The Child (1977) User Reviews

Surrealism

[Perception_de_Ambiguity · 6/10 · 15 January 2011]

Wow. I dare say you have never seen such a surreal film unless...well, you have seen THIS masterpiece of surreal cinema. I don't believe the movie was shot on earth or that earthlings were involved in the production, it just feels too otherworldly, and that's how I perceived it just after having watched a movie about a Martian society in which Santa Claus actually existed on earth.

Reportedly the film is about an evil girl killing adults. Well, you wouldn't really know she was evil because the film goes for GLARING CREEPY FROM START TO FINISH! Apart from the chick that stumbles into this hellhole and that we are supposedly meant to identify with every character here exists to creep out the chick (and consequently the viewer). Animals too, although you rarely get to see any. And woods. They are the evilest of them all. For example take the old lady she encounters in the beginning. Acting overly friendly but always implying certain doom in her dialogue. Well, after "our chick" meets the wicked family she suddenly is one whom the viewer is meant to feel for when she gets killed off. As for the evil girl, the only thing that distinguishes her wickedness from the wickedness of the other characters is that she is one wickedly bad actress.

In any other case I'd say the film is "hella stupid" but it creates such a thick atmosphere, mainly with its dense sound design but also with the lively camera-work, that it feels like experiencing a dream and when it becomes more incoherent it just feels even more like a dream. Apparently more effort was put into the sound design than into actually shooting the damn thing - even if the filmmaking here is anything but typical - but the walls of sounds that runs along on the soundtrack, wow. Only one section towards the end of the movie was so dull that even the sound editor simply skipped that part, leaving it untouched, for which I can't blame him, other than that there isn't a quiet second in the film. And did I mention the flick has a piano score? Yeah, MELLOW PIANO! Mixed with a lot of weird sounds.

As for the editing, well, that's a big part of what makes this such a surreal film. Coherence is almost non-existent, almost as if the director of photography after he was done shooting took the pile of film stock that was to be used, threw it onto the editor's floor and the editor then took one random piece of film and tucked it onto the next random piece of film until it was all one piece. Adding to the whole affair probably was the fact that the TV rip I watched was dark as all hell. Overall I very much was reminded of Spielberg's 'Something Evil' also because of the camera-work. So this would be like a incoherent, surreal version of that film. One more thing, this turns into a zombie movie at the end and initially that's also very cool. The weirdness of this flick knows no boundaries.

"Stay on the path until you come to an old cemetery"

[hwg1957-102-265704 · 4/10 · 10 April 2021]

A film that has some eerie moments but on the whole is dull. The acting is ineffective though Laurel Barnett can do a good scream. The titular sinister child just comes across as slightly peevish. Continuity between night and day is a muddle and the film score is enthusiastically excessive to the point of hilarity. It ends with a 'Night of the Living Dead' vibe that is too late to liven proceedings. Ostensibly set in the 1930's but it makes nothing of that. It could just have had a contemporary setting. The only thing that spooked me was the conversation about oleanders when the father and daughter began to laugh. That was creepy. And the zombie make-up wasn't too bad.

Not bad but way too weird

[Coventry · 5/10 · 6 December 2005]

A pretty lady is hired as the nanny of a spooky little girl called Rosalie. The girl is a bit of a loner, mostly hanging out in the woods that surround her house and grieving over her dead mother. Thing totally go awry when Rosalie starts to act more and more like a little psychopath, drawing morbid pictures of her family and hiring her "friends" from the woods to kill people that get in her way. There's some eerie atmosphere in "The Child" as well as some ominous guiding music and macabre scenery. The pacing is slow, though, and there's much too much weirdness going on that remains unexplained. The kid is okay, I guess, but not half as creepy as the juvenile murderers in "The Children", "Bloody Birthday" or "Village of the Damned". The budget obviously was very limited, resulting in poor editing and cheesy make-up effects. Not a bad little movie, but you'll forget about it pretty soon.

bread and butter 70s drive in horror

[ericdetrick2002 · 13 July 2004]

When I say the "bread and butter" of 70s drive-in horror, I mean movies like this one came and went, forgotten and/or never seen by the majority. But it was films like this that kept drive-ins and smaller movie houses in business. I am so

thankful for the age of the DVD. With the DVD era, companies such as Anchor

Bay, Something Weird Video (Image), Blue Underground, Shriek Show, and

many others have brought back lost cult classics (and not so cult classics) so that new generations can discover them, and the older generations can

rediscover them.

