What happens at the very beginning of this movie in the unedited version? I read somewhere that the children did something so terrible that what they did was cut out of later versions. What light can anybody shed on this?
Thanks in advance
Hmmm, maybe it was the montage of atrocities committed to children?
shareThe beginning of the film or pre-credit sequence is a montage of actual news footage of atrocities that happened throughtout different wars. Most of it Black and White and has Nazi Death Camp footage etc. As mentioned by Yellowchuck above it contains mostly footage of children.
shareThanks for your response. It would seem that a certain review that I read years ago when I first saw the movie had some faulty information.
sharethe version available from netflix is unedited, if that helps
shareSpeaking of the montage of old footage in the beginning - does anybody have an idea of how that is tied in with the rest of the movie? Is the director saying that man has caused children to suffer because of war and greed for a long time, and children should seek revenge and kill man, therefore becoming the powerful and no longer victims? Is he saying that the hypothetical idea of children, one day, waking up and unitedly becoming murderous is a real threat, especially since children have the built in defense mechanism of man not wanting to directly harm or kill a child?
i loved the film. It reminded me a lot of Lord of the Flies, in which traditional societal rules breakdown, and children resort to the instinctual survival mode of 'kill or be killed.'
i am a house of a hundred windows
You got me. I don't know what the director was going for with that montage but it really rubbed me the wrong way. I liked the rest of the movie though.
I know you're married but I've got feelings too!
Same here. That first part of the film showing the actual footage of death, suffering and murder of children – victims of wars and politics, was terribly disturbing; not something I wanted to see as a form of entertainment.
I kept fighting the urge to turn the movie off, or to jump ahead because I wanted to see the whole movie as the producers had intended it to be viewed. I got the unedited version from Netflix.
I liken that first part of the movie like seeing footage of a real bloody deadly car wreck versus seeing a fictitious movie-staged car wreck with special effects and all. The former I have no desire to see, the latter can be entertaining.
That first section was too shocking even though I know that such atrocities have and do occur. I guess the producers were trying to link the inhumane treatment of children with the inhumane/bizarre behavior of the children in the movie. Perhaps they purposely left out a direct linkage between the two to allow interpretation by the audience. Whatever the case, I didn’t appreciate it at all.
As for the movie itself, I was disappointed with the stupid acts that the adults did. For instance when the guy is searching around and finds dead body after dead body after dead body. Why didn’t he immediately make an effort to get him and his wife off the island ASAP?
When he was running to the boat after shooting those kids (final scenes), why did he throw away the gun? -- unrealistically stupid!
There were others, but those two stuck in my head.
But then it seems like in certain kinds of horror films the victims are always doing something obviously stupid!
I appreciated the concept and theme of the movie. The blatantly stupid acts however severely hurt the movie. I’m mixed on how much I like this movie – interesting story but could have easily been a better movie.
In the interview with the director on the disc I got from Netflix, he states that if children were regarded as a separate race, that race would have risen up and fought back. Children are the primary victims of war, famine, and plague.
I, too, almost turned it off because of the atrocities shown at the beginning. Although I'm pretty thick skinned, the idea of injuries to a child are just more than I can cope with.
Hey e bath! Wassup!
No, I don't think the director is saying that childrenshould rise up and seek revenge for their suffering, but that if they did, then we shouldn't be so shocked. That if we assumed they were a 'race of people' ( director's words), they surely would rebel.
I really liked this film, the photography was brilliant. The interview with the photographer really shed some light (he he) on the difficulties he had shooting.
It's funny you should mention The Lord of the Flies because I had the exact same thought! It also brought to mind possible plag1arism on Stephen King's part for his dreadfully awful Children of the Corn series, IMO.
Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!
It also brought to mind possible plag1arism on Stephen King's part for his dreadfully awful Children of the Corn series
Correction, the film WHO CAN KILL A CHILD premiered in Spain in the year 1975 and was released in 1976 in the US in slightly edited version called ISLAND OF THE DOOMED by AIP, which is when I first saw the film in 1976. So it wasn't 1978 the film's year of release and if Stephen King wrote the CHILDREN OF THE CORN short story in 1977, it's possible that he might have seen the film or read the famous short story called THE GAME(EL JUEGO) that the film is based on that was written in 1965.
shareAcording to the imdb page (Which is the only resource I have) Quien puede matar a un niño? Had only three other titles on USA release Lucifer's Curse, Trapped and Island of the Damned, not ISLAND OF THE DOOMED. And also accoeding to the IMDB page the premiere of the film was on June 1978 not in 1976. I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just saying IMDB says otherwise. But if you have the evidence to prove what you are saying from other sources then My bad.
Also the existence of a similar story do not prove plagiarism... As is well explained on the prologue of Robert Bloch's short story "A Toy For Juliette" writen by Harlan Ellison for his anthology Dangerous Visions many times a writer can reproduce without knowing preexistent material. The only way to prove plagiarism is with some definitive prove. That is an identical structure or copied passages.
Also if the story (Actually IMDB tells is not a short story like you have said but a novel and is called "El juego de los niños" or "The game of the kids", not "The Game" again according to IMDB), was readed by King in 1965 he could easily had forgoten about it by 1977 when he writed Children of the Corn. It could happen, it has happened before according to Ellison.
