Suffer, Little Children (1983)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Must See Movie...

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

On face value it would be easy to right this off as a pie of crap. And I wouldn't argue with those who think that. However it is essential to take on board that this was a very cheap shot on video movie using amateurs for a school project. Yes, the acting is bad. The music often drowns out the dialogue. The picture quality is poor at best. And the plot is just barmy (even Jesus gets in on the act!). But on the positive side the movie held my attention throughout, I wanted to know was going to happen next. Kind of a hypnotic effect. There's a fair smattering of gore, plus we get a few zombies thrown in for good measure. It's also a good glimpse of England back in 1983. A strange movie indeed, certainly not to your average horror fan's taste but for those who seek out strange films then it's worth a look.

Suffer Little Children (1983) * 1/2 (out of 4) This British shocker was quite controversial when it was first released but by today's standards it's pretty tame stuff. The story deals with a children's home that takes in a young mute girl who was left on their door step. It doesn't take long for strange things to start happening.SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN was caught up in the Video Nasty craze and it's easy to see why. It's not because the film was overly violent or more shocking than some of the films on the list but this one here does deal with murdering children so it's not too hard to see why certain groups were upset. With that being said, the film starts off good and ends on a good note but sadly everything in the middle is just a downright bore and hard to sit through.In fact, the middle section is so darn boring that I can't help but think that most people will either be hitting the eject button or not paying too much attention. Either way one should really hang in there because the film goes downright crazy during the finale and has a certain cameo that just comes out of nowhere. The film offers up a few bloody deaths along the way but the majority of them are saved for the ending as well.On a technical level the film is pretty ugly all around. The movie was shot-on-video and it looks rather ugly. I'd also argue that the majority of the acting was quite poor and at times the dialogue was hard to understand. SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN has a terrific title and some good moments scattered throughout it but on the whole there's not too much going for it.

Had this been done by professionals I doubt I would have given it more than 3. However it has been made by drama students with no budget and limited resources. The story is pretty basic. It takes place in an orphanage. One day a girl named Elizabeth knocks on the door with a written message in her hand. Elizabeth can't speak and is taken care of by the caretakers. Elizabeth seems rather harmless until she is gifted a necklace with a cross as present. This she uses rather effectively to get some of the kids under her control and "accidents" start to happen. There is a lot of rather boring dialogue but the build-up is good, the first accidents are rather tame but at almost the 1 hour mark things really start to get bad. Camera work was pretty effective. I was also impressed with the dream sequence where Elizabeth gets the first 2 kids under her demonic control. The ending well was pretty lame as if they ran out of ideas. The title of the movie is also the title of a song played in the movie at some point, rather catchy I must say.

This is an intolerably cheap and amateurishly edited together independent horror flick that for some reason enjoys a cult-status that it absolutely doesn't deserve. I once saw a VHS copy of this movie being sold on eBay for more than £500.00! Damn, I pity the person who spent such a massive amount of money on this utterly worthless piece of junk! "Suffer, Little Children" is so bad that I can hardly find enough synonyms for awful to describe what's going on here. It's practically unwatchable, with lousy editing, incomprehensible narration, inaudible dialogs (also because the acting performances are so inept) and no sign of coherence or pace whatsoever. The story plays at a children's home where the caretakers suddenly and unannounced have to take custody of a nine-year-old mute girl with a macabre persona. The girl has the ability to inflict nightmarish imagery onto others and hypnotizes the rest of the kids. She subsequently enjoys forcing them to mutilate and even kill themselves in gruesome ways. Personally, I'm a huge sucker for (evil) kids in horror movies! Some of my favorite genre films revolve on murderous children, like "Who Can Kill A Child" and "The Omen" for example, but this one is hopeless and even infuriating. The premise shows such enormous potential, yet the elaboration is a total mess. There wasn't any money for make-up effects, so don't go around expecting gory killings or creepy kids' faces. Along with a handful of other amateur films that were made around the same era, like "Goremet – Zombie Chef from Hell" and "Mad Mutilator", "Suffer Little Children" is one of the worst things I've ever seen in my life. Do NOT watch it, please!