Child's Play

This is an excellent film. Unfortunately the word subtle, which applies to this film, is used as a negative by the only (at this date) other comment on "Child's Play." Subtle it is, and those who like character studies and evocative camera work, a sustained mood and a finely wrought battle between good and evil will be delighted. If you like the garbage that passes for horror in most of today's bloodfests and loud, non-stop, effects-driven films, well - don't bother.

Robert Preston and James Mason, two A-list actors, knew good material and both give performances that rank highly with the best of their careers. This film was directed by the great Sidney Lumet, and reveals what is usually best about Lumet's work: great acting, sustained mood, the ability to confine the action to one setting and exploit it for all it is worth, attention to detail and precise pacing that builds exactly as it should. This unheralded gem deserves a DVD release soon!

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)

Sidney Lumet manages to engender great tension in this curious tale about a group of satan like kids and one of their masters. Reasonable acting with an intelligent script produces satisfactory results.

The only thing missing here is a lack of focus on the mechanics of how the boys behaviour is merely down to a local cult or if something more sinister is at work; however it may have been the writers intention to leave us in two minds regarding this aspect.

Definitely worth watching

There's evil afoot in one of those boy's schools were the boys are all played by actors in their early twenties. It makes you wonder at what age pupils graduated from American high-schools. "Child's Play" was adpated from a successful Tony-award winning Broadway play and was directed by Sidney Lumet. It's certainly not one of his better films but it's a nice grisly entertainment nevertheless about the feud between two senior masters, (James Mason and Robert Preston, both terrific), and a seemingly inexplicable eruption of violence amongst the boys.

Basically, it's a high-class horror film with possible demonology lurking in the chapel and would be more effective if the 'boys' weren't so clearly young men. Beau Bridges is the new young gym teacher and former pupil torn between loyalty to Preston and sympathy for Mason and David Rounds is good as a fairly liberal young priest. It's nonsense, of course, but the cast give it a real kick and Mason, in particular, might convince you that you're watching something serious. Understandly it isn't much revived.

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.