The Child

Plot synopsis:
Alicianne is a pretty young girl who is hired to be a full time caretaker and companion for young Rosalie Nordon, whose mother has recently passed away. Rosalie's household also consists of her father and brother, and the family lives in a large house, located in a heavily wooded area.On her way to the Nordon house for the first time, Alicianne suffers car trouble when she accidentally drives it into a ditch. Instead of choosing to walk along the road, Alicianne decides to walk through the woods, as she is somewhat familiar with the area because she grew up nearby. She meets an elderly neighbor, the somewhat daffy Mrs. Whitfield, who warns Alicianne about the strange ways of the Nordon clan, and when Alicianne finally arrives at the house, she finds out why the Nordons have a shady reputation. Mr. Nordon is a somewhat unfriendly old man. Len, the older brother, is mostly silent and awkward. Rosalie herself seems aloof and withdrawn. When Alicianne first meets her, the jack-in-the-box next to Rosalie's bed suddenly ejects itself without warning, startling Alicianne. Other strange things happen in the house, and Rosalie's father seems to possess a bizarre, morbid attitude; at the dinner table, he tells a story about a group of boy scouts who died of food poisoning, laughing at how the young boys accidentally added a poisonous ingredient to their dinner and died agonizing deaths. Rosalie laughs at the story, too. Len seems disturbed and embarrassed by his family.Soon after Alicianne's arrival, she begins to notice that whenever Rosalie gets angry or upset, things seem to move and take on a life of their own--like the jack-in-the-box. Rosalie spends a lot of time at the grave of her mother, which is in a nearby cemetery in the woods. Alicianne finds some of Rosalie's drawings, which reveal sinister figures. Unbeknownst to the others, Rosalie has telekinetic abilities, which she uses to reanimate corpses from the local cemetery. She sends the zombies to do her bidding, and as a reward, she feeds them things like small animals.Rosalie steps up her revenge a notch when she confronts the nosy Mrs. Whitfield. First the zombies make off with Mrs. Whitfield's dog, then the next night they come for her, terrorizing her before mutilating her in her basement. Rosalie has a sketch book full of drawings, one of which is a list of people she blames for her mother's death, and as her victims die, she crosses them off the list.Rosalie begins to sour on Alicianne, particularly when Alicianne starts to spend time with Len, and Alicianne's sense of terror starts to rise. In a dreamlike moment, Alicianne follows Rosalie to the misty cemetery one night and questions her about who she is meeting there, to no avail. During a Halloween party, a jack-o-lantern seems to levitate and follows Alicianne around the darkened living room, and Rosalie also causes a scarecrow to animate and come after Alicianne. She also exacts revenge on the gardener that her father employs; it seems as if the man has stolen some of her mother's jewelry, and Rosalie thinks that he has murdered the woman as well. Rosalie uses her telekinesis to animate a shotgun and fire on the man, killing him.Alicianne finds Mr. Nordon's mutilated body in the house. Len and Alicianne decide to flee in Alicianne's car, but a rock shatters the windshield and Len crashes. While he is trying to start the car again, zombies close in on them and try to drag them out of the car. They escape and run to a nearby wooden mill, where the zombies surround the structure and try to break in. Len attempts to hold them off by boarding the doors and windows, and he manages to kill one after finding a shotgun. Eventually the zombies attack from underneath the mill, and Len is pulled through the floorboards and presumably killed after his face is ripped off. Finally, the attack seems to stop, and Rosalie comes through the door of the mill. Alicianne manages to land a death blow with an axe to her head, killing her. When she emerges from the mill, the zombies are all gone.

Tags: violence, murder

Review:
When I say the "bread and butter" of 70s drive-in horror, I mean movies like this one came and went, forgotten and/or never seen by the majority.
Zombie Child does have the occasionally atmospheric scene or effective sets to redeem it.Alicianne Del Mar (played by the lovely Laurel Barnett) arrives in the heart of the forestry to look after the difficult child, Rosalie.
Alicianne soon realises that these friends' are the murderous zombies who have killed everyone that have, in some way, annoyed the spoilt little girl.
The climax involves the old favourite boarding up every possible entry as the horde of ghouls gather around an old mill to get at Alicianne.Zombie Child is so peculiar, not to mention obscure and hard to find, you end up liking the film.
but if you like the zombie subgenre best check out The Child, a movie with a mid-seventies homemade feel, which springs some scary groping monsters on the camera in the last twenty minutes, and packs the rest of the running time with strange music, weird camera angles and warped acting as well.
