Kevin Geeks Out about... meeting Max Kalmanowicz, director of THE CHILDREN (1980)

On Thursday July 7, I'm screening THE CHILDREN (1980) and DON'T GO TO SLEEP (1982) in New York City.  Click HERE and get tickets. 

As a young boy, my favorite thing about attending the annual Proctor & Gamble company picnic was getting to hang out with older kids, because everyone knows older kids are cooler. One year, some bad-ass 11-year olds told me about a horror movie called THE CHILDREN, where a school bus full of children are exposed to nuclear fog and turned into zombies, and you can tell because they have blue fingernails. I listened to the play-by-play of this gruesome story where kids kill adults and parents defend themselves by chopping off the children’s hands. That night I couldn’t sleep because I was too freaked out by the film’s final scene. Just hearing about it scared the hell out of me. I desperately wanted to see THE CHILDREN, but was too terrified. Years later I watched the film and it proved to be just as disturbing as I’d imagined. And I loved it.  


Recently, I had lunch with the film’s director, Max Kalmanowicz. Over lunch Max talked about what makes child actors so creepy, the secret to making low-budget horror, the cause of our current "zombie renaissance" and the surprising link between his drive-in movie and the horrors of World War II.  Plus he shared some details about his upcoming film HORROR CON. 

Max K.

KEVIN: Do people ever tell you they saw the movie when they were young and were just completely terrified and haunted?

MAX: The last horror convention that I went to, I met the people from Troma, who bought the rights to my two films The Children and Dreams Come True.  They recognized me from some of the publicity photos, and everybody started asking me if I would sign things.  I was a little embarrassed.  Basically, there were people coming up who looked too young to have been around at the time, saying, “You did The Children?  Wow, that was really scary!”  So that made me feel good, and I feel like if it worked then it still does now; for kids, anyway.

KEVIN: Does it seem like part of the appeal is that kids get a kick out of seeing themselves as the villains?

MAX: I think they like that the kids in the movie fry their parents.  That really gives them a big giggle.  They’re not scared by the kids being scary, they’re just wonderfully happy that the kids get even.  The kids are the monsters.  They have the power.

KEVIN: Do you have a favorite moment from The Children?

MAX: My favorite moment was when the father comes in and he sees his daughter and his son frying… who do they fry?  I forget.  It’s when he walks in and he sees them and they start coming towards him—the horror on his face that these kids that he’s raised are now coming after him.  They look really scary.  I love that!

KEVIN: My favorite scene is when Paul comes down the stairs, gets hit with the shotgun and goes over the side.  Was that really a kid doing the stunt?