"The Child" has all the right ingredients for a b-horror movie. A little bit of homemade special effect gore, a soundtrack that gives you the creeps, zombies, and it set in the countryside. It may have it's slow parts, but the final 20 minutes or so deliver the goods in fine 70s b-grade fashion. You will be getting startled one minute, then laughing the next (unintentionally of course).

One heck of a weird movie about a bad seed child

[tristanb-1 · 5/10 · 19 May 2005]

I think you have to be a film nut to really appreciate a movie like this. And I mean that in the best way possible. We film addicts have a tendency to think of ourselves as a special breed (though I'm sure many think of us as simply "special").

In a lot of ways this is actually a very interesting, unusual and fascinating film. Basically a young female tutor/nanny treks out into the middle of nowhere to take care of a little girl who lives in a huge house in the country.

Odd things happen, leading the nanny to believe the little girl is possessed or can control zombies or *something* (it's never completely clear what the little girl's powers are).

The whole movie never strays far from the house and I think there are a total of about five actors in the whole freakin thing. It looks like it was shot by a bored college student while on summer break using relatives for actors.

but there ARE snippets of real fascination here. the camera work is consistently quirky and interesting and the sound track is submerged in an ultra-weird sonic sponge that's somewhat freaky at first.

the main female actor is good. the little actress who plays the bad seed child has a striking face that can be both charming and malevolent, but she's mostly wooden.

As it goes on however, the film unfortunately loses some of its narrative drive. but I am glad I bought this and I sure enjoyed it more than a piece like Matrix Reloaded.

It's too bad the director never made another movie, I would have liked to see what he could do with more.

If nothing else, this was the first movie I ever saw where a little girl got an axe buried in her face at the end (have to admit I burst out laughing)

Cheap and weak.

[Boba_Fett1138 · 4/10 · 21 September 2011]

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

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

When Friends Do Friends Favors

[BaronBl00d · 3/10 · 10 July 2009]

A little girl lives with her father and brother in the middle of the countryside. This little girl Rosalie has some psychotic tendencies as the movie opens with her feeding kittens to some kind of creatures in the cemetery, and she has recently lost her mother who went crazy but whilst alive enjoyed staying in the woods all night. The premise of the film has a new young lady coming to Rosalie to take care of her. She is introduced to the evil of the woods while driving and, imagine the suspense here, experiences a huge blue barrel falling over the side of a cliff to somehow stop her car dead in its tracks. From there she walks to the nearest house and discovers Mrs. Whitfield who then goes into a whole lot of explanation about Rosalie and her family. The earnestness exuded by the Mrs. Whitfield character has to be seen to be believed. Well, the young lady meets up with the child and we soon learn that not only is she strange but everyone in the film is very bizarre as well. They all do share one thing in common which is none of them ever heard of an acting school. None of these people can act - as evidenced by the few vehicles any of them in the entire film appeared in before or since - and all of them look like they have little idea what is going on, pause to remember lines, and have all the conviction of a paper bag. The director plods through the material in a slow pace with this horrible piano music crescendoing here and there at things that are suppose to be scary. It takes us a bit before we get to a couple of murders by the creature friends, but by that time I didn't care. The murders are not convincing either, and truth be told the whole film looks like someone through it together on their friend's farm with the people and things on hand there. That all being said the ending does have some creepy aspects to it though we don't learn one darn thing about why Rosalie is like this or more importantly who the creature with the cheap masks are. Cheap doesn't even begin to describe the budget here with. It basically is a couple old farmhouses and some sheds at the end and of course the woods. Someone lent the director a couple old cars too. No special effects of any kind and only the most minimal make-up. There are so many guffaws/ridiculous moments to list, but I will just list a few here that at the very least made me chuckle from the lack of aptitude from the creative powers involved: 1)Watch the gardener's body well after he has been "slain". Len comes in and sees him butchered and you can see his fat belly heave with life. 2)the dying scene at the end where the actress playing Rosalie is killed. She looks like she is listening to directions and takes her sweet time dying considering the method. 3)How about the guy playing Roaslie's father giving us a cranky poor man's Andy Griffith. The scene where he is laughing about boy scouts dying was a weird hoot. The Child is indeed a very bad film and is very bad even for the standards of 70's cheese if you will. This isn't a B film but more like a Z film with producer Harry Novak making some money on virtually nothing.

