The Children starts one sunny New England day at the 'Yankee Power Company. Northern Tier 1 Nuclear Generating Facility' where a strange cloud of yellow gas escapes from a pipe... The children of the small town of Ravensback are on their way home from school but as the bus drives along it passes through a cloud of the yellow gas. As Sheriff Billy Hart (Gil Rogers) makes his rounds he notice's the school bus in the middle of the road totally empty & with the engine still running, he calls in at the nearest house that of Dr. Joyce Gould (Michelle Le Mothe) to see if she knows anything which she doesn't. They both go back to the bus but still find nothing, Sheriff Hart speeds off to set the wheels in motion & set about finding the kids but once he is gone Dr. Gould finds the bus driver (Ray Delmolino) horribly mutilated & after one of the children hugs her she ends up the same way. The children of Ravensback, Tommy Button (Nathanael Albright), Paul MacKenzie (Jeptha Evans), Ellen Chandler (Sarah Albright), Janet Shore (Julie Carrier) & Jennifer Freemont (Clara Evans), have changed. They have become evil murderers who kill with their radioactive hands that burn & horribly mutilate any other person they touch! Sheriff Hart & John (Martin Shakar) a distraught parent, must find a way to stop them & their indiscriminate killing spree...
Co-produced & directed by Max Kalmanowicz I think The Children is a throughly bad film with very little to recommend it. The Children takes me back to my childhood as it was one of the very first horror films I ever saw on VHS, to this day I specifically remember it because I wanted to see Total Recall (1990) the week it came out but the shop didn't have any copies so my dad rented The Children instead as he knew I liked horror films, thanks a lot dad! I also remember really disliking it back then & having watched it again last night my opinion of it isn't any better. The script by producers Carlton J. Albright & Edward Terry has a neat, twisted & fairly original concept that could have made for some great early 80's exploitation. Unfortunately the concept is totally ruined by rubbishy character's, a dumb script & a complete lack of anything exciting. The only character's in The Children are John & the Sheriff as everyone else have bit parts, we never know why this cloud of yellow gas only affects children & to be honest I can't think of a single logical reason why it would, we don't know why their hands burn people or how they become invincible to bullets, some plot threads seem to be there for the hell of it as when the Sheriff turns on the TV it says that similar things may be happening across the country but it is never expanded upon & there is one scene when one of the children manages to turn back into a normal person & touch people but this only happens in this scene & is never used again or explained why this kid didn't just burn the guy straight away, I mean why wait? She doesn't, or any of the rest of the children do this again so why this particular moment? Besides the inconsistent plot The Children commits the unforgivable sin of being really dull & boring, virtually the entire film is made up of Sheriff Hart & John driving around trying to look concerned. There's a whole 40 odd minute chunk of this crap where next to nothing happens, or at least that's how it seemed to me.
Director Kalmanowicz was obviously working on a low budget & the film looks pretty cheap throughout although it has that 80's horror film vibe to it which helps. It's far from scary, the children don't even run after their victims & black fingernails are hardly scary, there's no tension & no gore. There are a few burned bodies, a dead dog & the children have their hands cut off but they don't bleed so there's no blood & I can't remember a single drop of blood being spilt during the whole film.
The budget for The Children must have been small to say the least, it's competent I suppose & it gives the film a certain feel to it. The acting was OK I suppose, there's not that many people in it to be honest & the children never say a word.
The Children was yet another disappointment, it was boring, dull & simply didn't have the budget to expand upon it's ideas. I didn't like it all those years ago & I definitely don't like it now either, difficult to recommend. As of the time of writing this comment on The Children's user rating page on the IMDb 42 people have given it 10 out of 10, that's almost an incredible quarter of all voters. I'm sorry but but that is as fixed as they come, are the IMDb seriously trying to tell me that if 100 random people sat in a room & they all watched The Children 25 of them would say it's an absolutely perfect film & give it 10 out of 10? I don't think so...
Co-produced & directed by Max Kalmanowicz I think The Children is a throughly bad film with very little to recommend it. The Children takes me back to my childhood as it was one of the very first horror films I ever saw on VHS, to this day I specifically remember it because I wanted to see Total Recall (1990) the week it came out but the shop didn't have any copies so my dad rented The Children instead as he knew I liked horror films, thanks a lot dad! I also remember really disliking it back then & having watched it again last night my opinion of it isn't any better. The script by producers Carlton J. Albright & Edward Terry has a neat, twisted & fairly original concept that could have made for some great early 80's exploitation. Unfortunately the concept is totally ruined by rubbishy character's, a dumb script & a complete lack of anything exciting. The only character's in The Children are John & the Sheriff as everyone else have bit parts, we never know why this cloud of yellow gas only affects children & to be honest I can't think of a single logical reason why it would, we don't know why their hands burn people or how they become invincible to bullets, some plot threads seem to be there for the hell of it as when the Sheriff turns on the TV it says that similar things may be happening across the country but it is never expanded upon & there is one scene when one of the children manages to turn back into a normal person & touch people but this only happens in this scene & is never used again or explained why this kid didn't just burn the guy straight away, I mean why wait? She doesn't, or any of the rest of the children do this again so why this particular moment? Besides the inconsistent plot The Children commits the unforgivable sin of being really dull & boring, virtually the entire film is made up of Sheriff Hart & John driving around trying to look concerned. There's a whole 40 odd minute chunk of this crap where next to nothing happens, or at least that's how it seemed to me.
Director Kalmanowicz was obviously working on a low budget & the film looks pretty cheap throughout although it has that 80's horror film vibe to it which helps. It's far from scary, the children don't even run after their victims & black fingernails are hardly scary, there's no tension & no gore. There are a few burned bodies, a dead dog & the children have their hands cut off but they don't bleed so there's no blood & I can't remember a single drop of blood being spilt during the whole film.
The budget for The Children must have been small to say the least, it's competent I suppose & it gives the film a certain feel to it. The acting was OK I suppose, there's not that many people in it to be honest & the children never say a word.
The Children was yet another disappointment, it was boring, dull & simply didn't have the budget to expand upon it's ideas. I didn't like it all those years ago & I definitely don't like it now either, difficult to recommend. As of the time of writing this comment on The Children's user rating page on the IMDb 42 people have given it 10 out of 10, that's almost an incredible quarter of all voters. I'm sorry but but that is as fixed as they come, are the IMDb seriously trying to tell me that if 100 random people sat in a room & they all watched The Children 25 of them would say it's an absolutely perfect film & give it 10 out of 10? I don't think so...