The story goes something like this: A sweet and somewhat oblivious young lady named Alicianne Del Mar is hired as a baby-sitter for a little girl named Rosalie Nordon, who is grieving the lost of her mother.
Mrs. Whitfield, who doesn't have much of a life, invites Alicianne for a cup of tea and suddenly begins to say nasty things about the Nordons (we all know old ladies like this, don't we?).
The old bitty seems to particularly dislike little Rosalie and she even blames the child for a lot of strange things that happen in the area, without being too specific about it.
After Alicianne introduces herself to Rosalie, the child randomly begins to talk about her late mother's beautiful hair (um, okay) and then points out a photograph of the alleged woman, which actually looks more like a portrait from the XIX century (seriously, couldn't they get a photograph of a woman from the 60s, 50s or even 40s?)
Though the cutesy baby-sitter tries to be in good terms with the child, the truth is that Rosalie is, in fact, very weird and she does a lot of strange things, like, walking around the cemetery at the night (yikes!).
Rosalie's morbid behavior would have made her really popular nowadays, where being rude, horrible and creepy is trendy, but this was the 70s, where little girls were still expected to be nice and cute, so obviously, nobody likes Rosalie.
I know it may seem like I was making fun of it during my recap of the story, and maybe I was, but I actually love "The Child" and the random nature of it, is one of the main reasons why I do.
Since Robert Voskanian, the director, didn't do any other films, we'll never know if his randomness regarding the story and the bizarre dialogs were the result of poor writting or if this is simply his style (kind of like, a poor man's David Lynch).
Honestly, to me, this is a solid horror film by accident, as it seems like they pretty much overlooked certain technical aspects, and rushed things towards the last minutes, as they realized that the production had ran out of budget before the filming was over.
There are enough "nicely done" horror movies, technically speaking, and I'd be more than happy to see more "messy" films like this, because this so-called messiness helps to create a dark an chaotic atmosphere.
My main criticism regarding this film comes from the fact that "The Child" could have used a little bit more character development, since we don't get to know enough about Rosalie's late mother, which is crucial to the story.
Other than that, "The Child" is a very enjoyable little flick and I highly recommend it to horror fans who don't take films too seriously all the time..
If you can get around the horrible soundtrack and cheap special effects you might actually like this movie.
She spends her nights at the graveyard deep in the woods behind her house.A sitter arrives from the big city to help take care of the little girl and soon discovers the rash of killings in the community might have something to do with the 12-year old.
When the sitter realizes that the little girl has the power to move and animate inanimate objects it becomes crystal clear about just what she has been doing at the graveyard all those nights.I adored this movie.
Alicianne is hired to look after creepy 11-year-old Rosalie in her family's remote and gloomy house.It soon becomes clear that Rosalie has psychic powers and can make things move just by thinking about it-and she can also use those same powers to raise the dead,reanimating corpses in a nearby cemetery to take revenge after her mentally ill mother dies...A spooky and atmospheric opening scene gives way to a sluggish and wholly predictable zombie movie that has little new to add to an already over-crowded sub-genre.Technically,it's a mess and the acting is as dire as you'd expect,yet it does occasionally manage to display flashes of that creepiness that informed the opening scene."The Child" was released by exploitation king Harry Novak("Axe"),so fans of low-budget 70's horror should be pleased.This film has its share of flaws,but give it a chance.7 out of 10..
A pretty lady is hired as the nanny of a spooky little girl called Rosalie.
Thing totally go awry when Rosalie starts to act more and more like a little psychopath, drawing morbid pictures of her family and hiring her "friends" from the woods to kill people that get in her way.
Rosilan (Rosalie Cole) is a girl with some problems-like her psychic abilities that allow her to talk to her dead mother, levitate objects, and raise the dead.From producer Harry ("Axe","Rituals", "Hitch-Hike To Hell" and plenty of soft core flicks) Novak comes "The Child", an uneven but still watchable take on the Zombie movie.
The movie itself takes a while to get going, and like many movies of this type, the acting is terrible (especially Rosalie Cole, whose character is too much of a brat to be interesting or threatening), and the electronic score by Rob Wallace is grating.Still, when the final 20 minutes kick in, the movie kicks up.
The make up effects are also pretty good, especially considering the movie's budget."The Child" is an alright Bad Seed movie, only with the supernatural and the living dead instead of a killer kid.
This is one of those 70s independent horror films like "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" and "Let's Scare Jessica To Death" that are odd, crude, dated, but interesting in their dreamlike approach to the genre.
