After a school bus, filled with five children, drives through a yellow radioactive cloud leaked from a nearby nuclear power plant the children turn into zombies with black fingernails and char people to death when hugged. With that simple, silly synopsis one of the most surprisingly mean spirited movies is off and running. The first victims of the children are their parents and families, who obviously rush to hug their missing kids. Almost every character we see die in the smoky meltdowns is some sort of poster child for bad parenting so there is not much sympathy for them to be had.

The Children does have some interesting twists such as a variation of Night of the Living Dead’s “shoot them in the head!” mantra. The children can’t be killed by any means other then the severing of their hands. This method puts the leads in actual danger as they practically have to fall directly upon their attackers to hack off the offending appendages. Also, which I found quite shocking at the time I originally saw the movie, was how nobody was safe; virtually anyone could die. Characters that I thought were safe bit the dust and even a few I assumed were going to be killed were left alive. It was instances like that which kept you guessing and unprepared for what was left to come. Even though you knew there was no happy ending in sight, the end was very bleak if flawed.

Evil children are nothing new in cinema with the duality of the innocent child everyone outwardly sees in direct contrast with the monster laying in wait until it is too late. When handled effectively, this can lead to some classics of the genre such as Village of the Damned. While not at all on caliber of that example, The Children emerges as a rather mean spirited little low budget gem.

Many of the performances were completely over the top in The Children. From the promiscuous town slut to the “aw shucks” deputy, many of the inhabitants of the movie seemed to be more caricatures of normal people. Every parent was guilty of some sort of parenting sin from smoking while pregnant to indulging in the swinger lifestyle. To say that the film was trying to draw parallels between bad parenting habits and death is obvious but it was handled in a clumsy way. The direction was usually very workman like with a few standout scenes, otherwise it was competent if flatly directed.

The original print was overly dark with many scenes hard to make out during the night shots. There are cases when characters stumble upon charred bodies but the lighting is so soft and grainy that it is hard to tell who they are looking at without a throwaway line of exclamation telling us who it is. The dvd release distributed a few years ago from Troma appears to be from the same negative with the same sort of film grain and scratches as the original theatrical print.

Being a low budget movie, the so-called meltdowns of the parents are usually less than spectacular. In a movie of excess such as this the best kills are the ones that happen off screen with a well set up as opposed to the ones we are actually shown. Most of the parent fireworks consist nothing more than a lot of grimacing and an over use of smoke to obscure the fact that the deaths are mostly just blood and face paint. It is a bit creepy in only the way a low budget horror movie can be when you first see it especially at a young age but it doesn’t hold up well over time.

In the early days of cable TV or the days where smaller marketed horror movies could play in theaters next to films like Star Wars I used to love reading either the TV Guide’s cable listing or my local newspaper’s reviews of upcoming monster movies that I, if you pardon the pun, was dying to see. One of the best ones I have ever read was for The Children:
“Radiation is to blame again when children turn into black finger nailed zombies and kill their parents.”

Who wouldn’t want to see a movie like that? The choice of words still strikes me as funny, as if all the various monster movie creatures were deliberately caused by radiation. I can just imagine a stern scientist taking off his glasses and looking straight into the camera, snapping his fingers and proclaiming, “Yup, it’s that damn radiation again. Up to no good!”

The Children might not be blockbuster material for today’s been there done that audience, but as an eerie movie that sneaks up on you when you least expect it, I can think of worse choices than this gut grabbing little cheapie.