All the Kind Strangers

All the Kind Strangers is basically just your average made for TV seventies movie - in that it features an interesting base plot, and lets that fill the entire runtime without even attempting to do anything else with it. The result is adequate; though underwhelming. The film begins with a man driving through the woods alone. He encounters a young boy and offers to give him a lift home. Upon arriving at the boy's home, the man finds it inhabited by children; and because his car won't start, he decides to stay there for the night. However, it turns out that the kids have broken his car to make him stay with them as they want him to be their father. The film only runs for about seventy five minutes and doesn't provide a great deal of surprises along the way. Once the plot is laid out, we are left only with the task of getting to the end. The film does feature a good leading performance from Stacy Keach, who gets into his character well and receives good feedback from the likes of Samantha Eggar and John Savage. It all boils down to a rather strange, yet disappointing ending. Overall, this is a long way from being great; but it passes the time at least and I'd say it's just about worth a look.

I really love TV-horror/thriller movies from the 1970s. They are short, straightforward and usually compensate in atmosphere and plot- ingenuity for what they lack in action footage or make-up effects. "All the Kind Strangers" is a decent example of such a 70s tale with a very murky and unsettling premise and a thoroughly unpredictable atmosphere of tension. Macho freelance photographer Jimmy Wheeler is driving through rural roads in his fancy and brand new convertible when he stops to give a lift to a 7-year-old kid carrying large bags of groceries. He quickly regrets this, however, as he ends up at the backwoods equivalent of the Von Trapp family with seven parentless children living in the middle of a swamp. Unfortunately, they don't sing of Do-Re-Mi and – under the eerie leadership of the oldest brother Peter – they have the nasty habit of forcing random helpful strangers to become their reluctant ma's and pa's. They already reverse-adopted the terrified Samantha Eggar as their mommy, and now they see the ideal role-model father in Mr. Wheeler even though he doesn't share their enthusiasm. "All the Kind Strangers" is very compelling and ominous throughout the first hour, with notably uncanny scenes at the dinner table or during the boat trip on the creek. The hopelessness in Stacy Keach's eyes, the fear in Samantha Eggar's eyes and the madness in John Savage's eyes are extremely realistic and make even the most hardened viewer feel uncomfortable. In fact, "All the Kind Strangers" easily would have ranked in the top 10 of greatest TV-thrillers of the 70s if only it weren't for the daft and utterly disappointing anti-climax. The bad ending alone costs this otherwise fine TV-thriller a mere 2 or 3 points in the rating.

This is just a made-for-TV movie, but it is creepy fun. It is also the rare scary movie that you can safely watch with your kids, without traumatizing them. In fact the movie carries quite a strong family values message. There is no explicit gory violence, so those who watch movies looking for that would be disappointed. The thrills here are mostly of the anticipatory kind. I think kids from about 8 to 14 will find much in this movie that they can identify with and that will make them uneasy about how they would react in the situation. There is very good work from Stacy Keach and John Savage and a young Robbie Benson is as good as he ever gets.

This movie is kind of like "Lord of the Flies". A family of children (no mother or father present) desire to have guardians (Mom and Dad), so they kidnap a man and woman to be just that. What happens next is (of course) the movie. One thing to note is that not every one of the children (in fact most of them are not) aware of the secret!

This is a surprisingly good made-for-TV thriller and it wins props for originality points. Stacey Keach plays a photojournalist, on the road for an assignment, which takes him into the woods of the rural south. A chance encounter with a young boy, who Keach sees carrying groceries down a desolate dirt road, leads him to the boy's home, nestled very deep in the backwoods. Once he is thoroughly "in the hollar," Keach's car breaks down, and he has no choice but to spend the night in the house of the young boy, whose three brothers and two sisters respond with eerie approval. What follows next is a strange and pretty cool story about a family of dangerous orphans, who entrap Keach and a woman in a perverse plan to reaquire surrogate parents. Despite his efforts to escape, Keach is unsuccesful, and he quickly discovers how clever and intelligent the kids' plan really is. (He also discovers that he isn't the first to be taken in by the group). Can Keach escape before it is too late? This is a story that, despite its perverse absurdity, could actually happen, I suppose, and the picture's scenarios are consistently interesting and unpredicatble. It is a good script and the cast all fit their roles well. Particularly good is John Savage (e.g. "The Deer Hunter"), who plays the group's oldest brother and de facto father figure. All in all, this is a pretty obscure, minor little film, but I'd recommend it to fans of 70's cinema, as well as anyone who enjoys a thriller involving kuntry folk. This one surprised me. (PS: In this same vein, I'd recommend the highly underrated "Hunter's Blood." It is OOP, but worth seeking).