Memorable, crazy movie

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Suffer Little Children (1983) * 1/2 (out of 4) This British shocker was quite controversial when it was first released but by today's standards it's pretty tame stuff. The story deals with a children's home that takes in a young mute girl who was left on their door step. It doesn't take long for strange things to start happening.SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN was caught up in the Video Nasty craze and it's easy to see why. It's not because the film was overly violent or more shocking than some of the films on the list but this one here does deal with murdering children so it's not too hard to see why certain groups were upset. With that being said, the film starts off good and ends on a good note but sadly everything in the middle is just a downright bore and hard to sit through.In fact, the middle section is so darn boring that I can't help but think that most people will either be hitting the eject button or not paying too much attention. Either way one should really hang in there because the film goes downright crazy during the finale and has a certain cameo that just comes out of nowhere. The film offers up a few bloody deaths along the way but the majority of them are saved for the ending as well.On a technical level the film is pretty ugly all around. The movie was shot-on-video and it looks rather ugly. I'd also argue that the majority of the acting was quite poor and at times the dialogue was hard to understand. SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN has a terrific title and some good moments scattered throughout it but on the whole there's not too much going for it.

Had this been done by professionals I doubt I would have given it more than 3. However it has been made by drama students with no budget and limited resources. The story is pretty basic. It takes place in an orphanage. One day a girl named Elizabeth knocks on the door with a written message in her hand. Elizabeth can't speak and is taken care of by the caretakers. Elizabeth seems rather harmless until she is gifted a necklace with a cross as present. This she uses rather effectively to get some of the kids under her control and "accidents" start to happen. There is a lot of rather boring dialogue but the build-up is good, the first accidents are rather tame but at almost the 1 hour mark things really start to get bad. Camera work was pretty effective. I was also impressed with the dream sequence where Elizabeth gets the first 2 kids under her demonic control. The ending well was pretty lame as if they ran out of ideas. The title of the movie is also the title of a song played in the movie at some point, rather catchy I must say.

This is an intolerably cheap and amateurishly edited together independent horror flick that for some reason enjoys a cult-status that it absolutely doesn't deserve. I once saw a VHS copy of this movie being sold on eBay for more than £500.00! Damn, I pity the person who spent such a massive amount of money on this utterly worthless piece of junk! "Suffer, Little Children" is so bad that I can hardly find enough synonyms for awful to describe what's going on here. It's practically unwatchable, with lousy editing, incomprehensible narration, inaudible dialogs (also because the acting performances are so inept) and no sign of coherence or pace whatsoever. The story plays at a children's home where the caretakers suddenly and unannounced have to take custody of a nine-year-old mute girl with a macabre persona. The girl has the ability to inflict nightmarish imagery onto others and hypnotizes the rest of the kids. She subsequently enjoys forcing them to mutilate and even kill themselves in gruesome ways. Personally, I'm a huge sucker for (evil) kids in horror movies! Some of my favorite genre films revolve on murderous children, like "Who Can Kill A Child" and "The Omen" for example, but this one is hopeless and even infuriating. The premise shows such enormous potential, yet the elaboration is a total mess. There wasn't any money for make-up effects, so don't go around expecting gory killings or creepy kids' faces. Along with a handful of other amateur films that were made around the same era, like "Goremet – Zombie Chef from Hell" and "Mad Mutilator", "Suffer Little Children" is one of the worst things I've ever seen in my life. Do NOT watch it, please!

