Child's Play

Chances are you will never have an opportunity to see this film as it hasn't been on TV for ages. However, I wouldn't say it is as bad as some of the comments. I thought it was well acted, but the ending left the viewer confused about exactly what had happened with the boys. The fates of two of the three major characters are also left to the viewer's imagination. Robert Preston and James Mason made interesting foils. Mason managed to make his character a man to be despised and pitied. Preston was also quite capable in his role - all sweetness and light with increasingly malevolent undertones.

If it had been as dull as described in some of the other comments, I probably wouldn't have been able to stay awake since I watched it in the wee hours of the AM.

If you're the type of movie watcher who prefers to be entertained without having to really invest in the film (and that's absolutely fine) then this movie is probably not for you.

I'm fortunate in that I enjoy all types of film from juvenile slapstick such as Top Secret to classic epics like The Godfather.

This particular film builds very slowly and although there's little "action" in the first third, it's well written and acted and the you can feel the tension build.

Without giving too much away, it's brilliant how convincing one of the main protagonists is due to the quality of the lines attributed to him in the screenplay.

Although I personally believe this movie deserves a wider audience, I fully understand that it will not appeal to a significant number of viewers.

Recommend if you appreciate slow paced, well acted drama.

Among Lumet' s monumental filmography ,"child's play" must be ,even more than the overlooked "the group" ,the movie nobody knows or loves to hate .

Personally, I have always thought that Lumet is particularly at ease when he directs films the action of which takes place in an enclosed space: a tribunal in "12 angry men" ,a bank in "dog day afternoon" a train in "murder on the orient express" a house in "deathtrap" or "long day's journey into night" the Strategic Air Command in "fail safe" ,a prisoners camp in "the hill".....

"Child's play " happens entirely in a boys high school but the students are not often on the screen ;unlike some naive works such as "dead poets society" ,the nice modern beloved teacher (Robert Preston) is not the one you think he is ;he is a distant relative of the "good" teacher Miss Brodie in "the prime of miss Jean Brodie ";whereas the old maid was urging her students to fight for "noble " causes such as Spanish fascism,her

colleague uses them to put his old "pal" James Mason down,to drive him crazy;his motives are very obscure (the fact that he wants to teach the twelfth graders is not really convincing and one could write that "some people who do not fit get the only fun they get by putting people down ",as John Prine sings ."So cold ,sometimes it looks so cold" .Women (apart from a nurse) are completely absent and no one among the secular staff has a girlfriend or a wife ,even the young naive gym teacher.Beau Bridges is a bit clumsy and as a sports teacher ,well...besides he lacks charisma and his dramatic range is ineffective in the scene when he blames his colleague (just compare with young Pamela Franklin playing opposite Maggie Smith in a similar scene at the end of "Miss Jean Brodie").

All in all,when you cannot mention it in the same breath as Lumet's works I mention above ,if you like this director,you should catch it :James Mason is excellent in his part of a fallen pitiful Latin teacher (you can also notice his subject had already begun to lose the prestige it used to have in ancient times) and Robert Preston is all the more scary since he remains cheerful or straight-faced.A flawed but nonetheless worthy work .

Like this ? try these.....

"Unman,Wittering and Zigo" (McKenzie,1971)

"The prime of miss Jean Brodie (Neame,1970)

I confess, I've always loved this film since I first saw it decades ago. I was always amazed that with its strong pedigree, both behind and in front of the camera, that it seemed to be totally forgotten with no official release.

Needless to say, I was THRILLED when I heard that Olive was releasing the Blu-ray. I've had a fairly nice print that I got from television many years ago, but now it is awesome to have this unique film available on Blu-ray.

You pretty much have the general plot from the other reviewers here, so I won't waste your time on that. But, I will say that one of the primary things I really like about this movie, and that I like most about good Horror films, it is all about MOOD & ATMOSPHERE! Seriously, there is a very low-key but strongly oppressive mood over this film as these boys are mysteriously getting maimed. What is behind it...? Well, that is one of the things this movie (actually Sidney Lumet) does very well. And, that is really being vague and ambiguous about the source of the Evil that is happening. It is most definitely there and you feel it, you just don't quite know where it is coming from 😊

And THAT to me makes for a great film! I'll just leave it at that and say that if you are the kind of person who enjoys mood and atmosphere most in Horror movies like this, and appreciate an oppressive slowly building Evil, and you don't mind a Slow-Burn, low-key build up, there is a good chance that you may very well like it...

In CHILD'S PLAY, from way back in 1972 and not involving a red-haired serial killer doll named Chucky, the development of the characters drives the suspense, and for today's standards, this could seem like a slow-moving, over-brooding, thrilless arthouse thriller, or a stage play adapted to the big screen. But what's really intriguing are the similarities with THE EXORCIST, which was being filmed when this hit theaters, but the book had been on the stands for several years...

So for anyone who hasn't seen or doesn't want to see William Friedkin's brilliant and timeless GODFATHER of horror flicks, that opened the door for a number of slowburn Catholic-centered horror-thrillers, there are three particular characters: an old priest, a younger priest, and a possessed young girl. Replace the girl with an entire Catholic School of mostly bullying boys who, as we witness their odd behavior, are in some sort of... spell, or something... adding Mystery to the myriad of genres...

We learn of everything through token white rabbit Beau Bridges, a former student who had returned as a teacher and greatly admired Robert Preston's vivacious, progressive English teaching priest, Joseph Dobbs, while immensely fearing a bitter old coot - Jerome Malley played by James Mason - who seems to be our primary antagonist, but as "the case" unfolds he could very well be a temperamental red herring...

Leading to the best scenes involving conversations between Beau's pivotal and, for the most part, eventually ambiguous Paul Reis with the polar opposite instructors while the kids are but a sporadic break that really need no escaping from...

For CHILD'S PLAY is more of a "Courtroom Drama" without a court and gavel. Bridges proceeds over the "testimonies" of both men although one is sold as being far more likable from the onset; yet this opinion remains more decided by the students than we, the hyper-alert audience, anticipating a twist to occur, especially with a character (Preston) so flawless.

Meanwhile, we're (through Bridges) the Jury being swayed, maneuvered from one side to the other: Preston is charming and understandable on a universal level as Mason has a tortuous life that can be pitied, even beyond the death of his mother. And the characters develop from there.

Director Sidney Lumet channels his signature New York gritty realism into the Gothic school where statues and cold walls keep that heated far-off reality as distant from the lens as it is the students, inhibiting a power, or perhaps merely channeling a hypnotic strength that needs no real explanations like, say, a ROSEMARY'S BABY.

Leading to a conclusion with so much buildup it begs for palpable closure. And yet, CHILD'S PLAY clings to words beyond action and an enigmatic dark aura over nail-biting suspense. In some strange way, there doesn't need to be any end at all. You can hear these two men speaking for days.

Sure there could have been scarier moments here and there, or even a dugout of fellow priest/teachers introduced to individually buy the farm when they wander off alone through the spooky campus. (Alright, that's very 1980's, but there are pockets of downtime when a few deaths would have livened the picture.) Hell, even THE EXORCIST had palpable "gotcha!" moments: cinematic caffeine never hurts.

But CHILD'S PLAY centers more on the dark hypnosis than what derives from it. Adding to one of several films using THREE main male leads to override a more conventional formula, intriguing enough to keep the viewer tuned in even after the purpose becomes all too clear.