'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
The "Village of the Damned" meets "Night of the Living Dead" in the powerfully unsettling 1976 Spanish chiller Who Can Kill a Child? ($19.98), new from Dark Sky Films (darkskyfilms.com) in an uncut edition. It's our ... DVD pick of the week Loosely based on a novel by Juan Jose Plans, the film follows a British tourist couple — initially optimistic Tom (Lewis Fiander, in a role originally earmarked for Anthony Hopkins) and his pregnant wife Evelyn (Prunella Ransome) — as they journey to a remote Mediterranean island for a much-needed holiday.There, they find the formerly busy vacation hamlet nearly bereft of human life save for the local children, who are behaving oddly indeed.Director-screenwriter Narciso Ibanez Serrador skillfully builds the tension as the frolicking youngsters systematically terminate the town's remaining adults — adults who, like Tom and Evelyn, are understandably slow to comprehend the situation and reluctant, per the film's title, to fight back with lethal force.While the roots of the deadly phenomenon are never overtly explained, Mr. Serrador makes it clear, both within his film and in a bonus interview, that the children's collective revenge represents instinctive payback for the suffering visited upon the innocent throughout history by adult-engineered wars, famines and other atrocities.Though fairly light on explicit violence, the film, unfolding almost entirely in eerily bright sunshine and further sold by composer Waldo de los Rios' haunting score, is long on white-knuckle suspense. Beyond the interview with auteur Serrador, Dark Sky's disc includes a discussion with cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine, an image gallery and subtitled and dubbed language options. Collectors' corner
The "Village of the Damned" meets "Night of the Living Dead" in the powerfully unsettling 1976 Spanish chiller Who Can Kill a Child? ($19.98), new from Dark Sky Films (darkskyfilms.com) in an uncut edition. It's our ... DVD pick of the week Loosely based on a novel by Juan Jose Plans, the film follows a British tourist couple — initially optimistic Tom (Lewis Fiander, in a role originally earmarked for Anthony Hopkins) and his pregnant wife Evelyn (Prunella Ransome) — as they journey to a remote Mediterranean island for a much-needed holiday.There, they find the formerly busy vacation hamlet nearly bereft of human life save for the local children, who are behaving oddly indeed.Director-screenwriter Narciso Ibanez Serrador skillfully builds the tension as the frolicking youngsters systematically terminate the town's remaining adults — adults who, like Tom and Evelyn, are understandably slow to comprehend the situation and reluctant, per the film's title, to fight back with lethal force.While the roots of the deadly phenomenon are never overtly explained, Mr. Serrador makes it clear, both within his film and in a bonus interview, that the children's collective revenge represents instinctive payback for the suffering visited upon the innocent throughout history by adult-engineered wars, famines and other atrocities.Though fairly light on explicit violence, the film, unfolding almost entirely in eerily bright sunshine and further sold by composer Waldo de los Rios' haunting score, is long on white-knuckle suspense. Beyond the interview with auteur Serrador, Dark Sky's disc includes a discussion with cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine, an image gallery and subtitled and dubbed language options. Collectors' corner
