Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Absolutely brilliant

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

It is a real pleasure to watch a clever horror story with striking references to the worse of human history. Sure the portrait of the loving scared wife is kind of caricatured... But other times... Other women. The movie could have gained in mastery if Narciso Ibáñez Serrador had chosen between art-house film and B-movie. Anyway it's a good movie for creepy movie lovers.

"Who Can Kill a Child?" is a mid 1970s classic about a young British couple Tom (Lewis Fiander) and Evelyn (the late Prunella Ransome) who are on vacation. Evelyn is pregnant with their 3rd child and the couple want a vacation before the birth. Tom and Evelyn have a young son and daughter named Richard and Rosie already. Spain seems like an ideal place for them, but then again, other people have gotten the same memo and the island Tom and Evie are vacationing on is lousy with people. Tom and Evie want to get away from the noise and happy chaos of so many people. He suggests they take a boat to Almanzora, an island he went to 12 years ago. The day Tom and Evie take the boat to Almanzora is simply beautiful! When they arrive on the island, they see the white buildings and young boys playing in the water. One boy is a solemn, dark-haired kid with a fishing pole, a basket, and a less-than friendly-attitude towards Tom and Evie. Things become more and more unusual on Almanzora. All the inhabitants seem to be children ages 12 and under. The thing that clinches how strange the island is when Tom and Evie see a young girl not yet in her teens steal a cane from an old man and beat him to death with it! Both of them are shocked by what this young girl has done and she seems to think beating an old man to death is some sort of game. Tom sees the village children use the old man as a piñata later on. The reveal comes about when Tom and Evie realize all the adults have been eliminated from the equation by the children. A father of one of the murderous children says the murders happened the night before. He is soon killed when his daughter leads him to his death. The dark-haired boy and a blond boy are the leaders of the murderous children. All it takes is for them to stare at good children in a sort of hypnosis to get the good children on their side. It's too late to save Evie's unborn baby from this weird kind of hypnosis. A young girl touches Evie's pregnant stomach and the baby kills Evie. Tom can't take it anymore. He shots the children down and the ones who remain chase him to the shore. Tom is going to leave the island when the remaining children attack. A police boat comes by and the cops think Tom is killing innocent children. The chief shots Tom dead and the children show the cops where the villagers are hiding. This is a ruse of course. The boys rob the police boat of ammo and guns and shoot the cops dead."Who Can Kill a Child" is a really good, creepy movie about children who can't take the horrible things adults do anymore (ie., wars, famines, etc). The kids hypnotize each other and this makes all of them do away with their elders. The setting is not a haunted house and the sun is up during most of the movie. The children are all creepy and most of them have benevolent smiles that hide malice. One really can't blame the children for attacking the adults. The beginning of the movie shows wars, famines, and children being eliminated in concentration camps. I can't help but think Stephen King must have seen this movie late at night and was influenced to write "Children of the Corn" because his story follows the concept of this movie. I recommend "Who Can Kill a Child" because it is chilling, creepy, and no one would think a beautiful island would be the home of a horror movie!

"Who Can kill a Child?" has a brilliant concept. Children exhibit unusual behavior on an isolated island, threatening a tourist and his pregnant wife. Investigating this phenomena, reveals that the children have taken advantage of their perceived innocence to kill almost all of the adults on the island. What follows is a prolonged cat and mouse game between the threatened couple and hordes of strange acting children. The film is beautifully photographed, could have benefited from some tightening, and has an overwhelming foreboding atmosphere throughout. "Who Can Kill a Child?" is definitely not a gorefest, but is certainly an ethical dilemma worth exploring. - MERK

An out of date movie. A kind of mix between The Birds, The Village of the Damned and Verano Azul. However, a pleasant discovery. The director, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, created a famous TV show (1,2,3) that appeared on television all along Europe. Becoming the children in our society an increasingly scarce good and becoming the same children more selfish each succeeding generation, we can expect that this cycle will tend to escalate in the future something we may also call the generational conflict, but that will have nothing in common with the conflicts that we had known in the past, because the dispute is no longer about values, as happened in May 68, but will be about the well-being of each of the generations estranged.