Okay low-budget zombie flick.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 7/10 · 20 March 2005]

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.

Incredibly boring low budget horror

[miss_toucan · 1/10 · 14 May 2022]

This was a really boring and stupid movie. It really didn't have anything going for it at all.

The acting was bad. The story was bad.

I would not recommend this movie. I was falling asleep watching it.

Brat of the Dead

[lovecraft231 · 6/10 · 13 May 2008]

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.

a ghoulish story that really could have deserved more original direction

[fuzzbringer · 4/10 · 22 May 2020]

The first ten minutes or so can intrigue you enough to watch it once through perhaps, probably not twice though. This could've been a crazy mix of Sixth Sense, the Others, Omen, and Zombi Flesheaters. But no. Run of the mill 70's genre horror treatment and trying to please the audience expectations doesn't really do any good to this film in particular.

The low budget shows in a lot of things and the acting and presentation is uneven throughout the film. Sometimes the shift in atmosphere and directing is noticeable between lines in one scene. You can easily get the distinct feeling the crew is learning their trade by making their first movie here.

But when the cinematography and soundtrack play well together, and the uncanny suspense builds, it's pretty good actually! I was tempted to give this film a better rating just because of the occasionally super eerie atmosphere, but alas the moments at cemetery etc can't quite carry the whole movie.

And though the idea has refreshingly original flavor to it and it mixes well the otherwise old horror tropes (a creepy child, undead, cursed cemetery or such, remote houses & countryside helplessness) into something of its own, the plot runs still so predictable it's hard to not press fast forward and you kind of come up with all the possible directions the movie scenes could have gone and find a more interesting flow. The weird and creepy elements are wasted in boring direction and script.

Weirdness from another world

[BandSAboutMovies · 8/10 · 29 June 2019]

We first encountered The Child at a Halloween party thrown at the palatial Mexican War Streets home of Mr. Groovy Doom himself, Bill Van Ryn. While some folks drank in the kitchen or enjoyed the mix of Goblin and My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult blasting in the sitting room, I was entranced by a film that was playing on the TV. The sound wasn't turned up, the images all felt like transmissions from beyond and nothing really added up in the movie. "What the hell is this," I asked. "Oh, The Child!" exclaimed Bill, hurriedly running in to try and explain why he was growing more and more obsessed with multiple rewatches of the film.

Every print I've ever encountered of this film has been beaten to hell and back. So when it was announced that Arrow Video was about to clean it up and release it was part of their American Horror Project series, I was excited. For me, it was the main selling point of the entire second volume.

Sometime in the 1930's - which you'd only know from the old cars, as this film feels like an anachronism lost in no particular time - Alicianne has been hired to be the caretaker for Rosalie Nordon, the titular child, who has just lost her mother. Along with her father and brother Len, she lives in a house on the edge of the woods.

Even the trip to the house is strange, with Alicianne's car breaking down after she drives it into a ditch. A journey through the woods brings her to Mrs. Whitfield, who warns her about the Nordon family. She probably should have listened, as everyone in this family - hell, everyone in this movie - is touched, as they say.

When Alicianne first meets Rosalie, he jack in the box suddenly moves by itself. It's a very subtle scene that hints that things might not be right here. After all, people have seen Rosalie wandering the cemetery late at night, a place where she brings kittens so that her friends there will do anything she asks. And even dinner is strange, as her father relates a story of Boy Scouts eating a soup stirred with oleander that caused them all to die. Father and daughter have a good laugh at that while Len just seems embarrassed by his family.

Then there are the drawings - Rosalie has been sketching everyone who was at her mother's funeral, marking them for death. And if she does have psychic abilities, is she using them to reanimate the dead or control them? Or do they just do whatever she wants? The Child wasn't made to give you those answers. It just screams in your face and demands that you keep watching despite your ever-growing confusion.

