Through IMDb, I just discovered that Cannonball! was directed by Paul Bartel one year after Death Race 2000, which I was going to compare this film to, seeing as how they're both 70's carsploitation (I just made that word up.) flicks, starring David Carradine. It's been a few years since I've seen Death Race 2000, but I think it did everything right where Cannonball! did everything wrong. Race is funny, gory, sexy and endlessly entertaining; while Cannonball! is sloppy, boring and dull. Yeah, boring and dull are the same thing, but I couldn't come up with any more adjectives to describe this cinematic turd. There is no way I should be bored by an exploitation flick, it totally defeats the purpose.

David Carradine is Coy "Cannonball" Buckman, an ex-con and ex-professional race car driver, who wants to race his flame orange Firebird in in the illegal Cannonball Run across the country. Unwillingly along for the ride is his parole officer and girlfriend, one in the same. Since he's the favorite to win, he's got everybody gunning for him, including a gangster who's laid a big bet on another driver. It's a pretty basic set-up, that should provide for some fun, mindless entertainment. There's a couple of good scenes, which I'll post below, but that's about it. The rest of the film is incredibly dull, the racing scenes are mostly uninspired, the acting hovers between good and bad, so you can't get into the characters, but you can't laugh at the actors ineptitude. The score is an earful of awful, it sounds like it was ripped straight from a 70's porn movie that the composer was working on at the same time.

Don't bother in the least. Watch Death Race 2000 again, or one of the other 100 better 70's car-chase films, like Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, The Vanishing Point, or Bullit. Or if you're in the mood for an 80's comedy version of the Cannonball Run, than check out the ultimate guilty-pleasure film, Cannonball Run, featuring Burt Reynolds in his charismatic prime. - Grade: D

In this scene David Carradine uses some of his Kung Fu skills to beat down a fake cop, sent to take him out of the race. I love the way Carradine pauses for a second before unleashing a fury of kicks.



Here Carradine's had enough of his main rival in the race, Cade Redman, and decides to dispatch him. He jumps an unfinished bridge 20 years before Speed. It's easily the best put together scene in the film, if all the chase scenes in this film had this kind of energy, it'd be a cult-classic.



This has got to be the most ridiculous car crash scene in the history of cinema. It just goes on and on, with cars crashing into each other long after everyone should have stopped. Each collision ending in a huge fireball. It's cheesily entertaining though, I'll admit.

The opening credits of this film are an incredible downer, not something I was expecting when I rented a 70's Spanish horror film about killer children. I thought I was getting into some light, cheesy entertainment. The first few minutes is very disturbing footage and photographs of real life tragedies, where huge numbers of children have been slaughtered; Jews in Nazi concentration camps, Vietnamese children during the war, nasty stuff like that. Not something you really want to think about when you're trying to enjoy a movie, it makes death real. But it sets the tone for a film, that is far better made, and far more serious than I ever thought I was getting in to.

Who Can Kill A Child? starts with a young English couple, Tom and Evelyn, on vacation in Spain. They're enjoying the local festivities, but have plans to go on to a scarcely populated island off the coast. The film takes a while to get going, but it gives us a chance to get to know Tom and Evelyn, they're good natured, friendly, and very in love. They're enjoying their last vacation together, before Evelyn gives birth to their first child. Tom rents a small boat to take out to the island, which isn't too far off shore. When they arrive, there are a few children playing and fishing on the docks, but no sign of anyone else. Immediately something seems off, when Tom asks a boy what's in his fishing box, he gets a deathly glare.

When they get into town, there doesn't seem to be anyone there. Evelyn starts to get quite skittish about it all, but Tom seems confident that there must be some sort of festival on the other side of the island. Finally they lay eyes on their first adult, an old man dazedly walks towards them, when suddenly a young girl grabs his walking stick from him, and starts to beat him to death. Tom runs over to help, chasing the girl away. He takes the dying man to a nearby barn, laying him down in the hay, leaving him there, hoping to find someone who can help. He doesn't get far, when he hear strange sounds coming from the barn, what he discovers horrifies him beyond belief, a group of children have turned the old man into a pinata, slashing at him with a sickle. He doesn't tell Evelyn about what has happened, he's trying to hide his fear, while frantically looking for someone who can help them. Soon they run across a man, who's been hiding in the attic of the town's only hotel. He tells them how the children suddenly went wild, killing off every adult on the island, none who did much to defend themselves because Who Can Kill A Child?

