The China Syndrome" had just hit the theaters). Or perhaps a gratuitous horror film that crosses the line. In any case, "The Children" is very creepy and horrific, and also available on YouTube.

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