I first read about Suffer Little Children in Kim
Newman’s book Nightmare Movies, where it was pin-pointed as the “absolute rock
bottom” of British horror cinema, and “one of the cheapest, worse projects ever
packaged”. Lending Suffer Little
Children the kind of notoriety that might not immediately make you want to go
out and see the film, but does cause you to keep a mental note of its
title. Of course, anyone renting Suffer
Little Children on video in 1985 would likely have been under the impression
that Newman was in the critical minority when it came to the film. Indeed, if the VHS box is to be believed, the
critics were overflowing with praise for “an extraordinary good horror
movie”-Time Out, with “first rate effects and images”-Video Trade Weekly. Quite a coup for a film Newman described as
“a home movie shot on video at a theatre school in Surrey”, the type of
production that it’s hard to believe the likes of Time Out and Video Trade
Weekly would even take notice of, let alone be blowing critical kisses at.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve banged the drum for the
hidden merits of Suffer Little Children louder than most over the years, but
“first rate effects” isn’t exactly something I’d credit the film with. To put this in context, Suffer Little
Children was made around the same time as John Carpenter’s The Thing was
released, and a year after Rick Baker won an Oscar for An American Werewolf in
London. In that kind of company,
describing the special effects of Suffer Little Children –a levitating plant
pot, a ‘possessed’ desk that clearly has a crew member under it- as first rate,
seems highly generous. It should be
mentioned that Suffer Little Children’s distributor, Films Galore, was spending
around £13,000 on advertising in Video Trade Weekly at the time. Something which, dare I suggest, may have
been a factor in Video Trade Weekly proclaiming Suffer Little Children “an
essential item in any video shop”. We
all have our price.
The entire making of Suffer Little Children feels straight
out of an episode of Minder. Thatcher
era entrepreneurs attempt to capitalise on the popularity of horror films on VHS,
by cheaply shooting their own horror movie on videotape, starring unknown
children. Only for it all to blow up in
their faces when the police, the local vicar and the press get involved. Right people, right time, just the wrong
location. The Arthur Daley of this story
was Alan Briggs, a veteran of the music business who had run ‘The Fair Deal’ a
rock venue and the closely connected ‘People Records’ label, whose output
consisted of live recordings by local talent.
Every Sunday afternoon Briggs would put on Community Talent Competitions
at the venue “the winner got a ‘live-recording’ gig on the main stage”
explained Briggs “we just sold locally, using high-speed
cassette-copiers”. The Fair Deal also
played host to gigs by The Clash, UB40 and Motorhead, but fell into debt and
shut its doors in late 1982. Briggs then
hooked up with Margaret ‘Meg’ Shanks, a drama teacher based out of
Kingston-Upon-Thames, who rented rehearsal space at several theatres around Wimbledon. Shanks’ students ranged from thirtysomethings
to as young as eight. Finding solid
information about Meg Shanks’ career outside of Suffer Little Children is
certainly a challenge. The only other
connection to film I’ve been able to trace for her is as casting director on
Knights Electric (1980) a short film from the New Wave era of music about a
bunch of girls being bothered by a gang of punk wallies during a night out at a
funfair. Distributor Brent-Walker
released Knights Electric as a supporting feature, sending it out to cinemas
with Inseminoid (1981) and Brimstone & Treacle (1982). Shanks was paid
£1,337.50 for her work on the film.
Knights Electric had benefited
from being shot on 35mm and boasted a soundtrack featuring big name acts of the
day (The Pretenders, Madness, Gary Numan) but three years later Suffer Little Children
was an altogether more humble affair.
Made, as admitted in the end credits, with “no money, just determination
and guts”, its greatest strengths would turn out to be Briggs’ flair for
promotion, and the unstoppable enthusiasm and DIY attitude of Shanks’
students. Glamorous isn’t a word that
comes to mind when you hear about the making of Suffer Little Children, the
shooting location was an abandoned house in a terrace row of similarly empty
houses in New Malden. “A spooky, derelict mess” according to crew member Paul
Newbery. Aside from director Briggs and
producer Shanks, the entire cast and crew appear to have been made up of
Shanks’ theatre school wannabes and their mates. Essentially the kids did everything from
conceiving the plot of the movie, to the camerawork, lighting and general heavy
lifting. “I remember the whole
experience being bloody hard work but fun” claims Paul Newbery “I was helping
clear the garden which was an absolute mess and I picked up this carrier bag
and out spilled a massive bagful of maggots”.
