Beware: Children at Play
In 1996, prior the debut of Tromeo and Juliet at the Cannes Film Festival, Troma aired the trailer for Beware! Children at Play. According to legend, half the audience walked out.
In a brief extra included on the DVD, Mik Cribbin, director of Beware! Children at Play, explains how the film came about. Cribbin was hired as a cameraman on a horror film that was cancelled before shooting began. With money, investors, and special effects already lined up, Cribbin pitched one of his own scripts, and the rest was history. Cribbin mentions in the feature that he had never made a motion picture before. If you have seen Beware! Children at Play, you already suspected this.
Beware! opens with Professor Randall and his son Glenn camping in the woods. (A lack of acting skill runs in the family.) Other than dad’s penchant for singing songs about mythological creatures to his son around the campfire, the pair seem relatively normal. The camping trip takes an unexpected turn when dad steps in a bear trap, falls, and hits his head. Unable to free himself from the trap, Glenn is sent back to the campsite for food and water. Dad’s plan is to wait until someone discovers him in the woods, but after three or four days in the trap, dad begins to ramble incoherently about demons and goblins and maggots before eventually succumbing to his wounds. Young Glenn proceeds to do the only rational thing and cuts his father open with a hunting knife before eating his guts.
This is five minutes into the film.
Time passes, and we soon meet happily married John and Julie, and their cute daughter Kara. The nicest family in the world is on their way to Uncle Ross’s house. During their trip, the family stops to assist a travelling salesman whose car has broken down. While John looks at his car, the salesman, through ten solid minutes of exposition, explains that the nearby townsfolk are inbred, and that at least a dozen kids have recently come up missing. Once the exposition ends, John fixes the car and his family drives away. Moments later, “someone” murders the travelling salesman by cutting him in half. “Travelling salesmen” belong to a demographic you can still safely kill in a horror movie without too many complaints.
When John and his family arrive at Uncle Ross’s house, they discover Ross’s daughter Amy is one of the teens that has gone missing. This leads to even more boring dialogue, where Ross explains that one local child goes missing every other month. When John (a pulp fiction author) asks Ross why local authorities haven’t looked into the disappearances, we learn that Ross is actually the local sheriff, and is out of ideas. Ross has invited John because he “thinks he might know a mind reader or something.” (Who doesn’t?) During a confusing series of dead end plots, another local, Dr. Fish, arrives and the three men put their heads together in an attempt to solve the disappearances.
When another child goes missing, the sheriff holds a press conference where only one member of the press shows up. With no leads to follow, the three men decide hiring a psychic is their best bet. A psychic is brought in, and our protagonists give her a doll that belonged to one of the children. The psychic follows the doll’s “vibes” into the woods (alone), where she discovers the missing children! This is a happy reunion for ten seconds until the little munchkins begin to jab her in the legs with sharp sticks. Once on the ground, the kids slit her throat and eat her face, while chanting “Gulp the blood, gobble the flesh, tear her to pieces,” over and over.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Ross, John the Author, and Dr. Fish begin receiving push back from the “Brownies” — no, not junior Girl Scouts, but crazy, cult-like locals who live in the woods. The group is referenced roughly twenty times in a two-minute span, so even the densest of viewers know to take note.
The three musketeers of crime fighting go from interview to interview, trying to crack the case. John, who reveals to the group that he believes he has ESP, takes the investigation reigns from the sheriff. While interviewing one crazy local, John spies a car under a tarp. The car belonged to the travelling salesman, and has blood on it.
“What does it all mean?” asks the Sheriff.
“How did you get to be sheriff?” asks the viewers.
At the beginning of the third act, it is not John, but his wife Julie who cracks the case. Julie, a “high school literary teacher,” remembers that the phrase the murderous children were chanting included “alliteration.” She remembers the line came from the ancient story, Beowulf. In Beowulf, the monster, who was also a cannibal, was named Grendel. Remember the cannibalistic kid from the beginning of the film? Glenn Randall? G.Randall? Grendel? Oh boy, this is thin. And I mean, this is the SINGLE CLUE that cracks the case! When the cops look up Professor Randall’s file, they discover “he taught Anglo-Saxon.” Case closed, in my book.
The investigation can’t move fast enough. John’s wife Julie is killed, and Ross’s wife is kidnapped. “And now, it’s personal,” says John, implying that everything up until this point wasn’t personal. John and Ross arrive to confront the children, but the townsfolk have other plans — namely, to violently attack and kill the mob of children on sight.
The race is on. Can John the Psychic Author and Ross the Sheriff find the kids before the angry mob of townsfolk? No. The sheriff’s lawn enforcement background is no match for the dozen children, and he is quickly dispatched. While the children are working on the sheriff, John discovers Amy, hopes in the travelling salesman’s car, and attempts to escape!
(Major spoilers below.)
Grendel, now an older teen, attacks John for attempting to steal his “queen.” John defeats Grendel, and leaves in search of his daughter (who has been kidnapped during the melee). Just as he finds and rescues his own daughter, the townsfolk arrive and attack the children. When John informs the mob that anyone touching one of the children could be charged as “accessories to murder,” he receives a bullet to the forehead. Then, the slaughter begins.
One child is stabbed in the neck with a pitchfork. One gets a hatchet in the back. One takes a meat cleaver to the head. One is crushed with a 2×4. One gets an arrow to the chest. One gets a shotgun to the head at point blank range. One takes a machete to the chest. One has a pistol inserted into his mouth before the trigger is pulled, spraying blood on a piece of wood behind him.
After all the children — their own children — are killed, the townsfolk go home.
The final two minutes of film appear almost as news footage, with still shots of all the dead kids. (Well, not really still shots, most of them are breathing.) At the very end, John’s youngest daughter (who survived the attack by hiding under her father’s dead body) emerges with a knife as she prepares to cut and eat one of the victims. THE END!
Beware! Children at Play isn’t just disturbing — every part of it is awful. I can only assume that this was the first and last acting job for every person appearing in the film. The writing is awful; exposition is presented in huge dialogue dumps, and facts that might seem important (“Oh, I think I’m psychic!”) are buried. There’s no character arc for anyone in the film, no lesson, and no development of any kind. Its only redeeming quality is the shock value that comes from watching it with a friend.