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. It's not as good as the aforementioned, but it has its points.
A very beautiful young woman shows up to be nanny for a bratty young girl living in an isolated farmhouse with her crusty old father and hunky grownup brother. We figure out pretty soon that the brat is a malevolent force around here, though just how she manages to (apparently) raise the dead in order to off anyone who ticks her off is one of many logical details you're better off not pondering. (The movie doesn't bother explaining, anyway.)
The plot is very thin, yet the film feels atmospheric and eventful enough. It's not "good" by any standards, but it has personality and its own oddball sense of conviction. The most laughable and incongruous element is a musical score overwhelmed by florid piano arpeggios (I'm not the first person who thought of Liberace), though after a while you can somewhat tune it out. If the movie had a more effectively disturbing score, a la "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," it might now be considered a minor classic-- which would be overrating it, but it's certainly no piece of camp trash, either. (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.
A very beautiful young woman shows up to be nanny for a bratty young girl living in an isolated farmhouse with her crusty old father and hunky grownup brother. We figure out pretty soon that the brat is a malevolent force around here, though just how she manages to (apparently) raise the dead in order to off anyone who ticks her off is one of many logical details you're better off not pondering. (The movie doesn't bother explaining, anyway.)
The plot is very thin, yet the film feels atmospheric and eventful enough. It's not "good" by any standards, but it has personality and its own oddball sense of conviction. The most laughable and incongruous element is a musical score overwhelmed by florid piano arpeggios (I'm not the first person who thought of Liberace), though after a while you can somewhat tune it out. If the movie had a more effectively disturbing score, a la "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," it might now be considered a minor classic-- which would be overrating it, but it's certainly no piece of camp trash, either. (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.