The kids’ low budget inventiveness also impressed Briggs, who later
recalled that after discovering the house used for filming lacked the staircase
that the script called for, several of Shanks’ students merely hot footed it over
to the next house, tore out the staircase, passed it over the fence and voila!!
a staircase was installed at the filming location.
Conceived during a three month period in 1983, and
shot during Spring 1984, the plot of Suffer Little Children is largely confined
to the deteriorating walls of Sullivan’s Childrens Home, whose very foundations
are set to be rocked by the forces of rock n’ roll and the devil. The unwanted ragamuffins that call the place
a home idly play in the cramped day room or chase each other around the
corridors (‘bitch’ is a popular insult among the girls). The chaotic situation is just about kept in
check by staff members Maurice (Colin Chamberlain) and Jenny (Ginny Rose). In terms of fashion and personalities, Jenny
and Maurice are about as polar opposites as Bucks Fizz and The Smiths. Jenny is a cheery, surrogate older sister to
the kids whose florescent, pastel coloured dress sense alone makes her a
standout in the fuzzy, colour bleached, shot on video world of Suffer Little
Children. On the other hand Maurice
gives the impression of having been born wearing a cardigan. Maurice is twenty going on forty, moustachioed,
bespectacled and a painfully reserved introvert, who rarely maintains eye
contact during conversations.
The mundanity of a Sunday afternoon at the children’s
home is interrupted by the arrival of a mute child on the doorstep bearing a
letter “Please take care of Elizabeth, she can’t speak. This is the right place for her”. Unbeknownst to Maurice and Jenny, Elizabeth
is a Satanic force to be reckoned with, and has Carrie-like telekinetic
abilities. Unlike Carrie, Elizabeth is
no victim. The moment one of the other
kids puts a foot out of line, by asking Jenny why Elizabeth can’t speak,
Elizabeth shuts that shit down right away, willing a door to slam into the
other girl’s head. A malevolent blast of
heavy metal music, which accompanies just about every horror movie incident in
the film, plays over a crash zoom on Elizabeth’s face...Evil Liz means
business. As Elizabeth, Nicola Diana,
manages to maintain an aura of cuteness and innocence about her, while still
making for a creepy, deeply unsettling central figure. I’m sure no young actress ever aspires to be
described as creepy and unsettling, but that is what the role required, and
that is certainly what Nicola Diana brings to it. All the more impressive, when you discover
that she was an 11th hour replacement for the role. The original
Evil Liz –who was even younger than Nicola Diana- having been pulled from
Suffer Little Children by her parents, after they began to have second thoughts
about their offspring appearing in the film...can’t imagine why.
Liz’s sad, mournful demeanor and disability, allow
her to escape the finger of suspicion as paranormal incidents begin to pile up
at the children’s home. Basil, another
one of the children, takes a tumble and ends up a bloody mess at the bottom of
the staircase. Evil Liz induces two of
the other girls, Jules and Carol, to have a nightmare- seemingly influenced by
Hammer’s The Plague of the Zombies- that sees the two girls being menaced by
the undead, who have risen from their graves in the garden of the children’s
home. The scene ends surreally, with
Elizabeth beckoning the two girls and the zombies to a picnic. Thereafter, Jules and Carol act as Liz’s
flunkies. Forever shadowing their
shorter boss in the manner of Napoleon or Al Capone, and taking the heat for
Elizabeth when Maurice and Jenny interrogate them about Basil’s accident, with aptly,
a poster for ‘Rebel without a Cause’ in the background. At breakfast Jules and Carol mock Jenny
behind her back, using the kind of language that carries considerably greater
shock value coming from children than it does adults “stupid bitch”, “she don’t
know a fucking thing”.
