The Udvarnoky brothers play child twins involved in a macabre game that leads to murder in this bitchin' fear flick from the director of "To Kill a Mockingbird." Mulligan takes some of the subtle, childhood spookiness featured in that film and cranks it way up for this one.
One of the twins is weak-willed but good, the other manipulative and evil. How they both got that way is resolved in the film's twist ending, which most don't see coming. Like the Tom Tyron book it's based upon, this thinking person's horror gem enjoys a healthy cult following. It's easily the best "killer kids" movie ever made, but is, unfortunately, extremely hard to find, even though it's still in print.
Don't let it's PG rating fool you: The flick is brutal and disturbing enough that it's even hardened horror fans should find that this film chills 'em to the bone.They don't make them like this any more, folks. None of the "Children of the Corn" films even come close to matching this film's eeriness. Jerry Goldsmith, of "The Omen" fame, composed the kick-ass music score.
Tyron, who wrote both the book and the screenplay to this film, also penned the 1950s-paranoia cult classic "I Married a Monster From Outer Space."
