Rish Outfield's reviews
Now, I'm no fan of the little ones. I am much more afraid of a crazed toddler than just about any psycho with a chainsaw, but this movie went a bit far. It was just so badly pulled off and so exploitative that I felt a combination of embarrassment and shame while watching it. This is a Troma film (and whether that means they actually produced the film or only bought up the rights to it I don't know), so be prepared for 70 minutes of tasteless decadence.
Beware! Children At Play is a nice title (well-used on the cover, with a phony street sign in which a little girl is stabbing a woman crossing the street), but the story isn't quite as nice. A few years back, a man and his young son were on an outing in the woods when disaster struck. In the aftermath of this incident, something strange and disturbing has been going on in this back-woods, in-bred, chicken-coop, po-dunk, overalls-and-long-johns countryside. The people who live in town believe in "Woodies," a sort of supernatural forest folk, but we know what they really are . . . CANNIBALISTIC MONSTER CHILDREN! That's a pretty unique threat. They've based their society on "Beowulf"--choosing to see Grendel as the good guy. They say stuff like "the dark death's shadow holds you no hope."
A great believer in variety, this film featured death by knife, scythe, spikes, rocks, pitchfork, and guns (but even the best death scene looked phony). The movie it was closest to was, and this will come as no surprise, was Children of the Corn. I considered giving it a Rip Off Skull, especially when one character said, "The outlander must die!" but most of the time it was different enough that I declined.
A nice beginning establishes the relationship between the father and the son, but things begin to degenerate at varying levels after that. This was a very low-budget film, which could be observed with the long, unnatural takes. It was very talky, but the "actors" seem to be doing a first readthrough of their lines. It had a third-rate synthesizer soundtrack. Everything about this film is cheap and lame, except the script, oddly enough. But there's the paradox: moments of the script are extraordinarily well-written. Other parts remind me of the films I tried to make when I was in junior high.
It's hardly a secret that I hate and fear kids, so when the movie works, it is pretty scary. When it doesn't . . . well, let me simply say that there were a couple of scenes that feature a laughing bush. And scenes like that were much more plentiful than the successful ones. The climax of the film (if the film has gained any notoriety at all, it's due to that) is a perfect example. It's unbelievably excessive and would probably offend the worst movie fan among you. Since the ending of a film is what you remember as you're rewinding the tape, walking out of the theater, or turning off the TV, and Beware's ending sucks big time, the movie pretty much sucks too. From a narrative standpoint (and I may be giving the screenplay too much credit here) it sort of works (I actually shouted, "Holy shit!"), but it's so poorly done that it's hard to tell. Regardless, it is disgusting and wrong. It, more than all the amateurish/stupid moments before, make me hesitate to recommend the movie to anyone.
Line To Remember: Bible salesman: "Around here, anyone with beyond a second or third grade education is called ‘Doctor.'"
Note: One of the hick townspeople had a Batman shirt on (which has nothing to do with the story, I just remember when everybody had Batman t-shirts).

Total Skulls: 23

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood hits camera
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?