Customer Reviews

Where Are the Children [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is truly a great movie! So, why only four stars and not five? Well, I only give truly great classics such as "To Kill A Mockingbird" five stars. So, four stars in my book is about the best you can get. Many movies based on books lose something in the translation. Not so here! This movie is based on the best-selling novel and both Jill Clayburgh and Max Gail bring life to the characters brilliantly. It is a shame we have not been blessed with Max Gail's acting more often. He is a great, warm, funny and real actor. This movie deals with the tragic issues of child aduction in a way that will have you on the edge of your seat. Frederick Forrest plays the villian quite well also. You'll want to kick the crap out of him by the end of the movie. This movie has supense as well as heart. Many twists and turns in this one. A fine movie indeed!

On her birthday, San Francisco resident Nancy's two kids Peter and Lisa disappear, later to be found dead. The police wrongly accuse a devastated Nancy of being the killer. Nancy is found guilty and sentenced to the gas chamber, but her attorney manages to get her conviction overturned. Much to the District Attorney's dismay, Nancy can't be put back on trial because key witness has left the country. And Nancy's husband, college professor Carl, commits suicide.

Seven years later, Nancy has relocated to a town in Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Nancy has changed her identity, re-colored her hair, and has married a realtor named Ray Eldridge, with whom she has two kids named Michael and Missy, and the terrible pain from what happened to Peter and Lisa has begun to heal. But today is Nancy's birthday. She has allowed Michael and Missy to go out to play in the back yard. Nancy opens the newspaper and is stunned to find, in the local section of the paper, her picture and all of the details of the murders of Peter and Lisa. Nancy rushes out to the back yard to get Michael and Missy and bring them back into the house, but Nancy finds only one of Missy's red mittens...and Nancy knows that the nightmare is beginning again.

Because of the disappearance and murder of Peter and Lisa, Nancy is understandably concerned about finding Mike and Missy before they are hurt the way Peter and Lisa were. Local police chief Jed Coffin, who has read the newspaper, wrongfully sees Nancy as a suspect in the disappearance of Michael and Missy. When people in the town read about Nancy in the newspaper, virtually everyone suspects her of murdering Mike and Missy. But Mike and Missy have been kidnapped by a man named Courtney Parrish. In the desperate search for Mike and Missy, everyone will discover the devastating truth as to who Courtney Parrish really is. And there is also another question -- was it Parrish who killed Peter and Lisa years ago?

Sound like a lot of plot? "Where are the Children" is overloaded with plot, characters, and red herrings. This is the type of movie in which you keep asking yourself questions like "Who is that?" and "Where did they come from?" Of course this doesn't have to be a bad thing as movies with too much plot tend to be a bit more successful than movie with far too little plot. Nonetheless, by the end of this movie you will be wondering how all of the pieces fit together and how several characters were connected. It's a shame really because the film features some great performances (Frederic Forrest is quite chilling as "Uncle Courtney") and some incredible atmosphere (I know I'm not the only horror fan that likes a good "mansion by the sea" murder mystery)> When this movie reaches its laughable conclusion, I was laughing at the movie and never really all the scared. That being said, there is definitely some fun to be had here. Sadly, for whatever reason, this movie isn't available on DVD but is available on instant through Amazon.

This movie is up there with Plan 9 from Outer Space; it's so bad, it's great. First the many bloopers: there are visible boom mikes. One can see a safety rope tied around Missy's ankle when they're on the widow's walk at the climax of the film. When Parrish "locks" Missy in the bedroom, she pounds on the door and cries ... yet she could easily unlock the door and escape just by turning the lock's knob that's right next to her face! Elements like this make the film an unintentionally hilarious pleasure.

My other favorite aspect of the film is the atmosphere. The day on the Cape is mostly overcast and rainy, and the soundtrack music somehow catches the feel of this atmosphere and compliments it perfectly. Kudos to the music director of this film.

But what makes this movie so exquisitely entertaining overall is Frederick Forrest's portrayal of Courtney Parrish. This movie singlehandedly made me a Forrest fan. He brings a campy, sardonic comic relief to the whole affair; he always has some wacky quip. A highlight is when he's trying to get the kids to sing along with him while he plays the piano. He sings Mary Had a Little Lamb to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy, and when the boy points out the fact Parrish is singing to the wrong tune, Parrish gets angry and leaves in a huff with the words, "And no more jelly beans!!!" Forrest's portrayal of Parrish is ironic - because instead of coming off as a disgusting child murderer, he succeeds in making the character funny and endearing.

God help me, I love this stupid little flick.

The movie was great,in some part's of the movie and at the end of the movie there was alot of the part's of the movie you could not see, the tape was damage in some part's.You could not see it or make out what it was.If there had been a part here and there,then I would haved rate this alittle better.I know that my kid's watch VSH movie's all the time.They have over 300 VSH tape's, and these tape's are old. We have had these when my kid's where born, my son is 21 now and my little girl is 14 years old. And these tapes still work like new.

This adaptation of the best selling novel by Mary Higgins Clark features more rain scenes than Se7en, since the story is located at Cape Cod during a thunderstorm. It's only a pity director Bruce Malmuth can't match the storm in narrative excitement. The source material has lurid pulp potential, with Jill Clayburgh as a former accused child murderer (the conviction was overturned because of an undisclosed "technicality") whose 2 new 9 year old children go missing. In flashback, Clayburgh in an awful wig has an amusing disdain for the TV camera, but when faced with this new predicament, so acts like she's doing Chekhov, with pauses and half-choked utterances. When she calls for the children, her repetition is like an actor's nuanced recital, though I did like the way she lets her body go as limp as a ragdoll in hysteria. Malmuth presents the family scenes with husband Max Gail as so blissfully idealised that it's like a TV commercial, and we tend not to wish the best for a woman who names her child "Missy". Clayburgh's past naturally makes everyone believe that she has done it again (though Sharon Stone's alibi in Basic Instinct of announcing the intention being stupid, comes to mind), and though the audience is way ahead of the police, poor Clayburgh has to endure the clumsiest psychoanalysis I've ever been witness to. Barnard Hughes is typecast as the psychiatrist (retired but he's still a big man in the community), and Gail as an onlooker gets to deliver the howler "Doc, will you get to the point?!" However since the result is a delicious flashback of an adult dressed as a child, it's worth it. Frederic Forrest steals the movie as a funny child-like bad guy with a huge belly, and Elizabeth Wilson is around to look worried and give us plot summaries - she gets an unintentional laugh when she bursts with information at one point. Sylvester Levay provides a bad horror movie score which is inappropriate for most of the time, and we expect the climax to take place on the widow's walk roof of a lookout when we hear that it is unsafe.