The Children

A little seen film, THE CHILDREN was released three weeks after Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING in the summer of 1980. I remember seeing the ads for it in the newspaper at the time and being eleven years-old I could not imagine what the film was like. Had I seen it I more than likely would have been terrified by it.

Originally released on VHS by Vestron Video in the early 1980's after making the rounds on cable TV, THE CHILDREN, seen through my 34 year-old year-old eyes, is a dopey, campy, but occasionally fun film about a group of grammar schoolers whose schoolbus drives through a cloud of radioactive material accidentally released by a nearby plant in the town of Ravensback. Indubitably written and filmed in the wake of the Three-Mile Island nuclear accident that occurred on March 28, 1979 near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania when a cooling malfunction caused part of the core to melt in the # 2 reactor, THE CHILDREN becomes a macabre tale of contaminated kids growing black fingernails and killing adults by hugging them which, in turn, causes the adults to burn to a crisp!

Pedestrian dialogue and acting make this film fairly uninvolving, and the scenes play more like dailies than as an overall film, but it is an interesting variation on the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD motif. Martin Shaker, who played Frank in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, is one of the few people who does not sleepwalk his way through the film, providing what little reason and emotional core there is to be found � he does an ample job of portraying a sensible and ultimately effective parent, unlike most of the other adults who seem to exhibit about as much concern as the malevolent charges who inexorably seek them out with the intent of murdering them. Accomplished singer/actress Gale Garnett, who provided the voice of Francesca in the delightful MAD MONSTER PARTY?, appears as well.

The best part of the film is the revelation that in order to kill the children, their hands must be cut off!

The reason behind the nuclear accident is not really explained, and the film raises other questions as well, but the biggest question is: who are the people who allowed their children to appear in this film?