doylel-07837 Review is mostly nostalgia, but I LOVEd horror movies as a young kid and this is one of the earlier ones I saw. So, really a list of my old-time faves and not a legit review--I know more than anyone the danger of nostalgia and how bad some of these are, but hey. In no particular order and omitting the obvious franchises like Freddie and Jason: -Happy Birthday to Me (hello blind Mary from little house 🏡 on the prairie) -Alice Sweet Alice (hello little Brooke shields) -Blood Birthday -He knows you're alone (head in the fish tank, Tom Hanks, scary movie theater bathroom) -Bloody birthday -Mother's Day -April fools day (Deborah foreman and Clayton rohner version aka the original one) -dolls -troll (questionable in the horror category, enjoyed it in elementary school, also apparently remade. Sort of a creepy Batteries Not Included. Because, trolls. -The Kiss ((or maybe I just loved Meredith Salinger in dream a little dream. Also, escalators scare me.) -Children of the Corn,Linda Hamilton edition. -Sleepaway Camp 1 and 2 -Cutting Class (latecomer. Cheesy. But young Brad P and Donovan Leitch. And Shannen Dougherty-Esque Jill Scholen with her terrific raspy voice)Probably more but phone typing sucks...all great movies for some reasons.

Foreverisacastironmess I saw this movie years ago and completely forgot about it, the only thing I remembered was that some kid gets locked in a horrible rusty fridge in a junkyard. Needless to say I eventually rediscovered itand found that I still loved it, it's my favourite horror to feature killer kids, and I think it more than compensates for what it lacks(its main annoyances for me being lack of blood and gore, and seriously anaemic prose) with a great atmosphere, and eerily effective use of its premise. It has a great and memorably foreboding score. Theme tunes is key with any 80's horror movie worth its salt. A lot of the other bold music themes used in it aren't all that good though. What makes evil children pictures interesting is that the children are often doing incredibly bad and twisted stuff that they're not supposed to, and there's a fascination and revulsion to that. When you take something fundamentally innocent and twist it to the point where it's completely removed from what it's supposed to be, when you have the child that seems so angelic but it's really a facade, it's creepy. And it makes you wonder, does this happen? Can kids really do this? Well as we all know, sadly yes. The image in this film of the kid brandishing a gun might not have meant anything back in 1981, but I find it quite disturbing in its echoes of modern times. I believe that certain elements of this film have never been more relevant or frightening. The acting wasn't all that bad. The girl next door heroine Lori Lethin and K.C.Martel as her cocky little brother were pretty good. I remember him from that scene in Amityville where he gets his fingers crushed by the window. I also thought Melinda Cordell as Debbie's unaware (and perhaps by the end fully aware) mother was very good and moving in a couple of her emotional scenes. And I thought the dearly departed lady who played the teacher did a good job with her small role, of conveying a woman thoroughly p***ed-off with her life! A few of the dramatic scenes were very well done. One little scene I find quite moving is the one right after the second rather jarring funeral. I'm something of a believer in astrology. If the moon can drag entire oceans and create tides, why can't all those grand stars and planets and moons affect living things as well? Doesn't seem all that far out of the realms of possibility to me. Okay, perhaps not this degree! Of the three kids I really liked Elizabeth Hoy as Debbie the best. I found her to be by far the most effectively unnerving. She wasn't necessarily a better actor than the other two but there was something she brought of herself, her persona, with the cold expressions and big crazy hair, that really gave her a sense of otherness that you would expect from a kid that's supposed to have no soul. I found Billy Jayne as the killer nerd with the glasses fairly boring, only ever really scary or interesting when armed with his gun, which he somehow looked good with! He went on to have the most successful career of them all. Oh, and the blonde boy was simply pathetic. He was just a complete nonentity, I don't know what they were thinking when they choose him. We got patricide AND sororicide in the same movie! Even though most of the killings are annoyingly bloodless, to me they're still well done and shocking. The violence seems real, and doesn't go as far as the violence you see now, and that's what makes it powerful, because it seems real. The murder I find most horrifying is when the girl lures her own father to his death. Her reptilian smirk as he is dispatched is truly chilling. What's scarier than your own kid being the one you should be most afraid of? Happy Bloody Birthday...

Lee Eisenberg Alright! I've seen many a flick about murderous children, but Ed Hunt's "Bloody Birthday" has to be the coolest. It focuses on three children who were born during an eclipse that blocked Saturn, thereby depriving them of emotions, and so they go around killing people.There are some neat death scenes (and of course some nudity, since no self-respecting '80s slasher flick would dare skip that), but what's really good about the movie is that it shows how manipulative these children are. Not only do all three of them have cherubic faces to hide their evil deeds, but they know how to prevent anyone from finding anything out: that scene with the cake really had me going! As for the cast, it's a real treat. Playing a doctor is Cyrano de Bergerac himself, José Ferrer. Playing a teacher is Susan Strasberg (yes, the daughter of the guy who played Hyman Roth in "The Godfather Part II"); in fact, her character is named Viola Davis, which is the name of the co-star of "Doubt" and "The Help"! There's also Ellen Geer (Will Geer's daughter), Michael Dudikoff (known for action flicks), and K.C. Martel (Greg in "E.T."). Julie Brown, who has what is probably the coolest scene in the movie, is apparently a gay icon, although I'd never known about her before watching "Bloody Birthday".All in all, it's a really fun movie. Not any kind of masterpiece, but definitely a pleasure to watch. Just be careful the next time that you eat cake.

Michael O'Keefe BLOODY BIRTHDAY is a Ed Hunt project that revolves around three children who are born during a total eclipse. Not intentionally humorous, but the acting is so bad it is laughable. Curtis(Billy Jacoby), Steven(Andy Freeman)and the angelic cutie Debbie(Elizabeth Hay)by the age ten join forces and without hesitation gang up against anyone who gets in their way; and this includes their parents. Some situations are actually funny, then there are those that are plain stupid and those that are disturbingly brutal. These precocious hellions don't seem to have any real reason to kill; just for the thrill I guess. My two favorite scenes are when the birthday cake is poisoned, or thought to be poisoned. And the nudity of MTV-DJ Julie Brown playing the naughty sister. Also in the cast: Lori Lethin, Bert Kramer, Susan Strasberg, Ellen Geer, Joe Penny and Jose Ferrer. Cinematography doesn't resemble low-budget fare.