Sr, either you know a LOT more than IMDB and all the sources I have search in 15 minutes to reply to this post or you just dont remember well the things you are posting here...
EDIT: more interesting data that contradicts what you said...
I search for El Juego de los Niños in Wikipedia and found all the bibliography of his writer Juan Jose Plans. It seems that he could not have writen the as you call it "Famous short story" that is in fact a novel because his first fiction writing was "Las langostas" writen in 1967. In fact, El Juego de los Niños was published on 1976, making an adaptation of such work really difficult to make in 1975 if that is the year of the premiere you said it was in spain even when is not in the page of the movie here in IMDB.
So we have this contradictions about your post:
Novel, not short story.
Name of Novel.
Name of film in USA
Date of premiere in USA
Date of premiere in Spain.
So if you have evidence to prove your points...
"I think there is a difference between a work of art and an Oscar." Roger Corman
I stand corrected. You are right that "El JUEGO" on which the movie is based on, is a novel, not a short story and the correct American title of the film is ISLAND OF THE DAMNED. I'm human and can honestly make mistakes, just like yourself. But I did see the film in it's shortened American release version (without the initial documentary/atrocity title sequence) by American International Pictures in 1976 in a Times Square theater in NYC in a double feature with Jeff Leiberman's SQUIRM. Check the Wikipedia entry on the film and you can see that WHO CAN KILL A CHILD was made in 1975 and released initially in Spain in early 1976 and therefore the IMDB entry on the film on the film is incorrect(IMDB as we very well know can and has made mistakes regarding it's film entries in the past). You can also check the website www.grindhousedatabase.com which has has the year of release of the film in the US as 1976 plus various posters of the film such as TRAPPED and even Dark Sky Films which released the film on DVD in 2007, has also listed on it's website's (www.darkskyfilms.com) entry on the film that the film's American release was in 1976. Also check outif you can, Stephen King's Danse Macabre, his 1981 non-fiction book about the many literary and cinematic influences on his work as a horror writer in which he mentions that he had seen ISLAND OF THE DAMNED and that the film did had an influence on his work as a writer of horror fiction, although he doesn't directly state that the film inspired him to write his story CHILDREN OF THE CORN, but the influence is there.
Please, forgive me if I sounded harsh on my response, is well known in the Horror board were I frequently post that I am an arrogant prick. So sorry if I acted as such. Actually I was surprised by how much mistakes I found in your post and was doubtfull of your memory but I didnt though you were lying...
And also, is a well known fact that King likes to... "recreate" original stories as he have told many times. His Salem's Lot for instance is a recreation of the Dracula of Bram Stoker and there are many many other examples that he acknowledge as copies.
"I think there is a difference between a work of art and an Oscar." Roger Corman
No problem, friend. I understand what you're saying. Nobody's perfect. At least both you and I got our facts straight regarding WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? and it's American release as well as the many horror film and literature influences on Stephen King's writings.
Actually, this film WAS released in 1978 as Island of the Damned, and the proof is right on the theatrical poster: Copyright ©1978 American International Pictures, Inc.
So you couldn't have seen it in 1976 under that title.
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No offense, polyester-queen, but 1978 was the US release date of the film when AIP acquired the film for American distribution, dubbed it in English and retitled it ISLAND OF THE DAMNED which was about 10 minutes shorter than the original Spanish version. I remember seeing WHO CAN KILL A CHILD in it's original Spanish version in theaters in Puerto Rico in 1976, then two years later I saw it again in the English version released by AIP in 1978. I even have a foreign DVD release of the film that has both the original Spanish language uncut version of the film with it's original title together with the shortened version in English released under the title ISLAND OF THE DAMNED.I think that answers your question about the two versions of this Spanish horror classic.
share"tephen King's part for his dreadfully awful Children of the Corn series"
Actually it was only one (and short) story.
This is how it tied in . . .
In no particular order the director wanted to (A) pad out the film as he hardly anythign there to shoot (b0 gross people out n that "mondo" style by showing real footage.
It was stupid and if people on this board can genuinely face up to it the scenes didn't erally need to be included. They were boring.
Also, Feck the chldren. I could slaughter a whole bunch of them if I was that fella. They all deserved it.
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away!
With this movie being nearly two hours long, I don't think the director felt the need to add six more minutes to the film just to pad it out. It also isn't there to make you feel grossed out. It is there to try and drive home a point. The biggest enemy a child has are adults. Through the actions of adults, mainly war, we kill our own children. The director wanted to point that out, and what better way than showing actual footage? It sort of gives a reason, that is never truly explained in all honesty, for the children killing all of the adults in the film.
shareThere's a couple references throughout the movie about how the children are "playing". As is also obvious by their giggling and smiling that this is what's being referenced. I think the idea the filmaker is trying to get across is the question of "What are we teaching our children?". All the atrocities of war and what adults do to ignore famine and cause the death of all human life (not just children) would be considered a bad example. Why then wouldn't the children just follow and mimic that example?
I don't believe the film has anything to do with kids knowingly revolting against the adults. Though the idea of it all started one evening at midnight (though I suppose it could have been in response to what just happened in Tibet in the film) and some of the dialog would also suggest the meaning is not all that deep. With low budget movies, it's often difficult to tell.
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