Who Can Kill a Child?

(¿Quién puede matar a un niño?)

Narciso Ibañez Serrador / Spain / 1976 / 107 min
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  • Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival (1977)

    Critic Award
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Spanish with English subtitles

Once available only on poor VHS copies circulated among aficionados, this legendary, taboo-breaking horror classic’s disturbing imagery helped keep it out of easy public viewing. A Hitchcockian thriller with salutes to Night of the Living Dead and Lord of the Flies. While vacationing on the remote island of Almanzora, Tom and his pregnant wife, Evelyn, notice only giggling children. They wonder where all the adults are, until Tom discovers that the demonic youths have killed them all. Unflinchingly horrific and unapologetically downbeat, Who Can Kill a Child was heavily censored for its American release in 1976 as Island of the Damned, in reference to the classic Village of the Damned. Like another horror masterpiece,Rosemary’s Baby, Ibáñez Serrador’s film builds up slowly, without giving a hint of the horror that’s to come and climaxing with a battle for survival as terrifying and nihilistic as anything in Night of the Living Dead. One of the best horror films of the past 30 years, it’s been imitated many times (Children of the Corn, a Stephen King short story with a similar plot, which was followed by a popular film series, released a year after) but has never been beaten.

Press

“Comparable in tone to Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. The closing ten minutes come from a different era in filmmaking, when horror movies could spit in the eye of the status quo and say that good does not always prevail, no matter how much we’d like it to.” – SLANT MAGAZINE

“Serrador’s film is remarkably effective, slowly introducing the situation and playing on both xenophobia and cultural taboos while building an atmosphere of mounting dread.” – THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Unflinchingly horrific and unapologetically downbeat, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s Who can Kill a child? was heavily censored for its American release in 1976 as Island of the dammed.” – DARK SKY FILMS

About the Director
He was born in 1935 in Montevideo (Uruguay) and from an early age was influenced by the world of acting: his father was the Spanish theater director Narciso Ibañez Menta .He spent his childhood in Latin America accompanying their parents during their tour performances. In 1947 moved to Spain where he attended high school in the city of Salamanca He began to work with a theater company and made his theater director debut with The Glass Menagerie by Tenesse Williams. In 1963 he began to work in Spanish television with innovative programs as Historias para no dormir   and a successful TV show called Un, dos, tres…. Later he transitioned to feature films and directed such films as The house that screamed and Who can kill a child? which was international released.
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