Mrs. Whitfield's dog is taken first, then that old busy body pays the price, with her face getting ripped off as the zombies mutilate her. That gardener has some of mommy's jewelry, so he has to pay, too. And Alicianne, who was supposedly here just for Rosalie, has started to spend too much time with Len. She's next on the list.

There are some really haunting scenes as we get closer to Halloween, like a scarecrow come to life and a jack-o-lantern that keeps relighting itself and following our heroine around the room.

Finally, Mr. Nordon starts to discipline his daughter, which leads to Rosalie unleashing all of her powers. She decimates her father, crashes Alicianne's car and sends zombies to chase her governess and brother all the way to an old mill. Len tries to fight them while Alicianna just screams and screams, but he can't stop them from dragging him under the building and tearing his face to bloody pieces. As the attack of the zombies stops, Rosalie walks through the door just as our heroine hits her with an axe. She walks outside into the dawn's light and everything is still. The threat is over.

Written by Ralph Lucas as Kill and Go Hide, The Child isn't a great movie, but it's an interesting one. If you ask me, that's way more important. Some people will get tied up in things like narrative cohesion, good acting and a soundtrack that makes sense. None of those people should watch The Child with you, as they'll just ruin what can be an awesome experience. This is the kind of movie that takes over, kind of like one of those dreams you have and try to write down the moment you wake up, but it gets lost in the ether of reality. For most of the film, the zombies are barely glimpsed, just seen in the shadows, so they really could just be tramps that live in the cemetery. Or something much worse.

Producer Harry Novak acquired this film and made his money on it, even if director Robert Voskanian and producer Robert Dadashia saw no profit. It's a story we've seen hundreds of times - an interesting movie taken, used and abused by conmen who have no interest in art.

This new version of The Child simply looks amazing. I'm used to VHS level or worse copies of the film that obscure everything in the movie. That said, there's something about a battered copy of a movie like this that makes you love it even more.





This release also includes an appreciation of the film with Stephen Thrower, who also moderated audio commentary on the film with Voskanian and Dadashian. There are also interviews with the creators of the film, which discusses how the movie was shot on heads and tails of film stock, which were sometimes left in an ice box until they afford to send it out for developing.

My favorite part of The Child is that there's a dream sequence. Just think of that - a dream scene in a movie that completely feels like one big dream. If that doesn't make you run out and find a copy of this, I don't know what else will. Or come over to my house, where we can do an all-night movie watch of this, Cathy's Curse and The Children.

Delightfully kitschy

[boundlaw · 7/10 · 10 February 2022]

The filmmakers were not aiming to win major awards, and they succeeded. What they intended to make was a fun and sometimes genuinely frightening drive-in horror movie, and they succeeded in that, as well.

Legitimately terrifying monsters, beautiful actresses, a tween villainess, cheesy special effects and some eerie on-location settings make this a true classic of its genre.

The filmmakers admirably sought to set the film in the 1930s yet sprinkled with familiar items from the 1970s: clothing, a spiral phone cord, eye shadow, power lines, a plastic chair. Still, you appreciate the effort to take you to another time. This film is low-budget in all the right ways. The gender stereotypes are dated, but the female villain does help balance that relic of its time.

Forgettable, not worth watching.

[rvgillam-44732 · 2/10 · 16 April 2023]

The most dreadful and horrifying thing about this movie is it's score. And I don't mean that in a good way either. It's ridiculously clumsy and annoying and instead of helping to set an eerie mood; it works in contrast with the atmosphere which would have created that mood organically. It's so sloppily done it abruptly takes you out of the movie and while overpowering the actual dialouge of the cast. That may be only bright spot because I've seen better acting in elementary school plays. The only believable and likeable character was Miss Elizabeth.

I found it difficult to focus without being aggravated with the nonsensical background music. It was so herky jerky that I had to adjust the volume on my television due to it being uneven and certain parts painfully loud. It didn't match the movie. Very poor production. But with all that being said. I found the plot to be interesting and I tried to tough it out to get to the climax. Needless to say I didn't complete that mission. Shudder has way better to offer than this crap.

