User Reviews

The set-up for this monumentally useless slasher-lite drivel centers around three children who are born in the same hospital during an eclipse, a serendipitous occurrence which results in them growing up without a conscience. As their tenth birthdays approach, the trio of youngsters apparently spontaneously decide to go on a killing spree, whittling down parents, siblings, teachers, and random canoodling teens in a variety of unimaginative and unimpressive ways.

The clumsy staging of the murders is signaled from the opening scene, when two amorous dimwits meet their ends after climbing into an open grave to have sex (the lass is modest, and while she has no reservations about getting down in a cemetery, she feels exposed out in the open, thus the novel change of scenery). This silly intro sets the stage for the 85 minutes of tedious and ludicrous shenanigans which unfold while we watch the malevolent moppets go about their brutal business without any of the clueless adults in the film ever becoming suspicious. The parental ignorance might be believable if the killer kids exercised any tact, but when they repeatedly smash one of the fathers in the head with a baseball bat and his wife readily accepts their explanation that his (gruesome, one would imagine) injuries occurred when he fell down a flight of four stairs, the plot begins to spiral into absurdity.

Despite the sanguinary bounty advertised in the title, Bloody Birthday may well be the most tepid offering of the era. Only a single arrow to the eye gag even registers a blip on the gore meter, and the majority of the paltry homicidal handiwork occurs off-screen. The overall presentation is so tame and pedestrian that the film is more on par with the After School Specials which were being cranked out at this time, so if your looking for a hidden gem in the '80s slasher canon you most assuredly aren't going to find one here.

Save for a few sequences of gratuitous nudity, the only marginally amusing aspects of Bloody Birthday are the presences of a couple of the decade's semi-icons. Future B-action regular Michael Dudikoff turns up in a couple of scenes to make out with MTV host-to-be Julie Brown and stand in a few funeral assemblies with a blankly morose look on his face. Anyone who actually remembers who Brown is will undoubtedly be delighted to witness the extended strip tease she performs for herself, so if seeing her naked is on your bucket list, this outing admittedly delivers mightily on that front.

The biggest problems here are the prepubescent executioners, who are undoubtedly the least imposing genre villains ever presented. The most vicious of the bunch is a bespectacled sociopath who strongly resembles Skippy from "Family Ties" and even though he seems to possess the inhuman ability to fire a handgun that weighs as much as he does without experiencing any sort of recoil, the goofy grin he displays while he busts his caps offsets any sort of menace his massive weapon conjures up.

It takes no less than three failed murder attempts on the one shrewd classmate who figures out the remorseless bunch is up to no good for our diminutive hero's older sister to finally step up and offer her assistance. This leads us into the film's flaccid climax, where the band of grade-school slayers stalk the interloping duo but merit themselves an epic fail. One of the predators is subdued when a bowl of water is thrown in his face, while Skippy Junior simply runs out of bullets and gets beat up.

Only the lone girl in the crew uses her wiles to escape capture, and her mother (head still firmly inserted into her own backside, evidently) sneaks her away from the scene and flees town with her. The movie's coda reveals that mom and daughter remain at large after changing their names and that the lethal little girl has claimed another victim, thus setting the stage for Bloody Birthday 2, which was fortunately never excreted.

This tripe also loses points for its derivative score, which blatantly lifts music from Friday The 13th in a feeble attempt to give the murders some sort of impact. Good idea, but when the most intense scenes involve a flaxen-haired fifth-grader hiding in cupboards to choke people with a jump rope, screeching violins are a pale substitute for actual shocks.

I don't fault anyone who holds this cheap time-waster in high esteem; after all, I have certainly given pieces of my heart to plenty of atrocious movies. But since the lack of gore nudges Bloody Birthday out of the "Splatter" category and the absence of anything resembling suspense makes even the "Horror" designation a stretch, I'm really not sure how to classify this one. Is "Utter Crap" considered a genre?

This 1981 horror film stars Lori Lethin, Julie Brown, K.C. Martel, Billy Jayne, Elizabeth Hoy and Andrew Freeman. This takes place in California and begins one night in 1970 with a solar eclipse occurring during 3 births. Ten years later, we meet the children, Curtis (Jayne), Debbie (Hoy) and Steven (Freeman) who not only share the same birthday, but have murderous tendencies. Lethin plays Joyce who becomes targeted by them along with her little brother, Timmy (Martel) when they learn the truth about them. Brown (Clueless) plays Debbie's older sister, Beverly. This isn't a bad film that has similarities with "Village of the Damned" & "Friday the 13th" featuring a decent cast. I'd give this a chance if you enjoy horror/slasher flicks.