Suffer Little Children is an infamous Low-Fi horror film that emerged from New Malden, Surrey in 1984. A 'Kid's film' it was produced by The Meg Shanks Drama School seemingly as a promotional tool for the talents of her early and pre-teen pupils. While at any other time such a project would probably never been seen outside of casting agents or proud parents in the early Eighties the film managed to reach a paying public thanks to a relatively wide scale tape release through fly-by-night label Films Galore.Suffer Little Children opens with some location defining computer generated titles; "Sullivan's Children's' Home", "Sunday". At the home, troubled kids idly play in the cramped front room and chase each other around the corridors. The chaotic scene is vaguely supervised by the home's two staff members Maurice and Jenny. Polar opposites, she's an easy going leg warmers sporting 80s blonde and has a good rapport with the kids, Maurice on the other hand is an old fashioned man of Gray jumpers and NHS glasses, resembling Norman Eshley in George and Mildred. An average Sunday at the home is interrupted by the arrival of a mute child on the doorstep bearing a letter which reads "Please take care of Elizabeth, she can't speak.". Elizabeth is taken to meet the other children, one of them, Sarah asks what's Elizabeth's 'problem' i.e. why can't she speak. Jenny gently tells the girl off for being so rude, rather less forgiving Elizabeth uses her psychic powers (indicated by a crash zoom on her eyes and a blast of heavy metal music on the soundtrack) and a door slams into Sarah's face knocking her to the floor. Liz means business."That Evening" Two of the other girls have a joint nightmare- brought on by either Elizabeth or a late night viewing of Plague of the Zombies- that has zombies clawing their way out of the ground and pursuing the girls. In the midst of their terror the two girls encounter Elizabeth who beckons them to a picnic. The zombies stumble upon the girls and join in the picnic as well. After the nightmare the two girls become Elizabeth's minions.Elizabeth gets up to all sorts, using her demonic powers to knock fellow children down stairs, even causing a fight in a trendy New Wave club. By the time the adults cotton on Evil Liz has put her plan into action, growling the films title in a Linda Blair voice and turning her powers on Jenny and Maurice who get locked in the staff room and are hit by a levitating potted plant. The rest of the children end up worshipping Elizabeth in the attic and chanting "Come, Devil, Come". Just when it appears all is lost, who should magically appear but a peeved Jesus Christ who then rather un-Christianly starts zapping all of the devil worshipping little baskets into oblivion and does battle with Liz, truly insane.As you might expect from a film whose end credits admit to being made by people with "no experience and no money" a certain amount of patience is required for Suffer Little Children, since unlike say Invitation to Hell or Cliff Twemlow's North West actioners the film never manages to transcend its home movie origins. Had it been a 'real' film made by professionals Suffer Little Children would have made for a superb little horror film, and in its camcorder shot amateur hour incarnation there are still several noteworthy moments that shine through, thinking especially of the zombie dream sequence and the closing scenes with the evil kids collecting knives and hammers and going on an adult killing rampage. The climax is a true shocker in light of the leisurely paced nature of the rest of the film with the taboo use of child actors in an wildly gory spectacle. Special mention is also due to Nicola Diana, the child actress playing Elizabeth who cuts a genuinely disquieting figure. By the film's end she's presiding over satanic rituals and clad in a white bed sheet like a mini-version of Linda Hayden in Blood on Satan's Claw.What Director Alan Briggs and Shanks lacked in film-making know-how they made up for in self-promotion holding many heavily reported on publicity stunts during Suffer Little Children's making and video release. Including holding a casting call for zombies and having Meg Shanks pupils hold a protest outside of Richard Attenborough's office attempting to get Dickie to endorse the film. Pushing audience gullibility a bit, in a pre-Blair Witch touch the filmmakers claimed the film was a reconstruction of actual events that took place at a house in New Malden in August, 1984. In case anyone doubted this claim they even printed the address on the back of the video (45 Kingston Road, New Malden, Surrey, if you're interested).Not all publicity is good publicity though, released at the height of Video Nasty hysteria the film and its makers ultimately fell foul of the tabloid press who in their typical 'never let the truth get in the way of a good story' manner managed to make the film sound as disreputable an undertaking as possible. The ensuing controversy kept the film name checked in the tabloids and film trade magazines throughout 1985. By all accounts the video distributor and Shanks suffered much unnecessary police harassment as a result, the human cost of a tabloid 'good story' of which the consequences to people's lives and reputations last long after said newspapers become yesterday's fish and chip paper. While Director Briggs has at least one other credit to his name Ghetto Wars -described as a 'post-apocalyptic sci-fi film'- the bad press meant Meg Shanks and her little drama school were never heard from again. Evil kids are one thing, but the storm in a teacup case of Suffer Little Children suggests the scariest thing about 1980s Britain was the tabloid press.