After an unsettling opening montage of real-life world atrocities against children (understandably excised from most export prints), the film focuses on the harrowing ordeal of English tourists Tom (musical stage actor Lewis Fiander) and Evelyn (British TV regular Prunella Ransome), who are celebrating the expected arrival of a new baby with a vacation in Spain at an oceanside festival. Despite the disruptive presence of freshly-murdered bodies turning up from the surf, they decide to charter a boat to visit Almanzora, a small nearby island Tom visited long before. Upon arrival they find the area strangely devoid of adults, while the local children prove uncooperative, sinister, and... threatening.
"Bad kid" horror films had certainly existed before, most notably with The Bad Seed and Village of the Damned (or on a much lower level, Devil Times Five and Wild in the Streets), but this film upped the ante considerably by depicting the entire child population as coldly homicidal, a terrifying concept American culture didn't adopt into well into the writings of Stephen King.
Both of the English leads handle their roles exceptionally well (try to watch the English language option on the DVD to fully appreciate them), while Serrador skillfully uses the island atmosphere and pitch-perfect pacing to deliver the shocks when they're most potent. The film follows its nasty thesis all the way to its logical conclusion (which parallels nicely with the almost simultaneous release of David Cronenberg's first film, Shivers), and along the way numerous indelible situations and images accumulate to provide a potent, gut-churning experience reliant more on mounting terror and suspense than buckets of blood. Underrated composer Waldo de los Ríos (who also contributed equally haunting melodies to The House that Screamed and The Corruption of Chris Miller) provides a wonderfully effective score using tender lullaby motifs to sparing but chilling effect; this is the only score of his to date fortunate enough to warrant a CD release, but hopefully more will surface in the future.
Dark Sky's DVD salvages this much-discussed but rarely-seen gem from the vaults of AIP, whose rights eventually expired. The anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer looks terrific, putting to shame the butchering US prints. The film can be played either with its complete Spanish-language soundtrack (with optional English subtitles) or the preferable English version, which still segues into Spanish (also with subtitles) for a few brief bits never mixed into English, similar to the hybrid language presentations of such past essential DVD releases as Deep Red and Castle of Blood. Extras include a stills gallery, a newly-created trailer, and two excellent featurettes from Severin Films' David Gregory featuring interviews with Serrador and talented cinematographer José Luis Alcaine. They discuss the tricky location work to create the island, the uneven relationships with the actors, the origins of the script and related published novel, and their careers afterwards. Along with making the viewer hungry for an MGM-sanctioned DVD of The House that Screamed, the featurettes preserve the talents of two men who, in a perfect world, would have delivered many more horror masterpieces to come.
For more information about Would Can Kill a Child?, visit Dark Sky Films. To order Would Can Kill a Child?, go to TCM Shopping.
by Nathaniel Thompson
