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In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

A couple of British holidaymakers arrive in a small island off the Spanish coast, only to find the place totally empty of adults and the children acting in a sinister way. We soon find out that the children blew a fuse all of a sudden, and murdered all the grown-ups. Obviously, the little bastards are not going to let the visitors get away and spill the beans. Armed with clubs, knives, scythes and guns, they chase the hysterical pair all over the island, and the conclusion is quite predictable. This little film possesses a beautiful photography and an effective score to deliver the chills, but then there are a number of flaws in the script that weight against the story's credibility: who would want to live on an island too far away from the mainland when there is not a miserable telephone line or a radio to keep the islanders in touch with the rest of the world in the case of an emergency? What kind of a man would drag his heavily pregnant wife on a four-hour trip by boat in the blazing sun to stay for days in a place where there are not any medical facilities? And finally, dozens of bodies are lying all over the village in that sweltering heat, but still they don't decompose and stink but remain fresh and in pristine condition!!Nevertheless, it is a reasonably good horror film with an interesting story about kids from hell, and the children look quite sinister and evil. Nowadays we have seen so many movies about child psychopaths that this film may seem a bit lame to us, but we must think that when it first came out in 1976 it must have been quite shocking to audiences. I have recently seen the Mexican remake made two years ago, and it is virtually a carbon copy of this original almost shot by shot. If you want to remake something, at least try to make it better, use your imagination to improve the camera-work, take some time to revise the script so there will be not plot-holes the size of a bulldozer in it, and definitely get a bunch of kids who really look and act creepy and not like a kindergarten class!

Produced the year before the publication of Stephen King's short story Children of the Corn (which was subsequently made into a film in 1983), Who Can Kill a Child? is very similar in it's main idea. An English couple, Tom (Lewis Fiander), and his pregnant wife Evelyn (Prunella Ransome), arrive on a small island off of the mainland of Spain as tourists. On entering the small village, they find the place to be deserted. After some time searching for locals, they discover that the children have turned on the adult population, systematically killing all of them.During the opening credits of the film, a narrator describes - with the aid of documentary imagery - the many atrocities on humanity of the 20th century; from the concentration camps of world war 2, to the napalm bombing of Vietnam. In all of these, we are confronted with the very reality of the situations and the concept that within all of these inhumane acts, that children are the most innocent of victims. In a previous review (#106) for Devil Times Five (1975), I mentioned the 1970's trope for evil children. This is self evident within this narrative. As this concept was outlined within the context of American social change, I feel a slightly colloquial reading is needed for this Spanish film. In the 1960's and '70's, British tourism went further than it's usual boundaries of the UK. The gateways of Spain were flooded with these pale-skinned holiday-makers. Also, the children of this island are the last of Spanish dictator Franco's children. Franco died in 1975, meaning there was at last freedom, and Spaniards could move on from the devastation of the civil war. These children could represent the anger left by the atrocities of this period. They may well represent a new Spain which needs to move on; or the kids could be the remnants of Franco's ideas. But fundamentally, these kids want to destroy the adults that for years let themselves be dictated by a murdering president.The children of the film perpetuate (for me at least), the concept that they are intrinsically evil. Kids are f*****g monsters! The island children form a kind of collective psychic-psychosis, which can be projected onto other children; something that Evelyn finds out the hard way, as her unborn child kills her inside the womb after it has been possessed. After the island is rid of all adults, it would be time to move this psychic possession of children to the mainland. This is haunting stuff. The film is atmospheric, and has more tension than the film of Children of the Corn. It's a surprise that this film was forgotten. Chilling, disturbing: It also raises a fundamental question of morality: Who can kill a child? (as illustrated in the title used here - it is one of many other titles such as Island of Death, Death is Child's Play et al). Well, going back to the Brit-tourist invasion, it seems that an Englishman is the only kind that is capable of such a horrific act. Watch out Spain, the Brits are invading!www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

