Who Can Kill a Child?

An English couple go on holiday to a small island off the Spanish coast. There are no adults there; only children, and they are smiling. Then it becomes clear what has happened. The most contested part is the opening. Before the fiction starts, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador runs eight minutes of real documentary footage: what war did to children in the Second World War, in Vietnam, in Biafra and elsewhere. That imposes the film's question on the audience in advance, so that when children are killed on screen it is no longer obvious whose act it is. Serrador builds his horror out of sunlight rather than darkness. Almost all of it takes place in blinding daylight, which is what makes the crowd of children moving through empty streets so unpleasant. It was distributed under different titles, Island of the Damned in America and Death Is Child's Play in Britain. It is Serrador's best-known work and one of the cult items of Spanish horror. Who it is for: viewers curious about seventies European horror and films that work with taboo material. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot watch violence against children, or violence by them.