Happy Bloody Birthday To You

 Killer kids were a novelty before they started shooting up schools and acting like pint-sized Charles Whitmans. John Wyndham, who essentially created the killer kid genre with The Midwich Cuckoos, was really onto something, and cinema responded with Village of the Damned, Children of the Damned, These Are The Damned, The Bad Seed, and dozens of variations on little shits breaking bad.

Exported from England recently was The Children, a very decent effort about homicidal rug rats, and let's not forget the wildly entertaining Orphan, a killer kid flick that cheated on its age requirement, but did so smartly What makes a killer kid flick official is the age of its killers. They must be pre-teen.

 If you want to see kids killing and maiming and behaving in a way that is consistent with their age, I urge you to RSVP to the retro DVD event that is Ed Hunt's Bloody Birthday (Severin). It is one party that delivers, and the cake they cut will be you (!)

I'm not sure how I managed to avoid this gem for thirty-one years, but I suspect it has something to do with the title.  I was never a big fan of Happy Birthday To Me (even though I enjoyed watching 'Mary' from Little House on the Prairie going psycho), so it's  possible I avoided movies with "birthday" in the title, even if the birthday promised to be a bloody one. Well, shame on me, because this little number is an exceptional piece of 80's exploitation that never drops the ball.

Bloody Birthday is not a bad title (I vote for California Cuckoos), but it doesn't tell you squat about this movie. There is a birthday party, and it does get marginally bloody, but this flick is about three kids born during an eclipse who grow up to be ten-year-old killers. These moppets want to kill like teenage boys want to masturbate. Every time they turn around, they want to take someone out. When some fuck looks at them sideways, they know they should die. Why waste time doing good when you can do a shitload of bad?

The film is relentless. Once the kids are born in a California hospital, director Ed Hunt leaps forward ten years so the murders can begin. Although it's not a stylish or well shot film, it has a disturbing quality because it's stark. The beating of a cop is particularly grim, as is a terrific scene in which a killer kid opens fire twice on his enemy with a handgun, a gun so big it dwarfs the murderous squirt. A school teacher gets shot, a boy gets locked in a refrigerator, and the film's heroine gets chased through a junkyard by a car; the car is driven by an unlicensed (!) ten-year-old  in early Jason head gear.

Does it get any better than this, folks? Can ecstasy this sublime be truly surpassed?

Not really.

 

What allows the killings to occupy almost constant screen time is the lack of police. The town's top plod bites the dust early on, so that leaves a deputy who looks like he transferred in from 'Hazard County' or Last House on the Left. This ninkumpoop couldn't stop a snail with a jackboot. Which is great, because he's not around to stop the murders.

Because it wasn't enough to make the kids killers, screenwriters Hunt and Barry Pearson make the two males perverts also. The mini-skirted female of the trio charges the junior Larry Flynts a quarter each to peep on her teenage sister through a hole in the wall. They get to see some ass, some bra, some mild nipple action, but no pussy. The hole (the one in the wall) is also used as an opening by the vicious little vixen to shoot innocent people in the eye with arrows.

I could go on and on all day about this charmer, but I'll spare you that and wrap here with a big, meaty, bloody, subversive "Highly Recommended".

Orphan of The Year

Easily the best studio horror film of the last twelve months, and a sizzling introduction to the smoldering talents of young Isabelle Fuhrman (Esther) and the even younger Aryana Enginner, who plays Esther's adopted sister.

The last semi-decent studio pic to come down the pike was Raimi's Drag Me To Hell, a flick that was more a carnival ride than a movie. It had energy, some knee-jerk scares, and some gleeful destruction and death, but it was kiddie matinee stuff.

Not so Orphan. This one's definitely not for children, and thank fuckin Christ for that. Finally, we get a horror movie that can call itself a horror movie. Horrible things happen to very nice people (adults and children) here and its delivered with cold efficiency.

Writers David Johnson (screenplay) and Alex Mace (story) are the first reason this works so well. They have made the effort to create real people with real life hang-ups and typical relationship issues. The couple (well played by Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard) who adopt the neurotic hellspawn are trying to sort through a litany of psychological issues relating to alcoholism, a miscarriage, and infidelity. Daughter Max (Engineer) has a hearing problem, so she must sign in order to communicate. This specific character trait is used shrewdly once Esther joins the family.

Whether Esther is a bad seed is not the point. We know she is. We've seen the trailers. How far she will get before someone shuts her the fuck down is what the film is about. Watching things go to hell in very interesting ways is what makes the film enjoyable, and tense, and sometimes shocking.

Far be it from me to spoil many sequences that are not in the trailer. Rest assured, for a studio picture, this goes as far as you can go with children in jeopardy. Director Jaume Collet-Serra, who directed the slick but empty-headed House of Wax, keeps a firm grip on the reins of this screamfest and resists the urge to sink it with style and glitz. The pacing is refreshingly natural and deliberate, and the scare sequences are graphic but not heading for the gorefest hall of fame.
Fuhrman, who was born in '97 (making her 11 when this was shot), is a revelation as Esther. It would be too revealing to discuss why exactly she is such a revelation, but let's just say that her maturity level (and range) is staggering.

Aryana Engineer, who plays the mute stepsister of Esther, turns in a performance that is almost equally staggering.

After a weekend in which Orphan competed against Bruckheimer's G-Force, The Ugly Truth, and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, the best studio horror pic of the year came in -- fourth.

So the Friday the 13th remake did a $30 million+ weekend while this minor masterpiece did close to a third of that with a script that is at least fifty times better.

That kills me.

Esther won't be happy, either.

All Orphans Are Evil (allegedly)

Some adoption groups are up in arms about Orphan, a new evil kid film about to be released by Warner Bros.

The trailer looks pretty standard for studio scare fare. Shame about the hackneyed "Boo!" at the end. I think we can do without a nutcase jumping out from under a sheet for the ten thousandth time. Still, I'll be there to catch it. I have a soft spot for pint-sized menaces (as long as they're not family).

The studio has been forced to retract some of their original advertising for the film in order to pacify these pathetic whiners. They are concerned that the representation of the "orphan" in the film will cast an unfortunate light on "adopted children" and the process of adopting.

It's a legitimate concern -- if you're a five year old retard.

If prospective parents are persuaded (by this movie) that an orphan they are considering adopting is likely to turn totally evil before it hits puberty, they are much too stupid to adopt children, anyway, and should be kicked childless to the curb.

In a sense, the film is performing a public service by helping to identify brain dead couples whose judgment is as sound as Michael Jackson hanging a baby over a balcony.

With Eden Lake, The Children, Plague Town, and Orphan, killer kids are hot right now.

This will be hot, too, thanks to over-sensitive adoption groups. Way to go, guys, and thanks for the free PR!

The '79 The Orphan no doubt destroyed the adoption racket.