The Hot Spot Rating
Child, The (1977)
Cast: Laurel Barnett, Rosalie Cole, Frank Janson, Richard Hanners
Director: Robert Voskanian
Synopsis: An unsuspecting governess is employed to care for the Child from Hell!
“One of the eeriest low-budget horror films of the 1970s.” — DVD Talk (dvdtalk.com)
“Creepy as hell.” — Oh, The Horror! (oh-the-horror.com)
“An effectively unsettling little chiller.” — Mondo Digital (mondodigital.com)
“A genuinely creepy atmosphere.” — DVD Drive-In (dvddrive-in.com)
“An oddball horror gem.” — Bleeding Skull (bleedingskull.com)
“A bizarre and dreamlike horror film.” — Bleeding Skull (bleedingskull.com)
“Like a nightmare you can’t wake up from.” — Letterboxd user review (letterboxd.com)
“The atmosphere is absolutely suffocating.” — Letterboxd user review (letterboxd.com)
“An unforgettable little shocker.” — DVD Drive-In (dvddrive-in.com)
Having watched exploitation maestro Harry Novak’s Axe and appreciated its sleazy charms, expectations were reasonably high for The Child, even though Novak himself did not direct the picture. The premise alone — a twisted family living in the middle of nowhere and featuring a terrifyingly sinister little tot in the form of ten-year-old blonde Rosalie — holds enormous promise.
The opening sequence immediately suggests delightfully nasty things to come as young Rosalie plays sweetly with her kitten for a few fleeting moments before casually handing it over to a hungry ghoul for Sunday brunch.
Soon afterwards, an unsuspecting governess arrives to take charge of and befriend the brooding Rosalie. On her journey to the isolated household she narrowly avoids disaster before stopping off for tea with a batty but amiable old woman who ominously warns her about the Norton family, with whom she is about to reside.
Once the governess settles into the strange household and assumes responsibility for the quietly unsettling Rosalie, she gradually discovers that the family more than deserves its sinister reputation among the few wary locals familiar with them.
Rosalie’s grandfather is a particularly charming specimen, entertaining dinner guests with delightful stories involving young boys consuming poisonous plants and collapsing into lifeless heaps.
Meanwhile, Rosalie insists on visiting her “friends” in the local graveyard on an almost nightly basis. When the governess begins objecting to this somewhat unhealthy hobby, Rosalie retaliates by orchestrating a miniature reign of terror, utilising her graveyard ghoul companions to ensure her wishes are obeyed.
The frustrating thing about The Child is that the material contains all the ingredients necessary for a major cult classic. Unfortunately, the pacing is so slack and the direction so lethargic that the film’s modest 80-minute runtime somehow feels like an endless endurance test.
The gore effects are cheerful, cheap, and thoroughly unconvincing, though they are shown only in quick flashes and fleeting glimpses, which oddly works in the film’s favour despite the obvious kitchen-sink aesthetic.
The acting throughout remains true to classic Novak tradition — wooden at best — although young Rosalie at least cackles away with considerable enthusiasm and obvious relish.
Sadly, The Child never becomes the glorious little cracker one hopes for — something akin to a devilish hybrid of The Bad Seed and The Omen. The ingredients for a genuine minor cult classic are all present, but despite one or two reasonably effective sequences, the film mostly stumbles and plods forward in an almost sleep-inducing manner.
Ultimately, it falls well short of the mark thanks to its dreary pacing and overwhelming boredom factor, which smothers much of the considerable potential lurking beneath the surface.
