Apart from the brief total phase, staring bare-eyed at a solar eclipse is a bad idea. That is a known fact. Less factual, however, is the notion that giving birth during an eclipse will have serious repercussions for the baby. Certain superstitious lore suggests imminent harm for anyone whose birthday falls on or near an eclipse. Ed Hunt’s 1981 film, Bloody Birthday, takes the concept further and shows how the celestial event creates unfeeling killers.
As taboo as it is to bump off children in cinema, having them be murderers is maybe more so. Which is why Bloody Birthday and its ilk are so well liked and sought after by horror fans. The genre has visited plenty of verboten topics over the years (some with more mileage than others), but killer kids somehow never lose their novelty or shock value. Now, other films featuring a similar pitch have a tendency to be serious and concerned, using these lethal youths for metaphorical purposes. Whereas Bloody Birthday is bracingly irreverent.
This nightmare started incubating on June 9, 1970 at a small, Southern California hospital. The staff is too preoccupied with three in-labor patients to observe the solar eclipse happening outside. These different mothers all simultaneously gave birth, unaware of the uncanny effect incurred from the sun and moon blocking Saturn. Ten years later, a series of murders began on the first of June. After the nocturnal disposal of two random and horny teenagers — who essentially dug their own grave by going to second base inside an open cemetery plot — the story introduces its trio of terrible tykes: Curtis Taylor (Billy Jayne), Debbie Brody (Elizabeth Hoy) and Steven Seton (Andy Freeman).
Pictured: Curtis Taylor (Billy Jayne), Debbie Brody (Elizabeth Hoy) and Steven Seton (Andy Freeman) in Bloody Birthday.
Bloody Birthday fleetingly suggests K.C. Martel’s character, Timmy Russell, could be responsible for the opening murder before quickly cutting out the potential mystery element and fingering the real culprits. There is really no benefit to hiding their identities; the audience takes delight in knowing Curtis, Debbie and Steven have enacted a killing spree right under everyone’s noses, and seeing how they get away with their crimes is part of the fun. After all, the shock of these kinds of films does not come from the antagonist’s unmasking, but rather their age.
Released during the first flood of slashers, Bloody Birthday fits in despite an unorthodox setup. Admittedly, the body count is not the highest — still impressive, an unlucky eight die at the hands of either Curtis, Debbie or Steven — yet the film has the obvious obstacle to contend with. To make up for the fact that children are not going to be as physically strong as most adults, the murders are more calculated than visceral. Victims are often deceived and caught off guard. A surprising choice here was Debbie getting rid of not only the town’s sheriff but her own father (Bert Kramer); older slasher films are prone to keeping the law enforcement around longer, sometimes even letting a cop take down the perp in lieu of the surviving character.
The average adult can outwit and overpower an ordinary child. In this particular niche of horror, however, the kids are made to be exceptionally precocious to compensate for their smaller statures. Grownups in little bodies, basically. The playing field is more even as these boys and girls already know how the world works and accommodates them (and, also, their elders are frightfully oblivious or downright stupid). At one point, this film shows Jayne’s character threatening the story’s final girl, Timmy’s older sister Joyce (Lori Lethin), with arrest for assaulting a minor. This comes after another more involved example of the juvenile villains’ cunning behavior: Curtis tricked Joyce at his own birthday party — he had Joyce wrongly suspecting the cake had been poisoned — and, as a result, he made the other adults skeptical of her future allegations against him and his accomplices. Adults do this to one another in genre storytelling all the time, yes, but there is always a degree of wonder for children who can perform feats beyond their years. Even when they are committing murder.
Pictured: In Bloody Birthday, Elizabeth Hoy’s character Debbie cleans up the mess that is her dead sister, who is played by Julie Brown.
The solar eclipse, of course, is said to be the cause of Curtis, Debbie and Steven’s killer instinct and lack of emotions; Joyce reinforces the theory after analyzing Debbie’s astrological chart. Then again, this is speculation on Joyce’s part more than an absolute truth within the story. Other comparable films have come up with similarly bizarre origins, including contamination, manipulation, and supernatural influence. There always has to be a logical reason for why a child would be malicious and homicidal. They just cannot be that way without cause. Bloody Birthday takes the same route and explains away the children’s wickedness, but director Hunt and co-writer Barry Pearson also do not rely on their exposition, either. There is always the possibility that this is just some horrible coincidence, and Curtis, Debbie and Steven would have turned out to be cold-blooded murderers regardless of any eclipse.
It is hard to imagine Bloody Birthday being made today in the same exact manner. Kindred films produced since then are indeed more graphic, yet the unembellished delivery here is not so readily found in the subgenre’s current output. The frivolous and straightforward approach to the concept, as opposed to an allegorical one, is refreshing for the time as well as now. Even though the film lacks the polish of both its ilk and contemporaries, this early offering redeems itself with a gratuitous nature and moments of boundary-pushing.
For too long, the film escaped conversations about killer kids, largely due to its unavailability until a decade ago. Today, this cult slasher has found its fans, and it is understandable why they celebrate this nasty flick. Bloody Birthday is an open invitation to revel in three of the most mean-spirited children in horror.
Bloody Birthday is currently available on Blu-ray from 88 Films and Arrow Video, and is also streaming on SCREAMBOX.
Pictured: The Bloody Birthday poster.
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