- I once again caught up with Ed Hunt's excellent 1981 shocker Bloody Birthday this weekend and as this nifty little film has not really been discussed on these forums since the halcyon days of the old Anchor Bay UK Forum's, I felt that now was as good a time as any For those of you who have yet to see it, the plot of Bloody Birthday begins in 1970 with three babies Debbie, Curtis and Steven being born during a total eclipse. Ten years later and the young trio, who all live in the same small, sleepy American town, are inseparable friends who are rarely, if indeed ever, seen apart. However, the approach of Steven, Curtis and Debbie's tenth birthday coincides with a string of brutal murder's which leave the normally peaceful community shocked, frightened and baffled. - As it turns out the eclipse on the day of Debbie, Curtis and Steven's birth led to the sun and moon blocking out Saturn, the planet that purportedly governs human emotion. As a result the three children have grown up into cold-blooded, remorseless killers who mercilessly slaughter anyone foolish enough to cross swords with them. Despite their odd behaviour Debbie, Curtis and Steven attract no suspicion due to their tender years and are left free to continue their killing spree. However, things go awry when on of their classmates Timmy and his older teenage sister Joyce see a little too much and finally start to become suspicious of the trio's murderous activities, leading to a terrifying final confrontation as the evil pre-pubescent threesome seek to silence Timmy and Joyce forever.
- While as a general rule of thumb, so-called "killer kid" movies, in my experience at least, tend to be pretty hit and miss, generally provoking either deeply seated chills or unintentional amusement, Bloody Birthday is certainly a superior example of its ilk. Although the film starts out in pretty ponderous fashion, with token distinguished name star Jose Ferrer putting in a brief supporting appearance as the doctor responsible for delivering the three cherubic killers during that fateful solar eclipse, once Hunt's picture hits it stride it really does develop into a class act. Above all Bloody Birthday succeed's in conjuring up an effectively unnerving sense of a previously sleepy, insular and sedate small town being paralysed in the grip of grief and fear as the trio of pre-adolescent culprits scheme and kill with impunity as their tender years and angelic outward demeanour see's them sneak under the radar of suspicion whilst the bodies mount up. As such it really is a testament both to Hunt's direction and to Hunt and co-writer Barry Pearson's surprisingly level-headed script that Bloody Birthday doesn't sacrifice anything in the way of tension or suspense, even though the identities of the killer's are readily established more or less from the films outset. - Of course it goes without saying that this would all be for nought if Bloody Birthday did not feature memorable child villain's, but fortunately the film delivers more than adequately on this front too. Although the youthful trio of Elizabeth Hoy, Billy Jacoby and Andy Freeman who portray the murderous youngster's Debbie, Curtis and Steven respectively, deliver performance's which fluctuate at times between the coldly diabolical and the merely brattish this is to be expected given their tender years, and the sheer nonchalance with which they set about killing their adult victims, including their own parents and siblings, proves to be genuinely chilling. What is more, Bloody Birthday also provides this deadly, morally ambivalent trio with two sympathetic and likeable foils in the shape of their streetwise classmate Timmy and his wholesome, protective teenage sister Joyce (played by the lovely Lori Lethin) who ultimately find themselves pitted directly against the three seemingly angelic killer's. This eventually culminates in a tense and exciting finale in which an increasingly fearful Timmy and Joyce, having been cornered by the homicidal trio, are forced to use their quick thinking and ingenuity in order to escape with their lives intact. - Following Bloody Birthday the pretty and capable Lethin would go on to appear prominently in both Nicholas Meyer's famed nuclear holocaust themed TV movie The Day After (1983) and the Edwin Brown's backwoods slasher yarn The Prey (1984) (which was actually shot in 1978 but not released until six years later) before settling down into a fairly prolific career as a television character actress making appearance's in numerous high profile American series'. - Elsewhere on the acting front, famed veteran actress Susan Strasberg also puts in a strong cameo appearance as the deadly youngster's unduly stern and prim schoolteacher Miss Davis.
