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.
