The Child (1977)

Day 109 of Sobriety.

The Child was my last film to watch from Arrow Video's American Horror Project: Volume 2 set. I enjoyed the other two films in the set—Dream No Evil (1970) and Dark August (1976) and  so I was looking forward to another film in line with what I have come to expect from these sets: a left-field, low-key, eccentric, low-budget horror film.

And that is exactly what I got. The plot is about a young woman who goes to work as a nanny in an isolated mansion in rural California. The mansion is situated in the middle of thick woodland, and is inhabited by the aging patriarch, his adult son, and young daughter. The mother of the family is dead, having been murdered in the woods by tramps several years prior—an incident which has cast a dark shadow over the house and all of its inhabitants. It is not long before the young nanny discovers that all is not well in the household, particularly with regards to the young daughter the eponymous “child” of the film’s title.

 

In his overview of the film in the blu-ray extras, film writer Stephen Thrower, who curated the American Horror Project sets describes The Child as a film in which every element is off-kilter—the acting, the dialogue, the photography, the music—resulting in a net effect of the film being very unsettling throughout.

I’d agree with that assessment. The first thing that struck me about the film was the music, which is a very weird amalgamation of florid classical/jazz piano combined with primitive avant-garde electronics. It seems that the score was written by pianist Rob Wallace, and the electronic elements were provided by prog rock keyboardist Michael Quatro (Suzi’s brother!). The result sounds like Liberace jamming with Hawkwind. About ten minutes into the film, I realized that I had to rewind it because I’d got so engrossed in the soundtrack that I had forgotten to follow the dialogue.

The dialogue is pretty weird itself. Apparently only one member of the cast (the father) actually had any film acting experience. One other member (the elderly neighbor) was a stage actress, and the rest were all complete novices. Strangely enough, the resulting inconsistent, stilted delivery put me in mind of Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), which I watched recently. The photography is also strangely off-kilter, apparently achieved through the use of wide-angle lenses. The film is supposed to be set in the 1930s, but, other than a few vintage cars, I could see little to really denote that. Time fluctuates wildly between night, day, and dusk—often during a single scene.

With all of those unconventional elements, the film plays out like a strange, dark dream. I would classify it as a “trance movie,” as it kind of hypnotizes the viewer and pulls them into its own distorted unreality.

The only aspect of the film that I thought diminished it a little was the look of the zombies. They are depicted quite effectively for about the first half of the film, when we only catch a glimpse of one behind foliage, or a hand disappearing behind a gravestone, but in towards the end of the film, when they appear more prominently, I thought they just looked like guys in muddy jump-suits. There are a couple of reasonably effective gore effects though.

All-an-all, an enjoyably strange film. Would make a good brain-melting double-bill with Cathy’s Curse (1977).