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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"Rosalie's always been a little strange...", February 4, 2006
If you were a regular at the drive-in in the mid 1960s and throughout the 1970s, you probably weren't a stranger to the films released by Harry Novak through his Box Office International film group, enjoying such wonderfully sleazy exploitation fare as Venus in Furs (1967), Miniskirt Love (1967), The Dirty Mind of Young Sally (1970), and Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman (1975), to name just a few. Another Box Office International release was this independent film, titled simply The Child (1977), also known as Kill and Go Hide. Written by Ralph Lucas (Planet of Dinosaurs) and directed by Robert Voskanian (his first, and last film, to date), the movie features Laurel Barnett (Goodbye, Norma Jean) and Rosalie Cole in her only film appearance. Also appearing is Frank Janson, Richard Hanners, Ruth Ballan, and Slosson Bing Jong (no, I didn't make that name up) in the pivotal role as...the gardener.
The film opens on a dark and foggy night, where we see a girl visiting a cemetery...she's got a basket with a kitty, and it's feeding time at the graveyard (lovely)...next we cut to the daytime, and we see a young woman named Alicianne Del Mar (Barnett) driving down a lonely, country road. Some car trouble forces her to hoof it through some fields, and she meets up with Mrs.Whitfield (Ballan). Turns out Alicianne has been hired by the Nordon family, neighbors of Mrs. Whitfield, to look after Rosalie (Cole), the youngest child and the same girl we saw at the outset of the movie. Alicianne trudges to the Nordon's (who happen to live next to a cemetery), and we get to meet the clan, including the curmudgeonly father Joshua (Janson), the older son Len (Hanners), and finally little Rosalie. As Alicianne settles in, she becomes more and more aware of Rosalie's weirdness, particularly her fondness of going the cemetery at night, supposedly visiting her mother's gravesite. In reality, Rosalie's got some funky mojo powers that include, but aren't limited to, her to talking to the dead. In return for her friendship, they perform certain tasks for Rosalie, who seems to blame everyone for the death of her mother. At the insistence of Alicianne, Rosalie's father decides it's time to start exerting his parental control, telling Rosalie she's not allowed out at night any more, to which she scoffs at the old man, telling him he'll get his...and he does, along with a few others, in gruesome fashion, as Rosalie's `friends' make the scene. Soon after Alicianne learns some horrible truths about creepy girl, she decides to split, but it ain't that easy, as Rosalie's friends seem numerous, determined, and hungry...
This wasn't a great film, but it did have some modest charms, and was pretty indicative of a lot of the cheapie horror films floating around drive-ins in the 1970s. It's a fairly low rent production with some good locations, but falters quite a bit given the weak story, amateurish direction, often miserable acting, and the fact many of the scenes that were supposed to take place at night were obviously shot during the daytime, probably due to a lack of lighting equipment. I suppose it is important to keep in mind most who appeared in this film weren't really professional actors, as this was their one and only time appearing on screen, so heaping criticisms on them would be sort of like shooting fish in a barrel. Barnett wasn't too bad, but her role was lacking...she spend nearly the entire last twenty minutes or so cowering, screaming, and holding her head as the stuff continually hits the fan. As far as the character of Rosalie, I hardly found her scary...normally when `bad seeds' are presented on screen, it is unsettling as we tend to think of children as being relatively innocent, innocuous little scamps, and not minions of evil, bent on destroying whomever gets in their way. Rosalie did seem a nasty, uppity child, but her main trait was just being really annoying. I suppose that's a form of evil, but not one that frightens the pants off me. Acting all obtuse and cackling at inappropriate times doesn't necessarily evoke malevolent intent. As far as Rosalie's abilities went, it was never really detailed exactly what all she could do, how she could do it, or where she derived said abilities from, as all that's offered is that her now deceased mother was unhinged in some manner. The story is slow going for about the first half hour, but things do pick up, especially in the last twenty minutes or so when the movie really gets its zombie freak on...and the zombies didn't look that bad, given the low budget nature of the film, but the blood sure looked funky...I wonder how many bottles of catsup where employed in this production? The direction is sort of all over the place, as Robert Voskanian uses this opportunity to explore all kinds of `creative' shots including up angled shots, down angled shots, close ups, etc. I think the effort was to try and create tension, something he'd seen work in other movies, but that's difficult to do here when the audience is feeling nausea due to motion sickness. I usually appreciate an offbeat musical score, but whoever was cranking on the Polymoog synthesizer should have toned down cacophony of discordant electronic beeps and screeches. It was spooky at times, but grating more often than not...as I said, the film does pick up the pace considerably in the twenty minutes, and features a suitable, and very satisfying ending. If you're a gorehound, you'll probably disappointed with this feature as there's not a whole lot of zombie violence, as whenever someone is devoured by the undead, it always happens off screen, where then shortly afterwards we the result of the attack as the half eaten victim is shown for effect.
The picture quality on this Something Weird Video DVD release, presented in fullscreen (1.33:1), was decent, with some rough spots, indicating whatever element used for the transfer had obviously seen some action. The Dolby Digital audio isn't too bad, but does feature background noise. As far as extras, included is Del Tenney's zombie feature titled I Eat Your Skin (1964), which, as others have mentioned, features a constant `SWV' mark at the bottom right corner as the film plays. Also thrown in is a trailer for The Child, along with those for Axe (1977), Booby Trap (1970), Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974), Kidnapped Coed (1976), The Mad Butcher (1971), The Toy Box (1971), and Toys Are Not for Children (1972), a gallery of horror drive-in exploitation art with horrorama radio-spot rarities, along with two short subjects, the first titled The Outsider (11.43), an instructional film teaching weird kids how to conform with their peers, and the second titled (poorly, I might add) The ABC of Baby Sitting (10:24), another instructional film discussing the booming baby sitting industry, featuring such useful tips like how to avoid being driven home by a drunk parent and proper fridge raiding techniques. All in all, the featured film rates about two stars, but the overall release with the inclusion of the goodies brings it up to three stars.
Cookieman108
If I learned anything from this film it's that zombies sure hate car horns (they do love eyeballs, though), and actor Richard Hanners does not know how to properly use a hammer...dude, if you choke up on it that much, you'll never get any power out of it...by the way, this feature's worth watching if only to check out the scene where the curmudgeonly father relates, taking an unusual amount of joy in the telling, how a while back, a pack of local boy scouts accidentally poisoned themselves with white oleanders while camping in the area...what a whack-a-doo...
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A decent zombie movie, July 14, 2002
The Child is a zombie movie, although not a "great" one. A city-girl returns to the countryside where she grew up to be a nanny for a little girl who has been very awful since her mother died. But as the nanny falls in love with a man working at the house, the girl gets angry. The girl has control of zombies from the nearby cemetary, and she uses them to strike back at everyone around her.
This disk is very good, as well. It contains trailers for many other movies, and it has a "short" movie (which is about 70 minutes, I believe), that also has zombies in it (that movie is older, and there is very little gore, since the zombies are basically used as cheap workers, as in most older zombie movies).
Excluding several scenes, this one is not as graphic as most zombie movies, but still is gory enough that some people may want to avoid it.
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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Just a warning, February 6, 2004
I purchased this DVD in order to obtain a relatively clean and sharp copy of I Eat Your Skin. Now, Something Weird has been completely honest in listing this as an "extra" rather than promoting the disc as a "double-feature," because I Eat Your Skin is plagued with a video-produced "SWV" watermark that distractingly appears on the screen during the entire feature.The print also suffers from damage that eliminates 1-2 minutes of important dialogue, including the intruduction of a character.
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