Capital Celluloid - Day 133: Saturday May 14

Who Can Kill A Child? (Serrador, 1976): Rio Cinema, 11.30pm

The Cigarette Burns team continue to impress with their midnight movie choices at the Rio Cinema in Dalston and this rare screening of the 1970s Spanish shocker deserves to pull the punters in.

Here is the wikipedia entry on the movie and this is the link for Cigarette Burns who are putting on the show with live dj and the invariably excellent regular trailers and short films.

Here is a New York Times review (spoiler warning: this gives significant plot details):

'Children strike back at adults in this chilling horror film from director Narcisco Ibanez Serrador. While vacationing on the remote island of Almanzora, Tom (Lewis Fiander) and his pregnant wife Evelyn (Prunella Ransome) notice only giggling children. They wonder where all the adults are, until Tom spies a little girl beating an old man to death with his own walking stick. The man is then hung up in the town square and used as a piƱata by the scythe-wielding children. Tom soon discovers that the demonic youths have killed every adult on the island, because none would ever fight back if it meant killing a child. Even Evelyn's unborn baby is affected, and Tom becomes the target of gunfire as the children go after him. Aside from a silly ending, Serrador's film is remarkably effective, slowly introducing the situation and playing on both xenophobia and cultural taboos while building an atmosphere of mounting dread. Unlike most Spanish shockers, this is not an unintentionally funny melodrama or a sexually-charged exploitation item. It is a serious-minded horror film with a message, based on Juan Jose Plans' novel {-The Game}, and is both worthwhile and frightening. ~ Robert Firsching,

This is the link for the Rio cinema where the film will be screened and the trailer for the film can be found here.

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