35mm revival screening of Max Kalmanowicz's 1980 horror film THE CHILDREN.

Appearing on drive-in screens barely a year after the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor meltdown in Pennsylvania in 1979, it’s tempting to view THE CHILDREN as a low-budget response to that milestone of environmental disaster. But even if the script pre-dated Three Mile Island, it’s interesting in that it combines both the eco-horror and the child-as-monster horror subgenres into one campy package, recalling films such as WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? (Spain, 1976), VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960), as well FROGS (1972) and perhaps SOYLENT GREEN (1973).

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Due to careless chemical plant workers in the fictional New England town of Ravensback, a damaged pipe leaks an enormous toxic cloud into the town, just in time to collide with a school bus on its after-school route. When the bus passes through the cloud, the remaining five children on the bus are transformed into pale, black-fingernailed zombies who burn to a crisp anyone they hug – their preferred method of killing. The children’s parents learn the hard way that hugging = death, unless they chop off the kids’ hands – the only method that seems to stop them!

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Despite its low budget, the movie gets the most out of its subversive premise and cast of genuinely creeptastic child zombies.