There
are certain taboos that few filmmakers will breach. Killing kids is one
of them. That’s why a good child murder remains one of the
moments in any movie that will shock even the most jaded connoisseur of
extreme exploitation.
Some
of you reading this will believe that kid kills are beyond the pale,
but remember – this is just acting and make-up. This list is the best
fictional kid kills – you won’t see the Twilight Zone movie
on this list. Adjust your outrage-meters accordingly and settle in for
ten of the best minor murders ever committed to celluloid.
Totaled Tot: Eddie Beckner
Kiddie Killer: A plasmic lifeform that hunts its prey
Minor Murder Method: Sewer meltage
The Blob is a rare case of a successfully-executed remake that manages to take a classic idea and retool it with a twist. The titular amorphous antagonist was far from the jello mold-looking mass that sloughed rather slowly in the Steve McQueen 1958 original. This version was a ninja quagmire, a stealthy ooze that liked to make with the clandestine liquification until such time as it grew to a size that allowed it to just say fuck it and roll down main street taking townsfolk at its leisure.
Early on, it melted a hobo from the inside out and turned the heroine’s would-be boyfriend into a drippy homage to Thing Addams. It sucked down George the fry cook via a garbage disposal, made Scott Jeskie seriously regret his attempted date rape, disconnected Candy Clark in a phone booth, and almost got its hands, er, tendrils on Shawnee Smith’s Meg on a number of occasions, which is understandable. So by the time it got to the pivotal movie theatre scene, it turned a theatre patron into Two-Face and chased Meg, her younger brother, Kevin and his buddy, Eddie into the sewers.
A quick background on Eddie was that his older brother was an usher at the movie, Garden Tool Massacre (if I’m remembering it right), which was your basic slice and dice. This allowed Eddie and Kevin to sneak in and enjoy it, although there was some trucker-hatted dildo in the back determined to spell out every kill in the movie beforehand. Not to worry though, he got his. But unfortunately for Eddie, so did he not long after. It’s in the sewer that Blob grabs Eddie and, despite a valiant effort by Meg turned him into something resembling Tar Man’s kid brother.
The impact of this kid’s death was minimal as, by that point in the movie, we’d seen dozens of people indiscriminately deliquesced in every conceivable way imaginable. In retrospect, Eddie wasn’t a bad kid. Other than listening to his headphones a bit too much, his only transgression was sneaking into an R-rated movie on the wrong night. But then again, Paul McCrane didn’t deserve to be turned into a folding chair also.
Lord of the Flies (1990)
Totaled Tots: Piggy
Kiddie Killer: A couple of Jack’s boys
Minor Murder Weapon: Large boulder, gravity
A bunch of military school boys crash onto a desert island, one without hatches, black smoke things nor people who see fit to not ever mention any of the weird shit they see. During their quest for survival, two leaders emerge, a young Balthazar Getty’s Ralph, the straitlaced one, and Jack, who had definitely watched The Road Warrior a few times too many. Among the other survivors were the twins, Sam and Eric, and a fat, whiny little shit named Piggy.
Normally Piggy would be someone that could fall into the background were it not for three issues: he’s an aforementioned fat, whiny little shit when most of the rest of the kids look like they were junior swimming all-stars, he throws in with Ralph, who quickly becomes persona non grata on the island, and he has the only pair of eye glasses on the island, which are the only source for starting signal and cooking fires.
It’s not long before all of the kids on the island, with the exception of Ralph and Piggy, decide to go native in shredded Fruit of the Looms, face paint and spears. They ambush Ralph and Piggy and take Piggy’s glasses. The resulting confrontation between Ralph and Piggy and the Islanders finds Piggy at the business end of a tumbling boulder that was sent over the edge and onto his noggin. Ralph could have joined Piggy on the list were it not for the timely intervention of a U.S. military search and rescue team at the end.
Nevermind that this movie has undoubtedly been at the top of NAMBLA’s 100 Years, 100 Films since they instituted it, Lord of the Flies is one of those rare instances when a kid kill is made by other kids. And there’s no offscreen inferred action nor shocked looks only by the participants to indicate that something bad has happened. Piggy’s head is turned into a squish toy and laid out there – as Piggy was – for everyone to see. But then again, that was the trend in the movie.