(Which is not to say I don't enjoy camp trash at times.) Most of the participants seem to have never made another movie, and "The Child" has that compelling curiosity of a one-shot genre movie made by people whose arty inclinations probably doomed their futures in commercial cinema, but which also make this sole effort more interesting than most of what it would have shared drive-in and grindhouse screens with in the mid/late 70s..
The naive young housekeeper gradually becomes aware of Rosalie's strange abilities and eventually runs afoul of the little girl's graveyard friends!This film doesn't really succeed in the period detail department, primarily because the housekeeper spends nine-tenths of the movie in peasant dresses, not exactly the going fashion in 1939 or whenever this movie was supposed to be set.
Not great, but not bad, either, The Child is a lot like Dawn of the Dead or Night of the Living Dead set in the late 1930s.
While it does have some technical flaws and takes a while to get exciting, it does turn into a good zombie movie in the final twenty minutes.
The two heroes (unknown performers who look a lot like a young Susan Dey and Michael Cole from the Mod Squad) have to try to fight off a group of zombies in a remote shack, in the film's exciting climax.
It is not completely like Romero's films, in that zombies are not rampaging throughout all of the setting of 1930s America in this movie, but you do get the same sense of desperation and hopelessness in this production by Harry Novak.
The script does plod along and you really never get to know any of the characters well (even Aliceanne acts a bit strange at times), but it is worth a look if you can find it.
It's an obviously cheap movie, that got poorly put together by an also very obviously inexperienced cast and crew.I'm taking into consideration the budget and time that went into this movie and in that regard it really isn't an horrible picture and on some levels actually quite an achievement but the overall end result isn't exactly anything that I would recommend to anybody.Thing with this movie is that it's storytelling never really flows pleasantly.
Meh. There were a lot of truly great horror movies produced in the seventies - but this film certainly isn't one of them!
We have the idea of a vengeful child, which worked so well in classic films such as The Bad Seed and then we have the central zombie theme, which of course has been the backbone of many a successful horror movie.
But Rosalie misses her dead mother a lot and continuously visits her grave (conveniently located in a cemetery right behind the house) late at night...where she also meets her "friends"...This starts off good with a truly eerie sequence in the cemetery...then falls apart.
I've seen older movies with way better acting and such.The music was terrible to.
Merging the 'creepy kid' horror subgenre with the zombie flick, The Child - the only film from director Robert Voskanian - is a quirky, rough around the edges, low-budget oddity that trundles along at a reasonable pace, delivering a creepy atmosphere and a smattering of hokey gore, making it a more than reasonable time-waster for fans of '70s drive-in schlock.Laurel Barnett stars as Alicianne Del Mar, new house-keeper at the Nordon residence, home to father Joshua (Frank Janson), son Len (Richard Hanners) and daughter Rosalie (Rosalie Cole), all of whom seem a touch odd.
As Alicianne tries to connect with Rosalie, she slowly begins to realise the frightening truth about the little girl's 'friends'.Opening with a pre-credits scene in which Rosalie feeds a kitten to a ghoul hiding behind a gravestone, The Child is quite the strange movie, kicking off like a cut-price Carrie, the girl displaying telekinetic powers, but ending like Night of the Living Dead, with Alicianne and Len barricading themselves in a ramshackle shed surrounded by zombies.The first half of the film is all about the off-kilter atmosphere, the most uneasy scene being Joshua's suppertime story about a group of boy scouts who accidentally poison themselves, a source of much amusement to the father and his freaky daughter.
A dischordant soundtrack adds to the unsettling effect throughout.The latter part of the film is where the blood starts to flow, as Rosalie sends her graveyard pals to kill those who she feels threatened by.
It's cheap, it's technically lacking (the day-for-night shots are especially bad), and the acting isn't great, but it has an unconventional charm that makes it hard to dislike..
I haven't seen a movie where the acting is bad as the job done in "The Child." This is truly an amateur production.Overpoweringly bad music, scratchy sound, and horrible lighting.
Any horror fan could guess what's about to happen and even what the characters are about to say.It's unfortunate that the movie is really that bad - I was hoping it would at least be cheesy in a good way but with the script and these actors there's just no way for this one to be enjoyable.Here's hoping people don't waste their time on this one.
Good low budget horror movie....
The story is about young girl called Alicianne is who has been hired to be a full time caretaker for young 11 year old Rosalie Nordon, whose mother has recently died Rosalie's her father and brother, and the family lives in a large house, which is in a wooded area.
when Alicianne finally arrives at the house, she finds out why the Nordons are strange Mr. Nordon is an old man with a bad attitude while he is at the dinner table, he tells a story about a group of boy scouts who died of food poisoning and died .Rosalie laughs at the story, she is not a very nice little girl who can easily get angry.
i found this film to be very gory with some very good moments in it even though it was a low budget movie..
