Devil Times Five (aka People Toys), 1974
In the middle of a snowstorm, a van transporting children from a psychiatric hospital crashes on a mountainside. David (Leif Garrett), Hannah (Gail Smale), Moe (Dawn Lyn), Brian (Tierre Turner), and Susan (Tia Thompson) emerge from the wreck and make their way to a home where a slew of adults are engaged in their own petty dramas and jealousies. Unfortunately for the adults, the children have a very extreme sense of fun.
Outside of torture porn, "evil kids" is probably my absolutely least favorite horror subgenre. The kids are often these smarmy, precocious creatures and, evil or not, I tend to find them more obnoxious than scary. While this is not necessarily a great iteration of the evil kids trope, it does manage some interesting dynamics by situating the kids inside of an insipid soap opera-type scenario and letting the carnage fall between cat fights and masculine corporate posturing.
The most winning aspect of the film is the set of child actors. Tierre Turner and Leif Garrett as Brian and David both bring a kind of cool confidence and energy to their characters. Turner's character feels like a real child, with his interest in using his stolen watch to talk in military time and just the overall way he interacts with the adults. Garrett's performance, on the other hand, has a lot of weird adult vibes to it. While I had mixed feelings about some of the sequences specifically involving David, it can't be denied that there's a kind of eerie focus to the character.
Smale brings an on-edge jittery aspect to Hannah. Lyn's Moe is the most child-like, but you can tell that when she decides to lash out it will be something special. And while Thompson's Susan is pretty low key, the final sequence with her character rewards a kind of still waters run deep element to the character.
Another major benefit of the film is how easy it makes it to dislike the adults. While two of them, Julie (Joan McCall) and Rick (Taylor Lacher) are okay, the rest are total creeps. One of the first scenes we get is of a character named Lovely (Carolyn Stellar) seducing and mocking the house's developmentally delayed worker, Ralph (John Durren). There is a kind of dark humor that develops nicely as one of the guests, Harvey (Sorrell Booke) spends the whole movie working up the nerve to tell head honcho Papa Doc (Gene Evans) that he wants a promotion, finally doing so after there are at least two dead bodies bobbling around the winter house.
The major downside to the movie is what you often get with this type of scenario, namely the portrayal of mental illness in a pretty exploitative way. This mainly comes out in the portrayal of David, who is frequently seen dressing in women's clothing and makeup. It plays into the well-worn (but completely false) narrative about genderqueer or transgender people being crazy or dangerous, and it's especially rough seeing that trope play out with such a young child. I'm not saying that every movie with a "crazy killer" needs to be 100% accurate to how mental illness really looks, but the film definitely plays fast and loose with how it shows the different kids and the manifestation of their disorders. It also doesn't totally make sense to me that a group like this would stay on the same wavelength, but that's the kind of thing you can sort of handwave away in the spirit of the thing.
I was somewhat torn on the style of the film, which employs a lot of slow motion, color filters, and freeze frames. At times it works, such as when the film will slow down when one of the kids decides to commit a murder. And a slow-motion shot of David climbing a ladder is pretty effective, but at times it's a bit goofy, especially some of the freeze frames.
Overall a good time.
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