People are voting emotionally.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Young Glenn Randle (Eric Tonken) and his father (Bernard Hocke), a college professor of medieval and Anglo Saxon English, go on a camping trip into the wilds, where they fish, sing songs based on the Old English poem Beowulf, and play hide and seek (sounds like fun, huh?). It is during one of these games that Professor Randall steps on a bear trap, breaking his leg; unable to move, he lies there for three days, his son by his side, gradually going delirious as the wound becomes infected. Then he carks it. Affected by his dad's final feverish talk of 'gulping blood' and 'gobbling flesh', Glenn slices open his pop's belly and feasts on his entrails.Ten years later, writer John DeWolfe (Michael Robertson) and his family—hypercritical wife Julia (Lori Romero) and daughter Kara (Jamie Krause)—travel to the same area to visit John's Vietnam buddy Ross Carr (Rich Hamilton), a local sheriff whose daughter Amy is just one of several children to have gone missing over the past few years. No prizes for guessing that crazy cannibal Glenn is responsible, having abducted and brainwashed the kids into believing that he is the mythical monster Grendell from Beowulf, and that they are flesh-eating demons.Cannibalistic kids sure sound like a whole lot of demented fun, but despite the occasional smattering of bargain basement gore (including a cheezy bodily bisection by scythe, a slashed throat, an impalement on spiked stakes, and a mutilated corpse with a rat on its face), plus a couple of rather twisted sexual moments (Glenn/Grendell's rape of a woman while the killer kids watch on, and jail-bait Amy offering herself to John), Beware: Children at Play is mostly dull talk and uneventful wandering around the woods. The direction is uninspired and the acting is largely wooden, with my 'worst performance' award going to Stephanie Jaworski as irritating psychic Alice Allegari, who calls everyone 'deary' and deservedly has her guts eaten.Still, this is one of those films where you might just want to hang on in there for the final few minutes (or get busy with the scene advance button), because the film almost redeems itself in the closing moments with a memorable spot of truly outrageous carnage, as the crazed kids are brutally massacred by the locals. Violence against kids is a touchy subject, even in horror films, but director Mik Cribben clearly doesn't care, with one terrible tyke getting a pitchfork through the neck, another having their entire head blown off by a shotgun, and another being forced to take a gun barrel in the mouth, with inevitable splattery results. OK, so all the 'dead' kids can clearly be seen still breathing as the camera surveys the carnage, but at least the film tries to push the boundaries of taste, and for that I'll generously give it a rating of 3/10.

I have yet to see the big-budget Beowulf movie from a couple years ago. Probably never will. I don't care for big-budget movies, I like 'em old and obscure, and sometimes, downright awful. Despite all that, I got a strong feeling Beowulf is probably a decent watch compared to this one. And whatever vague connection these two movies share, really makes no difference to me, because big-budget cinema ain't my cup of tea, and Beware: Children At Play clearly ain't worth a damn.Yay, it's a camping movie from the 80's. Father and son, playing, and frolicking amongst nature. Awkward little scenes involving the father quoting Beowulf, and father and son singing "Old McDonald". Father chases son a tad too much, and gets his leg stuck in a bear trap. Son sits by dying fathers side for days, listening to him go insane, and obsessively quoting Beowulf, and eating beans. A lot of talk about cannibalism. Father croaks, brain-washed son ditches beans, and mutilates and eats freshly deceased father. Wait a minute, this isn't a camping movie, this is an extremely low-budget, not-so-well-thought-out, non-Kaufman, Troma movie... from the 80's.Fast forward 10 years. John Dewolfe, along with his irritating little family is driving out to rural New Jersey to help out his old army buddy (sherriff of Rural, New Jersey) and his irritating little family, who are all stressed because his daughter was kidnapped. Actually, a lot of kids from this irritating little town have turned up missing. Is it foul play, or did they simply take off because they were sick of being bored? Well, whatever the case, sci-fi writer, John Dewolfe, Army-buddy-Sheriff, his pal, Dr. Fish, and some psychic should have enough brain power between them to get to the bottom of this.After the first few scenes involving father and son time, my expectations were already low enough. I had come to terms with exactly how bad of an experience this was going to be. Which, if my naive assumption had been accurate, this movie wouldn't have been all that bad. Enter John Dewolfe and family, and everything goes to Hell. Beware: Children At Play is just plain boring, and there's no way around it. Not the worst I've ever seen, not even remotely the worst from Troma, but this just gives you no reason to welcome it into your collection. For far more worthwhile non-Kaufman Troma's, check out Decampitated (an actual camping movie), or Redneck Zombies (masterpiece), or Combat Shock (most depressing comedy ever made). Sure, Beware Children At Play does offer head-ache inducing boredom, an unappealing, cheap, keyboard score, zero intentional or unintentional humor, and, pretty much, nothing else, but if you actually make it through this entire movie, you just might look back on your experience in Rural New, Jersey with fond memories. 3/10