Fun and Obscure

[rufasff · 26 April 2003]

This overdubed, somewhat disjointed horror film is probably more of a late to scene "Omen" rip-off than a zombie film; but if you are in the right mood you may find it creepily effective. There is an excellent scene about a half hour into the film where the old creep grandfather starts laughing at a horrible accident and the kid joins in. The other two don't know what to do, haven't we all been there? The disjointed sound actually may work in the film's favor, though you wonder if you are listening to the same people you are seeing on the screen. So it's hard to fault the performers too much. It's the kind of thing you might have seen at a faraway drive-in or late one night on cable and never quite shook. The Something Weird DVD gives you a chance to live it all again.

The worst acting in history

[eggartrealty · 1/10 · 16 September 2011]

I haven't seen a movie where the acting is bad as the job done in "The Child." This is truly an amateur production.

Overpoweringly bad music, scratchy sound, and horrible lighting. This feels like a college production movie. Any horror fan could guess what's about to happen and even what the characters are about to say.

It's unfortunate that the movie is really that bad - I was hoping it would at least be cheesy in a good way but with the script and these actors there's just no way for this one to be enjoyable.

Here's hoping people don't waste their time on this one. It's available for free on youtube - thankfully, I didn't have to even waste a netflix choice on it.

Pretty terrible

[preppy-3 · 1/10 · 22 April 2006]

Alicianne (Laurel Barnett) becomes a live in babysitter for young Rosalie Nordon (Rosalione Cole) who has recently lost her mother. But Rosalie misses her dead mother a lot and continuously visits her grave (conveniently located in a cemetery right behind the house) late at night...where she also meets her "friends"...

This starts off good with a truly eerie sequence in the cemetery...then falls apart. The story is thin and there is TONS of padding to make the film 85 minutes long. The acting is terrible across the board (with Cole easily being the worst). Badly directed with some of the WORST editing I've ever seen in a motion picture. Scenes (and sound) are just cut off with no rhyme or reason. Also the film has terrible (and obvious) post-production sound.

As for blood and violence--forget it! There's very little and what there is looks incredibly fake. I've NEVER seen such fake-looking blood--looks like ketchup! Boring, pointless--a rightfully forgotten drive-in movie. You can skip this one.

The Bad Seed on drugz

[ofumalow · 5/10 · 26 March 2016]

This is one of those 70s independent horror films like "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" and "Let's Scare Jessica To Death" that are odd, crude, dated, but interesting in their dreamlike approach to the genre. It's not as good as the aforementioned, but it has its points.

A very beautiful young woman shows up to be nanny for a bratty young girl living in an isolated farmhouse with her crusty old father and hunky grownup brother. We figure out pretty soon that the brat is a malevolent force around here, though just how she manages to (apparently) raise the dead in order to off anyone who ticks her off is one of many logical details you're better off not pondering. (The movie doesn't bother explaining, anyway.)

The plot is very thin, yet the film feels atmospheric and eventful enough. It's not "good" by any standards, but it has personality and its own oddball sense of conviction. The most laughable and incongruous element is a musical score overwhelmed by florid piano arpeggios (I'm not the first person who thought of Liberace), though after a while you can somewhat tune it out. If the movie had a more effectively disturbing score, a la "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," it might now be considered a minor classic-- which would be overrating it, but it's certainly no piece of camp trash, either. (Which is not to say I don't enjoy camp trash at times.)

Most of the participants seem to have never made another movie, and "The Child" has that compelling curiosity of a one-shot genre movie made by people whose arty inclinations probably doomed their futures in commercial cinema, but which also make this sole effort more interesting than most of what it would have shared drive-in and grindhouse screens with in the mid/late 70s.

"I'm gonna hurt you both, hurt you bad!" (Rosalie Nordon, aka "The Child")

[Milo-Jeeder · 6/10 · 13 November 2012]

The story goes something like this: A sweet and somewhat oblivious young lady named Alicianne Del Mar is hired as a baby-sitter for a little girl named Rosalie Nordon, who is grieving the lost of her mother. When Alicianne is driving to the Nordon's house, in the middle of nowhere, her car breaks down and she is assisted by Mrs. Whitfield, a noisy elderly woman with a very annoying high-pitched voice. Mrs. Whitfield, who doesn't have much of a life, invites Alicianne for a cup of tea and suddenly begins to say nasty things about the Nordons (we all know old ladies like this, don't we?). The old bitty seems to particularly dislike little Rosalie and she even blames the child for a lot of strange things that happen in the woods.

