Who Can Kill a Child? (), released theatrically as Island of the Damned and Children of the Corn Tortilla in the US, and Would You Kill A Child?, Death Is Child's Play (original release) and Island of Death (1979 re-release) in the UK, is a 1976 Spanish horror film directed by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador. The film follows an English couple who find an island inhabited by maniacal children.
Plot
A montage of documentary footage depicts the effect of war on children. The film cuts from this mondo imagery to the story of English couple Tom and Evelyn (Lewis Fiander and Prunella Ransome), who are taking a vacation before the birth of their third child. They arrive on an island where they encounter grim-faced, silent children who seem to be the island's entire population. Throughout their stay, they witness the children behaving strangely. They later learn that the children are capable of violence; they have murdered just about every adult on the island. The couple are now forced to consider killing the children in self-defense. It is implied that the long list of atrocities and horrors brought upon children by adults' fighting and apathy has caused the island's children to take matters into their own hands. It's also shown that normal children are changed like the rest on the island merely by making eye contact with them.
Tom reluctantly shoots one boy with a gun when they are cornered in a room. Trapped in the room, Evelyn is killed when her unborn child joins the island children and attacks her from inside. By the next morning, a weary Tom is completely alone.
Tom eventually shoots an MP-40 at a group of children as he tries to escape the island, but the children follow him to the dock and attack en masse as he tries to cut a boat loose. As he tries to fight off the children, a Spanish military/police patrol boat arrives. The crew thinks that Tom is killing the children in cold blood, and one officer draws his weapon on him, ordering him to stay still. When he doesn't, the officer shoots him dead. The patrol boat docks, and the officers begin tending to the injured children, with the officer who shot Tom wondering aloud, "what kind of man...?" When asked where their parents are, the children point towards the town, and the three officers depart, leaving their boat and their weapons unsecured. One officer is stopped by a child calling out "Goodbye!" He turns to see that the children have boarded the patrol boat and are unloading its small-arms inventory. One of the boys kills the three officers with a rifle.
The movie ends with a small group of children preparing to head to mainland Spain on a motorboat, taking care to go in low numbers to avoid suspicion. When one girl asks, "Do you think the other children will start playing the way we do?" the boy in charge grins and says, "Oh, yes...there are lots of children in the world. Lots of them".
Cast
Lewis Fiander as Tom
Prunella Ransome as Evelyn
Antonio Iranzo as Padre
Marisa Porcel as Brit Van Der Holden
Luis Ciges as Enrique Amoros
Fabian Conde as Empleado
Miguel Narros as Guardacostas
Production
The film was based on a novel by Juan José Plans titled El juego de los niños (The children's game) and adapted for cinema by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador under his pseudonym Luis Peñafiel.
Release
Home video
Divisa released a Blu-ray plus DVD combo in Spain on May 2, 2016, exclusive to the retail chain FNAC as part of its Filmoteca Fnacional label. A regular Blu-ray followed on November 3.
Mondo Macabro released the uncut version on Blu-ray on its site as a (region free) "Red Case Limited Edition" on May 28, 2018; a general release (in the USA and Canada) followed on July 10 (the regular edition omits the lobbycards and the booklet from the limited edition and has a different cover).
Carlotta Films released a SteelBook Blu-ray in France on Sep 16, 2020; a regular edition followed on Apr 07, 2021.
Stingray released a 45th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray in Japan on Jan 29, 2021.