It's obscurity probably assures that you may not have seen it already, which makes it a curious treat if you can find it.Obviously made cheaply and seemingly very quickly too, the movie concerns young Aliceanne, who is hired as a nanny for the bizarre Rosalie, a child obsessed with the recent death of her mother.
Rosalie lives with her father and her brother in a secluded old house in the woods, and Aliceanne immediately notices the weirdness of their freaked-out clan.
Often the music swells in a menacing way when nothing of note is happening on screen.The climax, which finds Aliceanne and the only other semi-normal character in the film trapped in a weird abandoned mill while surrounded by the living dead, is a satisfying zombie confrontation, with some surprisingly creepy ghoul makeup.Aliceanne makes a reasonable 70s horror heroine, the kind who would much rather walk through the darkened woods and through a cemetery than have someone come pick her up by the road.
Worse yet, the evil child's late mother was an institutionalized lunatic and the deadly little darling can even resurrect the dead (the scene where a snoopy old lady neighbor has her face gruesomely torn off by a zombie is especially tense and scary).
This culminates in a truly horrific and nerve-wracking climax where the two hole up in a ratty old tool shed that's attacked by Rosalie's supremely unnerving, rot-faced, dirt-covered shambling zombie pals.Capably directed by Robert Voskanian, this effectively spare'n'spooky low-budget rural shocker is a handy dandy combo blend of "The Bad Seed," "Carrie," and "Night of the Living Dead." It works remarkably well thanks to a strong brooding gloom-doom rustic Southern atmosphere, some really unusual and imaginative cinematography (the occasional use of off-kilter tilted camera angles is particularly good at creating and sustaining a genuinely disturbing nightmarish mood), a vividly rendered period setting, a superbly wonky, dissonant and discomfiting droning synthesizer score, solid and credible acting from a game no-name cast, the wonderfully ugly and upsetting zombie make-up (the hideous undead ghouls look like they lurched off the set of a Lucio Fulci film), and a nice sprinkling of ghastly gore.
I don't believe the movie was shot on earth or that earthlings were involved in the production, it just feels too otherworldly, and that's how I perceived it just after having watched a movie about a Martian society in which Santa Claus actually existed on earth.Reportedly the film is about an evil girl killing adults.
As for the evil girl, the only thing that distinguishes her wickedness from the wickedness of the other characters is that she is one wickedly bad actress.In any other case I'd say the film is "hella stupid" but it creates such a thick atmosphere, mainly with its dense sound design but also with the lively camera-work, that it feels like experiencing a dream and when it becomes more incoherent it just feels even more like a dream.
One heck of a weird movie about a bad seed child.
I think you have to be a film nut to really appreciate a movie like this.
the little actress who plays the bad seed child has a striking face that can be both charming and malevolent, but she's mostly wooden.As it goes on however, the film unfortunately loses some of its narrative drive.
This little girl Rosalie has some psychotic tendencies as the movie opens with her feeding kittens to some kind of creatures in the cemetery, and she has recently lost her mother who went crazy but whilst alive enjoyed staying in the woods all night.
Well, the young lady meets up with the child and we soon learn that not only is she strange but everyone in the film is very bizarre as well.
None of these people can act - as evidenced by the few vehicles any of them in the entire film appeared in before or since - and all of them look like they have little idea what is going on, pause to remember lines, and have all the conviction of a paper bag.
The murders are not convincing either, and truth be told the whole film looks like someone through it together on their friend's farm with the people and things on hand there.
Crappy Story, Acting, Cinematography, Editing, Music/Sound, Lighting, Sets, Dialogue, Bad Dubbing, etc..
What saves this movie is the initial idea, an evil or twisted child with some kind of power to bring forth the dead to kill people.
I also like the fact that the female lead started screaming nonstop, after the car crash and seeing the zombies, till the end of the movie.
Story, acting, cinematography, editing, music/sound, lighting, sets, dialogue, dubbing, etc.
I like most viewers have seen that movie many times.
Go watch it, the story sucks, the acting is horrible, and the zombie makeup is just plain trash.At least with the Child we have something.
Good premise and atmosphere but way too little of the child.
You have just sat through one of the most lamebrained, boring horror films you're ever likely to see, and lost 82 minutes of your life you'll never get back.