When Alicianne arrives to the Nordon residence, Rosalie's father doesn't exactly offer her a friendly welcome and begins to mumble some nonsense about how he cannot stand nervous women. Right after her bizarre encounter with Mr. Nordon, Rosalie's older brother, Len, enters the scene and apologizes for the old man's attitude, prompting Alicianne to stay.

Against all odds, Rosalie becomes rather attached to Alicianne and she even gets a little bit posessive, too. Though the cutesy nanny tries to be in good terms with the child, the truth is that Rosalie is, in fact, very weird and she does a lot of strange things, like, walking around the cemetery at the night. Rosalie is definitely not an ordinary girl, she seems to have a special power that she uses for evil purposes. When the innocent baby-sitter discovers this, she teams up with Rosalie's brother in order to save their sorry behinds, before it's too late.

I have to admit, I love "The Child" and its randomness. I'm not sure if the bizarre dialogs and situations are the result of poor writing or if there's something else behind this, but, be that as it may, it works. The editing, the photography, the camera movements, angles and shots seem rather amateurish from time to time, but it works well. Honestly, to me, this is a solid horror film by accident, as it seems like they pretty much overlooked certain technical aspects, and rushed things towards the last minutes, as they realized that the production had ran out of budget before the filming was over. That being said, there are enough "nicely done" horror movies, when it comes to production values, and I'd be more than happy to see more "messy" films like this, because this so-called messiness helps to create a dark an chaotic atmosphere. The fact that the movie was mostly dubbed (and it is very obvious) also gives "The Child" a rather weird and eerie vibe.

I don't know anything about the filming locations, but the woods and the big house where the story take place are eerie and both sceneries convey a feeling of isolation and gloominess. I don't find nature and isolation depressing per se, but when you put these characters in this sceneries, I really do. Rosalie is, in fact, very creepy and the relationship between her and her father is, in my opinion, one of the best aspects of this film. Aside from the fact that both characters are mostly hillariously bizarre, the truth is that Mr. Nordon appears to be a very troubled and dark character, which we can mostly notice in one scene, in which he laughs while telling the story of a bunch of kids who accidentally poisoned themselves, by ingesting oleander sap. Now, I also laughed when the old man begun to laugh at the children, but strangely, I found it disturbing, too.

My main criticism regarding this film comes from the fact that "The Child" could have used a little bit more character development, since we don't get to know enough about Rosalie's late mother, which is crucial to the story. Are we supposed to assume that Rosalie inherited her powers from her mother or her mother (who was very interested in the human mind) spent her entire life learning how to develop powers and she passed that knowledge to her child? Was Mrs. Nordon really such a strange woman or was she simply a misunderstood person, who was interested in the human mind? A nice flashback or a final revelation would have been very much appreciated. Part of Rosalie's background story is revealed by Mrs. Whitfield, in my opinion, that wasn't enough. Other than that, "The Child" is a very enjoyable little flick and I highly recommend it to horror fans who don't take films too seriously all the time.

Zombies getting scared by car honking. Abstruse n obscure indeed.

[Fella_shibby · 5/10 · 28 July 2019]

First saw this in the 80s. Revisited it recently. The isolated house atop a hill surrounded by woods n a misty cemetery is the only good stuff about this lazy film.

It has irritating music throughout. Lingering scene of a curtain n then suddenly an old lady screams as if somebody grabbed her n the next scene she is seen dialing a phone. It has one of the most lousy dream sequence. Ther r two offscreen eye-gouging scenes n two offscreen scenes of faces getting ripped off. Zombies turn up only in the end with lousy make-up who doesn't require beheadings but only loud honking to ward them off. Wait, were they really zombies? In the end credits they r referred as creatures. While a guy fights off the creatures with hammer, axe, gun, kicks, wall nail, wooden planks, metal tin, etc., a gal (with her hair kept open the entire film) keeps on screaming irritatingly. Another annoying aspect is the sudden change of daylight n nite time.

