Directed by Ed Hunt
Written by Ed Hunt and Barry Pearson
Starring:
- Lori Lethin as Joyce Russel
- K.C. Martel as Timmy Russel
- Elizabeth Hoy as Debbie Brody
- Billy Jayne (credited as Billy Jacoby) as Curtis Taylor
- Andrew Freeman (credited as Andy Freeman) as Steven Seton
Release Date: April 28, 1981
Rating: 
Evil-killer-kid cinema collides with slasher mechanics in this twisted tale of two boys and a girl born during a solar eclipse in a Southern California hospital in 1970. A decade later, the trio’s cherubic innocence curdles into outright sadism, as they methodically murder anyone who begins to question their unnervingly precocious façade. Lori Lethin plays the older sister of one of the town’s “normal” children, and becomes one of the first to uncover the sociopathy and macabre violence lurking beneath the children’s angelic exteriors. Ed Hunt’s blunt provocation is to drag childhood’s incorruptible image through the mud at the precise moment it seems most physically safe.
Forget the head-shrinking seriousness of Patty McCormack’s Rhoda and the operatic evil of Harvey Stephens’ Damien. These kids are handled with breezy exploitation and casual nastiness, favoring provocation over psychology or myth. The camera openly drools over their baby-faced brutality, which is both skin-crawling and perversely awesome. But all that blunt-force sleaze comes at a cost, stripping the film of one of the slasher’s core pleasures: suspense.
The plot is a dry, silly, no-frills routine completely devoid of intrigue—something even the dumbest slashers usually manage by accident. There’s no twist waiting in the wings, no origin of evil to dig into, just goofy astrological mumbo-jumbo, with the killer kids exposed right out of the gate. Imagine a killer-kids flick where you don’t know who’s doing it, where everyone is so absurdly adorable it’s impossible to guess—that’s the movie I wanted. Instead, Bloody Birthday blows its load on farcical nudity, hammy, bloodless kills, and a limp finale, ignoring the real macabre potential baked into the script.