- Although it has a reputation as something of a shocker, Bloody Birthday is actually more restrained than you might imagine in that regard, with Ed Hunt largely avoiding graphic bloodshed, instead preferring to hinge the effectiveness of the films murder set-piece's upon the detached, smirking, ambivalent reactions of the 10 year old murderers to the cold-blooded slayings they are perpetrating. This approach really does work and the intermittent scene's of the youngster's sizing up then matter of factly slaughtering their victims pack a genuine punch. - Hunt doesn't need to throw buckets of gore everywhere, the sight of ten year old children killing with such chilling, detached satisfaction is shocking enough as it is. However, even though Bloody Birthday is far from awash with gore, there is still a playful, almost darkly comic sense of sadistic relish to the violence as the terrible trio utilise baseball bats, hand guns and even a bow and arrow to bring their grown up victims down to size. Meanwhile sleaze hound's and celebrity skin spotter's alike will also no doubt enjoy the scene in which the evil Debbie's precocious older sister Beverly (portrayed by future singer/songwriter and comedienne Julie Brown) performs a raunchy striptease, unaware that the pre-pubescent killer's are illicitly observing her through a secret peephole.
- In conclusion Bloody Birthday, perhaps rather surprisingly, emerges as a genuinely superior example of the killer kid sub genre. Indeed, if we are going to compare like for like then Hunt's film is much closer in terms of quality to the likes of Sean MacGregor's delectably exploitative Devil Times Five (1974), Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's Spanish horror classic Who Can Kill A Child? (aka - Island Of The Damned) (1976) and Robert Voskanian's delightfully creepy and offbeat The Child (1977), than it is to the disposable likes of Fritz Kiersch's muddled Stephen King adaptation Children Of The Corn (1984) and its many interminable sequel's. So while I would not go quite so far as to proclaim Bloody Birthday as some sort of unsung classic, it is certainly an underrated, effective, alternately disturbing and darkly funny early eighties horror film which makes a solid impression thanks to its winning combination of panicked, grieving small town atmosphere, memorably malevolent pre-adolescent killers, vicious set-piece deaths , some well sustained tension and, arguably above all else, an admirable refusal to soft pedal it's depiction of angelic looking ten year olds as cold-blooded, scheming, murdering, amoral psychopath's for reasons of "good taste". Therefore, both the more and the less discerning of horror aficionado's alike owe it to themselves to give Hunt's entertaining effort a second glance. Recommended.
Bloody Birthday is available on a rather spiffing UK Region 2 DVD from Anchor Bay UK which presents the film itself uncut in an unexceptional yet nevertheless pretty decent 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer which fluctuates in quality at times, particularly during darker, nighttime sequence's, but on the whole makes for a more than watchable viewing experience. Although there is no mention of it on the packaging, the Anchor Bay UK release also contains a video interview with the films executive Max Rosenberg, who for what it's worth is actually pretty dismissive of the actual film itself. As - I write this the Anchor Bay UK DVD can still easily be picked up online for less than £5 and at that price is frankly impossible to pass up. For the record the Anchor Bay UK DVD is predated by a slightly older US All Region's DVD from VCI which looks to be of very similar specification's and can also still be picked up dirt cheap online. However, some may still find the Anchor Bay UK disc preferable as it include's both Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono and Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack options, whereas VCI's release contains only the former. Bloody Birthday (Anchor Bay UK - UK R2 DVD):amazon.co.uk
http://whatgetsmehot.posterous.com/bloody-birthday-1981 Bloody Birthday (Ed Hunt, 1981) - I once again caught up with Ed Hunt's excellent 1981 shocker Bloody Birthday this weekend and as this nifty little film has not really been discussed on these forums since the halcyon days of the old Anchor Bay UK Forum's, I felt that now was as good a time as any ... Dogmeat