Average zombie film set in the 1930s

[Hessian499 · 6/10 · 10 November 2001]

Not great, but not bad, either, The Child is a lot like Dawn of the Dead or Night of the Living Dead set in the late 1930s. The cars and sets look like the era they are set in (the 1930s) but the sitter Aliceanne wears a dress that looks like it is more from the 1890s and both she and the adult son of the farmer have 1970s hair styles - not much consistency in this period drama! The film is also inconsistent in its lighting, as one scene will have daylight, the next scene will be night, then go back to day, etc. While it does have some technical flaws and takes a while to get exciting, it does turn into a good zombie movie in the final twenty minutes. The two heroes (unknown performers who look a lot like a young Susan Dey and Michael Cole from the Mod Squad) have to try to fight off a group of zombies in a remote shack, in the film's exciting climax. The zombies themselves amble along like the creatures in the films of George Romero, but have excellent makeup and look quite demonic. It is not completely like Romero's films, in that zombies are not rampaging throughout all of the setting of 1930s America in this movie, but you do get the same sense of desperation and hopelessness in this production by Harry Novak. The script does plod along and you really never get to know any of the characters well (even Aliceanne acts a bit strange at times), but it is worth a look if you can find it. Reminded me of what would happen if a bunch of zombies attacked the Waltons!

This is pretty unbearable

[mwold · 1/10 · 22 July 2003]

And that comes from someone that will withstand almost ANY viewing. The acting and sound is awful. This might qualify for a "so bad it's good" point of merit,,,for some. However I take my horror movies seriously and this is just crap-it's just soooo cheap, I think that's my major complaint. The dialogue is often hilarious-attention to how many times "you startled me" is used. The "child" actress is seriously god awful-I pray her acting career ended here..her line "DONUTS! I HATE DONUTS" is worth repeated viewing however.

Spooky Halloween Zombie Horror

[GroovyDoom · 8/10 · 21 June 2001]

This is one of those rare gems: a ramshackle film so undeniably creepy and charming that you have to love it in spite of its shortcomings. It's obscurity probably assures that you may not have seen it already, which makes it a curious treat if you can find it.

The movie concerns young Alicianne, who is hired as a nanny for the bizarre Rosalie, a child obsessed with the recent death of her mother. Rosalie lives with her father and her brother in a secluded old house in the woods, and Alicianne immediately notices the weirdness of their freaked-out clan. Rosalie is quite disturbed, as is her creepy father, and the brother just mostly seems embarrassed. Unbeknownst to the others, Rosalie is telekinetic and has the ability to reanimate corpses from the local graveyard, and she wreaks a diminutive but shocking form of revenge on those around her, evidently goaded by the death of her mother.

The director is gleefully shameless in the construction of the illogical world in which the film exists. The characters inhabit large ghostly houses seemingly devoid of light. Few of the conversations between the characters make sense, as if half of everybody's lines were omitted. A number of day-for-night shots make the audience unsure of the sequence of events, while the soundtrack features some gleefully schlocky sound effects (some of them identical to the ones that appeared on Disney's classic 'Chilling Thrilling Sound of the Haunted House' Halloween album). The original soundtrack music is a ridiculous swirling mishmash of dissonant piano notes, trilling synthesizers, and spooky strings. Often the music swells in a menacing way when nothing of note is happening on screen.

The climax, which finds Alicianne and the only other semi-normal character in the film trapped in a weird abandoned mill while surrounded by the living dead, is a satisfying zombie confrontation, with some surprisingly creepy ghoul makeup.

Alicianne makes a reasonable 70s horror heroine, the kind who would much rather walk through the darkened woods and through a cemetery than have someone come pick her up by the road. The rest of the acting is mostly horrendous, even to the point of absurdity. Rosalie Cole wasn't exactly Tatum O'Neal. The woman who plays a bitchy neighbor was hilariously awful, delivering her lines as if she's taken too many pills. One of the main problems is that it's not easy to understand that Rosalie can move things with her mind. When Alicianne meets her for the first time, she approaches the child's bed and suddenly a jack-in-the-box explodes outward. It could have been a good scary surprise, but the way it is filmed, it's just a jack-in-the-box popping open. We don't clearly understand that Rosalie was supposed to have caused it.

