movie review

Noted character actor LQ Jones (who would later direct the cult classic A Boy and His Dog) produced this low-budget horror item about a small Southwestern town torn asunder by the mysterious disappearances of several of its children. Jones plays the town sheriff, who joins forces with some of the locals to find the perpetrators and uncovers a diabolical plot concocted by a coven of elderly devil-worshippers who plan to use the children’s bodies as receptacles for their own souls, enabling them to live again in younger bodies. To this end, they use their supernatural abilities to slay any meddling adults by turning the kids’ toys into deadly war machines. Creepy opening and closing sequences and a bravado performance from Strother Martin (as the king-daddy Warlock) are the film’s strongest assets.