While on vacation, a man and his pregnant wife visit an island that the former knows from his past. They arrive to find that the place is not how he remembered. In fact, it appears to be quite deserted aside from several children. It isn't too long before they come across an adult. Pity the kids get to him first, killing him and stringing his body up for use as a human piñata. You see, adults are no longer welcome on this island. At least not if they're still among the living.For my money, "Who Can Kill a Child?" is a masterpiece of the genre. It makes other killer kid films look like jokes in comparison. Originally seeing it via the "Island of the Damned" cut, it's a very tense and unsettling film with some interesting socio-political subtext as relates to child violence. The likable main characters really struggle here, both physically and morally, in a picture as bleak as they come. It has such an impeccable mood and atmosphere to it. The closest comparison I can make is to that of Werner Herzog's short documentary, "La Soufrière". The isolated, disquieted feel of the island is very predominant.It's unfortunate that director Serrador faded into the land of television after this film. He clearly had a lot to offer the genre.

It's been awhile since I watched anything like this, and I'm damned glad I stuck it on. Who Can Kill A Child? opens with a pretty grim montage and narration on modern war, and how the children are the worst victims of it. Que the 8 minutes of real war footage of dead babies and kids dying. We then kick into the film, which follows the happy couple Tom and the heavily pregnant Evelyn as they take a trip to Tom's favorite island that he spent time on as a kid. On arriving at the island, they notice things seem to be particularly quiet. No adults are to be seen, only the few local kids are walking about. Thinking they may be all over at a festival on the other side of the island, the couple make themselves at home in a café.Things are eerie enough, but when an old man suddenly appears in the street, things go to hell. A young girl beats the old man to death with a stick, all the while laughing to herself. Tom tries to stop her, but then a gang of kids steal the old man's body and play human piñata with him. Tom soon discovers a lot of adult corpses in houses, and when he finds a man in hiding, he explains that the kids went crazy the night before, going door to door slaughtering the grown ups. And nobody stopped them? Of course not, who could kill a child? From here on it's a deadly game of survival for the couple. The kids haunt them in gangs, and it comes down to the final decision, it's either the kids or themselves who are gonna die...Plot wise, there isn't a huge amount to go on, but that's not what the film is about. It's a film with bigger ideas than just straight up narrative, and it dangles those moral questions for the audience nicely. That's not to say the film isn't exploitative. The opening war atrocity footage will put a wide load of people off straight away, but the director, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, does a smart thing here. He visually forces you to feel uncomfortable at the idea or mentality it takes to stand by and watch a small child die,(which we all do every day in times of war, how many starving kids have you seen on TV??), so he sets you up straight away with the gut churning feeling of dread, with your own morality telling you that killing children is wrong. Sure, it's a cheap trick, but it's highly effective.The film builds the tension strongly until all the cards are laid on the table. The island, a once beautifully open and spacious place, soon narrows down to the streets, which soon narrows down to a room, leaving our heroes little place to run. With machine gun in hand, Tom must blast his way through the kiddies to make it to the boat, and safety. And blast he does! This one probably packs all the bullet sprayed minors and boat oar beaten kids that you will ever need! There are so many chilling moments here that I really don't want to ruin them all. One sticks clear in my head though, when Tom tries to help a woman who as fled to the village church. He finds the woman dead on the ground in the bell tower, and the kids attempting to strip her body of clothes. It's a shocking moment, just watching the cold nature of the children, doing a vile act out of what seems to be oblivious innocence. The climax is also a powerful one, and is up there with some of the great endings in modern horror cinema in my opinion.The camera work is crisp, and the photography spot on. Some nicely unusual choices in terms of framing really help sell the claustrophobic nature of the film too. There is very little bad I can say on this one really, I did find Evelyn's character to be a tad annoying though, and keeping her in the dark on what was happening just didn't cut it with me. Other than that, I say it's a modern classic. A grim one, but one that should be seen by every real horror fan out there!