Devil Times Five Movie Review
Five children escape from a loony bin and make their way to a huge house, where they begin killing the adults inside. Loony bin--that's something you just don't hear anymore. Whatever happened to that term? I'm guessing somebody was offended by it at some point so it made its way out of our everyday speak. I say we bring it back because it's just so fun to say! Anyway, back to our movie. This one is from 1974, stars a very young Leif Garrett (The Outsiders), and is rather bizarre.
They don't look like much trouble
The strength of this movie, believe it or not, is in character development. Every character, from the kids to the adults, is very different, each with very distinct personalities--this is quite impressive, as this is done with a dozen characters in the span of 88 minutes. The acting really isn't too bad either--it's certainly better than you would expect from a cast whose most successful actor was arguably Leif Garrett. Where this movie is likely to lose you is in the directing and editing. If the use of slow motion is a pet peeve of yours (as it is of mine), this movie may drive you to madness. The scene of the kids beating the guy to death is entirely in super slow motion, and seems to go on forever. After minutes of this, I finally hit fast forward x 1 (the sound was as bad, so you don't miss anything with that) and that brought it close to real speed, and it still seemed to take an eternity to get through the scene. Some of the death scenes are more impressive--the bathtub scene particularly stands out. There are tons of continuity errors in this one, and the believability of the kids committing some of these murders without the adults being able to stop them is lacking as well. The ending is a bit surprising and it provides some stunning, memorable visuals. One could pick up on a commentary from this film--if you take from this a message that adulthood brings boredom and sucks all the imagination out of you, you're not alone. Devil Times Five will probably never be a movie you watch dozens of times, but it's certainly worth watching once.
On A Scale Of One To Ten: 6
Devil Times Five Movie Trailer
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