But there are some truly effective moments, too. For instance, the nosy neighbor lady's dog disappears one night. She has it tied outside her house and we see numerous shots of it barking its head off at...something. When she finally gets up to see what's the matter, she looks out and sees the dog's leash lying there, empty, and suddenly the dog howls just off camera. The scene where the lady "gets it" is silly but weird in itself. There's another scene where Alicianne goes down to the graveyard to confront Rosalie about who she is meeting there every night. It's obviously daylight but the characters are dressed in nightclothes, and the camera swirls around the actors, shrouded in thick mist. We are never quite sure if this scene is a dream or not.

Despite the movie's cheapness, the effective elements manage to bring it off in spite of itself. The whole film reminds me of the sort of Halloween material that was rampant in the 60s and 70s, when juvenile spooky sound effects and stories appeared on record albums. If "The Child" was a spooky record, it would be the kind that you would cut off the back of a cereal box. If you have a fondness for that kind of thing, you may really enjoy the amateurish quality of the film. It gives the movie a sinister fascination, sort of the same appeal of a Jaycee's haunted house at Halloween. "The Child" is 70s drive-in horror sleaze at its... finest?

boring, then good

[marlowe_is_dead · 6/10 · 24 February 2001]

the first fifty minutes of this harry novak distributed pic are pretty dull. there are flashes of promise, as parts of the story are revealed. but finally, the action starts, the zombies begin to attack the main characters (one male, one female of course). and then, it is the climax of night of the living dead revisited.

overall, i enjoyed this. but it had more potential than it delivered.

and the music was too overpowering. i would like to see a remake of this.

The Child Should Be Reviled *SPOILERS*

[anxietyresister · 2/10 · 9 December 2008]

If you're going to look after a child, make sure they don't live anywhere near a graveyard. Especially if said kid has a habit of drawing gory pictures and disappears at night among the tombstones to see her 'friends'. But, our long haired heroine, oblivious to all the signs, shacks up with her family the Nortons, which include a strict father and a dullard older brother who becomes a love interest for our budding babysitter. Even more spooky than the zombie gang outside is the cast's tendency to talk even when their lips aren't moving, and for the words to not match the movement of their mouths. But enough of that.. domestic animals are being sacrificed, old ladies are having eyeballs torn out and the orchestra won't shut up during any scene, even the quiet ones. Oh, and the editor is having a day off going by the way the film drones on.

In fact, it would been better if everybody involved had taken a breather, smelt what they'd signed up for and gone AWOL. Yes, I know it's hard to get into movies these days, but this sort of starter point is not one on your CV you'd want. If would be like a trainee farm labourer having a conviction for chicken molesting. Featuring one of the worst lead performances ever by the shrill Laurel Barnett, and another almost equally as bad by the charisma-free child actress Rosalie Cole (The next Dakota Fanning she ain't) the film meanders on and on with nothing but padding until we get what passes for a climax.

This involves five or six members of the undead barricading our utterly useless heroine in a shed, while her bit of rough fends off these ghouls with a plank of wood, a one shell shotgun and whatever he can lay his hands on. But back up a minute.. earlier on they were in the car, and they accidentally discovered that the creatures found the noise of the horn so repellent they shuffled off at the sound of it. So do they stay where they are safe? No of course not, they run off to this abandoned building in the middle of nowhere, so the bloke can prove what a hardnut he is the girl can act like she's having a nervous breakdown.

Finally, the film closes. It doesn't end, it just goes to a grinding halt. The main character wanders back to her vehicle covered in fake blood, as if nothing horrible had happened. But, my dear viewer, something horrible has happened. You have just sat through one of the most lamebrained, boring horror films you're ever likely to see, and lost 82 minutes of your life you'll never get back. Just think.. years from now on your deathbed, what you'd trade an hour and 22 minutes for just to spend a bit of extra time with your family. Sadly, it's already too late for me. Don't you make the same mistake :( 2/10