Who can Kill a Child (1976)
¿Quién puede matar a un niño? Some real 70’s exploitation insanity.
Kids are attacking and killing adults in retribution for decades of abuse and past atrocities against children (as seen in the opening montage of stock footage of war, famine, the holocaust, that just keeps going for a full 10 minutes). Initially the adults are incapable of killing the children in defense, but that soon ends… The adults fight back. The children seem to be able to recruit other children just by looking at them. An unborn child “joins” the children by killing the pregnant main female character from the inside.
It’s a rather slow and meandering and occasionally very fucked up film.
The movie ends with a small group of children preparing to head to mainland Spain on a motorboat, taking care to go in low numbers to avoid suspicion. When one girl asks, “Do you think the other children will start playing the way we do?” the boy in charge grins and says, “Oh, yes…there are lots of children in the world. Lots of them.” 2/5.
Lair of the White Worm (1988)
A horror comedy by Ken Russell based on the Bram Stoker novel, staring Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi.
Peter Capaldi is an archeologist digging on the grounds of Hugh Grants manor. They find a skull, possibly that of the the d’Ampton ‘worm’ (Lambton worm), a legendary created said to have been slain by an ancestor of Grants. A missing persons watch is found, a seductress is encountered, and the legend of the “worm” may be more real than it seems.
An interesting really enjoyable film, a bit raunchy, and almost camp? There’s some far out psychedelic moments, some horror moments. It is absolutely a comedy and in ways you are not initially expecting at all, dry yet overt and often just outlandish and bizarre. Intelligently and stupidly, almost subversively, fully aware of its insanity. 3/5