Beware! Children at Play 1989 (Unrated Version) The film is introduced by Llyod Kaufman as having a trailer deemed so controversial in it's depiction of children killing adults that it was booed at the Cannes Film Festival and half the audience walked out. That sounds like a bad joke I heard before. What does it take to offend a French person?…Or how many lightbulbs does it take to screw a French person?The opening of the film is a father/son camping trip gone wrong. The father slowly dies after getting stuck in a bear trap and he tells his son to eat him spawning a cannibalistic cult of little children. And everything after this is screwier. The father was a professor that taught Anglo-Saxon poetry, or as the dimwit town sheriff affectionately refers to as "Angel Accent poetry", and this leads his son to believe that he, Glen Randell, is now "Grendel" from the poem "Beowulf". There are a variety of other bizarre explanations for the children's behavior in the convoluted plot involving the Sacrifice of Abraham's child to God amongst other things. Basically, the children disappear from the town, start a cult, hunt adults, and eat them. Sorry if this is confusing folks, but I watched the film and still don't get it. This is the most I could try to understand without falling asleep.Unfortunately, as interesting as the premise sounds, the film is quite boring. It tried to be smart and I give it credit for that much. The SFX are good is some parts and bad in others. There are some scenes that try to make the mark, but fall short. One involves the young boy cutting open his father and eating his heart. At least I think that is what it was. The editing was strange and I am pretty sure it was not a real boy doing this for legal reasons. The stomach resembled an empty flap and a hand went in and pulled out a round, brown lump. The only scene that caught my attention for about 3 minutes was the slaughter scene at the end. And for the parents who secretly fantasize about killing their own kids, well here you have it.There is a strange rape scene thrown in for no apparent reason. It seemed completely unnecessary and pointless. The child leader rapes a mom in front of other children including her own. That falls under the It's Just Wrong Category. And yet they somehow managed to make that boring as well.The sound quality was okay, but there was goofy 80's boombox beat music at the oddest times. The film quality was decent, but there are problems with the editing and continuity issues. One scene in particular is shot at night and when the camera sings back to an actor talking, it is suddenly broad daylight!Favorite Quote: A Bible salesman describing the Holy Bible he loves so much, "It is the best damn book ever! You don't need any god damn luck. You just say it is the word of God and their pocket book spreads it's cheeks and the long green pops out like puss from a pimple."DVD Extras: The usual Troma fare: T.I.T. (Troma Intelligence Test), Still Gallery, Multiple Trailers, Commentary, and Bios. One note though, I could not read the menu. The font is illegible, so I just clicked on random colorful blobs I saw and hoped for the best.Bottom Line: Only for "Tromans" looking to complete a collection.Rating: 5/10Molly Celaschi www.HorrorYearbook.com MySpace.com/HorrorYearbook

I went in expecting low budget thrills and they came, but they just came late in the movie. It was decent for the first three fourths of the movie,but it moved slowly. Once it hit the last quarter of the movie it picked up tremendously. I love the last quarter of the movie. If the whole movie had been like that part I could have given it a much higher score. Still I am proud to have added this Troma classic to my collection. (5 out of 10)