Samhain Project '24: The Children

1980's The Children is one bizarre excursion into cinema.  As the film opens, you have a couple of gomers who work for a nuclear plant arguing about how much attention they should be paying to a pressurization issue.  

I'd say more. 

Later on, we have a bus full of kids singing 99 Bottles and a weird Hail to the Bus Driver tune before driving through what appears to be a giant mustard fart cloud.  Now, the only thing weirder than this movie is probably the community it takes place in.  It seems to have two cops and a population of about 12 people who have massive homes and plots of land.  

Strange dead ends hang in the atmosphere.  For example, once shit starts hitting the fans, we have two people signed up to monitor a road block who are never accounted for again.   A heartbroken waitress, teary-eyed and miserable, heads home in the dark, stood up by her ride, (who in all fairness has some serious shit to do) and is also never heard from for the rest of the film.  Weird.

   

What's happening is our Mustard Fart Cloud kids are now bullet-proof black-fingernailed, smokey-eyed weirdos who want to hug everybody so they can cook them alive.  This is a low- budget film, however, so you have to grade on a curve.  I will say Gil Rogers as the sheriff does pull his weight.  Harry Manfredini works the score here, and it sounds like he's doing a rough draft of his superior Friday the 13th score, mixed with Bernard Herrman's Psycho elements.  I forget the director's name already.  It's that sloppy.

1980 had a plethora of low budget horror, but where The Children sets itself apart is it isn't a slasher film.  It's kind of a zombie film in an odd way.  The residents of this small town are made short work of by our bus riders, not a big deal with only 12 members of the community.  All of them either assholes or perverts, so who could blame the tykes anyway.  

I must warn you, despite the factors that make this seem like light horror fare for one to enjoy on a Saturday Night, (like my sisters and I tried to do in 1981 on Spectrum) there's a heavy few jaw droppers in here that give genuine weight to the affairs and kind of take the wind out of the sails of the "fun horror giggles".

That being said, is The Children a good movie?

No. 

Is it worth watching?  Based on its complete and utter bizarreness, definitely.  Happy Halloween!!