The film is actually somewhat surprising where it goes from here. It's surprising in how effectively creepy it all is. Surprising in how realistic the filmmakers manage to make it all feel. I appreciate that they don't try to explain how or why it's all happening, just the fact that it is, making it a gruesome reality. The closest they come to explaining anything, is a great scene (see it below); Tom and Evelyn go to the other side of the island, where they find a family home intact, with some still innocent children playing outside. When some of the kids from the village show up, they watch helplessly as the kids change. Tom and Evelyn split, leaving the children's mother there to suffer the consequences, because what could these outsiders possibly say to make her understand that her own children are about to kill her.

Writer/Director Narciso Ibáñez Serrador created an understated masterpiece. The film takes a ridiculous idea and makes it a horrifying reality. This 1976 film is undoubtedly influenced by Hitchcock's The Birds, where for unexplained reasons, birds decide to attack and kill humans; they're both done realistically, relying on tension to terrify instead of gore. The few violent scenes pack a lot more emotional punch because of the way the film is built. The most disturbing scene in the film has to do with the surprising results to Evelyn's pregnancy. Who Can Kill A Child?, isn't a film for the faint of heart, once Tom's switch is flipped, he does some disgusting things to survive. The tone remains deadly serious throughout, it never really lightens up with any jokes. Once the film is over, the opening scene begins to make sense, these children are punishing the adults for all the atrocities of the world, and boy don't we deserve it. - Grade: A

I want to see the movie on the poster to the right, it looks so much cooler than the film I watched. The rats never looked this scary, nor were there any scantily-clad girls getting carried off by them. There were giant rats, yes, but they were either big immobile puppets thrown at the actors, or cute pet rats climbing on miniature sets. The effects are laughably bad throughout Food of the Gods, but they're endearing because the filmmakers try so hard to make them work, despite their limited budget and 70's technology.

Honestly the film is nowhere as near as bad as I thought it would be or hoped for. I was expecting a laughable mess, instead the film is fairly competently made. The effects are very cheesy, but respectably so, not nearly as bad as many films of this era. The acting by the mostly unknown actors isn't terrible, they give good line readings, with the right inflections. The film is decently shot, directed, edited and scored. Which was a bit of a disappointment on one level, because I couldn't laugh at the film-maker's incompetence, and sort of had to take this ridiculous story seriously, which didn't make it as entertaining as I expected. Because the film's not funny, and I obviously can't be scared of it either, because I'm not 10 and living in the 70's, it becomes mearly a mediocre piece of entertainment.

Now don't get me wrong, the effects are humorous, I especially liked the part where our hero Morgan gets attacked by a giant chicken. The scenes of the giant animals are definitely the highlight of the film, but there are too many dead scenes of dialogue, that slow the film down. I was also hoping for more variety in animals, at the very beginning Morgan and his buddies are hunting in the woods, when one of them is attacked and killed by giant wasps. There's some good make-up effects here of the guy gruesomely puffed up. After the funeral, Morgan, a professional football player, heads back into the woods to figure out the mystery of what happened. That's when he comes across the farm with the giant chickens. That night, the farmer is attacked by giant rats. For the rest of the movie only the rats attack, and it got boring seeing the same old puppets. I guess that's all the animals they had in the budget.

There's some kind of magical goo seeping out of the ground on the farmer's land, and any animal that eats it turns gigantic. So by all means, there should have been more, especially of the insect variety. (Writer/Director Bert I. Gordon did the giant insect thing with his next film Empire of the Ants.) The farmers decide to feed it to the chickens, then the rats steal the chickens eggs, and apparently that's where the food chain ends in this world. Anyway, I shouldn't be complaining, three giant animals is three more than most films have to offer. An evil businessman shows up, he wants to buy the goo to use in animal production. In tow, is his cute secretary, who soon falls for Morgan and his manly blond curls. Soon they're all trapped in the farm house with giant rats crawling all over and it's up to Morgan and his NFL buddy to save the day.

They made a lot of these nature-revenge films in the late 70's and early 80's. It all started with The Birds, then became popular with Jaws, which remains far-and-away the best of the bunch. But there was also Day of the Animals, Piranha, Grizzly, Squirm, a personal favorite, and quite a few others. In terms of quality, Food of the Gods lies somewhere in the middle, as it's a fairly well made for a B-movie. But lies in a strange area between good and bad, which makes it unfortunately boring. Watch it for the giant animal scenes, skip the rest. - Grade: C+

Read More Horror Film Reviews