The Horror Dads (now armed with a fresh new banner courtesy of fellow HD and graphic genius Greg Ferrara) are back just in time for Halloween with an in-depth, spoiler-insensitive discussion of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's disturbing 1976 chiller, Who Can Kill a Child?, a.k.a. known as Quien Puede Matar a Nino and Island of the Damned. This is one I avoided for a long time, so unsure was I of the movie's content and whether I would be able to withstand whatever impact it might have. But other than the use of a questionable tactic early on, which the Dads definitely toss around a bit, I was suitably impressed by the movie's style and its seriousness of purpose. As were we all-- no dogfights a la The Mist this time around. But the discussion was fun and thought-provoking just the same. Nicholas McCarthy kick-starts things over at Movie Morlocks thusly:
"A while back when I was anticipating the birth of my daughter, I found myself wondering if my enjoyment of horror movies would go out the window, if I would become too sensitive to the violence in them. I had a standing movie night with a friend where we had regularly watched some pretty crazy stuff and I programmed a series of 'horror kids' movies leading up to my wife’s due date. We watched It's Alive (1974), The Omen (1976) and Who Can Kill A Child? (1976). It was purposely silly to do this, but in a real way, I feared that this would be the last time I could `see' these films clearly. Now I have watched Who can Kill a Child? again, a year and a half later. If I thought I would have a radically different reaction now that I have a kid, I probably should have just remembered that if a film is good, it is worth seeing and thinking about, no matter what it’s about. And this is a great movie."
Join us for our roundtable discussion of Who Can Kill a Child? and find out if the question is a rhetorical one, or not.
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Thank you for the banner credit, Dennis. I don't believe I got that over at Morlocks. It was a great discussion and I'm assuming there's more to come, right? Because I said way more than the two or three bits he put in there.
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure, Greg. It's pretty keen! I haven't heard that the discussion about Who Can Kill a Child? is going to continue. I was just waiting for that 007-esque announcement: "The Horror Dads will return in November with (Insert Title Here)!" These are great fun to take part in, and hopefully as much fun to read.
ReplyDeleteGreg, that copyright attribution for your great banner is now in place at the bottom of the latest roundtable. It was never an oversight in the classic sense that I forgot it. I just had a horrific day computer-wise for trying to edit and post that roundtable, with my system moving so slowly that it took 5 full minutes to embed and resize each photo with long interludes inbetween in which the page would have to reload. Extremely frustrating. A post that should have gone up at noon went up at 5pm, with me having to scramble out in the middle to pick up my daughter from school. I intended on getting attributing the banner to you this weekend and, voila, there it is!
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