Bloody Birthday (1981) is another classic that I recently watched for free on Tubi. This 80s gem with its wonderful VHS cover art is about a group of children that decide two things are cool - seeing girls naked and killing adults. Can their family figure out what's going on before they're all dead? This movie is directed by Ed Hunt (The Brain) and stars Lori Lethin (The Day After), Melinda Cordell (Greenwich Villay Story), Julie Brown (Clueless), Joe Penny (TJ Hooker) and Jose Ferrer (Dune). The storyline for this is fun and gave me Children of the Corn vibes. The kill scenes are very good. I loved the skateboard/baseball bat setup on the police officer to start the movie. The peep hole scenes are hilarious. One annoyance I had with this movie is how nonchalant the parent were about children pointing a "replica" gun at them, but other than that, I had few complaints with this film. Well, maybe they relied on kids shooting a gun to execute their kills too many times, but it was still a fun movie. Overall this is a great 80s gem that is a must see for fans of classics from this era. I'd give is a 6.5-7/10.

Bloody Birthday opens to a shot of Meadowvale General Hospital. There three babies are being born at precisely the same time during a total eclipse. A caption informs us that it is now 'Meadowvale, California June 1, 1980'. Two teenage lovers, Duke Benson (Ben Marley) and Annie Smith (Erica Hope) are getting down to business in an open grave. They hear noises and Duke investigates. Both Duke and Annie are murdered. Sheriff Jim Brody (Bert Kramer) is baffled and only has the handle of a child's skipping rope that Annie was holding, as a clue. Unfortunately before Sheriff Brody can solve the case his youngest daughter Debbie (Elizabeth Hoy) and two of her friends Curtis Taylor (Billy Jayne as Billy Jacoby) and Steven Seton (Andy Freeman) murder him. Just as they are finishing Sheriff Brody off another young boy from their class named Timmy Russel (K.C. Martel) turns up, the three killers are unaware of how much he saw. Soon after the incident Timmy plays with Steven and Curtis in a junkyard. Curtis locks Timmy into an old locker. Timmy manages to escape and tell his sister Joyce (Lori Lethin), but she doesn't believe him at first. The three children carry on their murder spree. Their strict teacher Miss Davis (Susan Strasberg) a lovemaking couple (John Avery and Sylvia Wright) in a van and Debbie's older sister Beverly (Julie Brown) are among their victims. Joyce begins to have her suspicions about Debbie, Curtis and Steven which makes her and Timmy a target for the evil trio. Will they be able to convince the authorities that these three innocent looking 10 year olds are really soulless killers?

Co-written and directed by Ed Hunt I have an intense dislike for this film. I think it's absolutely awful and doesn't have a single enjoyable aspect to it's 83 minute running time. The script by Hunt and Barry Pearson gives us no explanation for the child killers motives beyond the solar eclipse that blocks out Saturn and therefore for some bizarre astrological reason these three children don't have any conscience, so these are the only children ever born during a total eclipse? If that is true why do they wait until just before their tenth birthday's before starting their killing spree? I guess it just suddenly kicks in, right? To it's credit it is reasonably well paced but I still found it incredibly boring and tedious to sit through. The film as a whole is very unexciting and predictable, the children are revealed as the killers within the first 10 minutes and as I've mentioned next to no motive is given. It's very silly at times, too. Check out the scene where Debbie stops Steven by throwing a bowl of water over him! The Sheriff's death is put down to him falling down some steps, yeah right the injuries suffered from that type of accident aren't going to be the same as if your beaten to death with a baseball bat like he was in reality, any competent Doctor or Pathologist would have spotted that within 5 seconds. There isn't a single drop of blood spilt in the entire film and all of the lame killings are dull and unimaginative. There is some out-of-place looking nudity as Debbie charges 25c to let boys peek through a hole while her sister Beverly strips. There is an early scene just after the 5 minute mark when Joyce walks from the kitchen to the living room and the boom mike is clearly visible at the top of the screen, not even a little bit of it the whole damn thing. The general incompetence continues throughout the film. The whole production is bland and instantly forgettable. The acting is poor throughout, those three kids are very annoying and got on my nerves right from the start and made sitting through this film even more of a chore, especially Curtis in his geeky over-sized glasses. I just hate this film really, simple as that. I can't think of a single good thing to say about it. Definitely one to avoid.