Inadvertently acting as a further distraction from the
real cause of the home’s problems is the arrival of Mick Philips (Jon Hollanz),
a Leif Garrett type teenage rock star, who grew up at the home. Mick finds himself tangled up in Evil Liz’s
machinations when he pays the place a flying visit. Predicable as clockwork, Maurice cynically
views Mick’s presence as an excuse to sell records and gain free publicity,
while expressing parental concerns to Jenny “what if he starts offering around
drugs”. The sweary, rock n’ roll
attitude of Mick’s roadie Hustler (Mark Insull), does nothing to put uptight
Maurice at ease. All the kids go wild
for Mick, mobbing him at the door and the hallway, all except Elizabeth, who
recognises a good guy nemesis when she sees one...and shoots him dirty looks
from the sidelines. These scenes are a
rare example of where the semi-improv nature of Suffer Little Children’s
dialogue and the inexperience of the younger cast, actually works in the film’s
benefit. The kid’s giddy behaviour and
inane questions (“are you a vegetarian, by chance”) feeling like a believable, on the money
encounter between star struck young pop fans and their idol. As you might expect from a film conceived by
its own, very young cast, there is a degree of wish-fulfilment and childhood
play acting to the roles in Suffer Little Children...the famous rock star, the
cool leather clad roadie, the girl with the mischief making supernatural
abilities, plus the whole children’s home setting, that sees the kids free of
parental control and running riot.
Briggs’ own background as a rock music promoter no doubt came in useful
when it came to the Mick Philips sub-plot, yet for my money Briggs’ greatest
gift to the production on the musical side has to be the film’s theme
tune-vocals by its star Ginny Rose- that should be on the playlist of Halloween
parties everywhere. “Are you afraid to close your eyes at night...I’m gonna creep up on you
while you’re dreaming...there’s no one who can save you left insight...so
suffer...suffer...suffer little children”.
It certainly goes down a treat at the party scene in the film itself,
even Maurice lets his hair down and contributes some unsurprisingly
embarrassing dad dancing. Evil Liz can’t
resist the chance to play party pooper though, and breaks up the party by using
her powers to cause a violent fracas between the kids.
Suffer Little Children is nothing if not generous when
it comes to passing the narrative baton around.
Showing its roots as a show-reel project for Shanks’ students, with lots
of inconsequential chit-chat from secondary characters, that a more
commercially minded movie might have been inclined to snip. The two dinner ladies who work at the
children’s home are the main offenders in this respect, thanks to their
chin-wags about the washing and their horror scopes. Although the Cockney duo do occasionally
redeem themselves with their comic relief banter “when I asked you to separate
some eggs, you put one of the table, one in the fridge and one in the cupboard”.
The burgeoning romance between Mick and Jenny also
tends to eat into the running time. The
fact that Ginny Rose was Meg Shanks’ daughter, offering a likely explanation
for Suffer Little Children’s keenness to shine a light on her acting and
singing talent. The character whose
plight lends Suffer Little Children a surprising emotional resonance between
horror movie incidents though is Maurice.
An inarticulate, socially awkward man, who you sense cares deeply for
the kids, and possibly harbours romantic feelings for Jenny, but prefers to
bury himself away in the home’s paperwork than voice his emotions. Nevertheless, this isn’t lost on Mick, who perceptively
points out to Jenny “he’s protective of you, as if you were someone special to
him”.
Maurice might not be an obstacle in Jenny and Mick’s
romance, but Elizabeth is an altogether different matter. While Jenny and Mick are off on a date at New
Wave nightclub ‘Cloudbusters’, and Maurice hides away from the world behind his
typewriter, the kids take advantage of vigilant eyes being off them by
congregating in the attic, worshipping Elizabeth in a candle lit ritual. Liz’s powers cause one of the men at the club
to plant a kiss on Mick. Then when Mick
brushes the unwanted admirer off, the entire club erupts into a riot, intercut
with Elizabeth’s smirking, strobe lit, face.
Shanks student Neil Longley, had already been in the film, but this
didn’t stop him being recalled for the Cloudbusters sequence. “I played a
zombie and a gay bloke that started a fight in a bar” remembers Neil “about 8
years ago i was in Ibiza with my daughter, and we were invited to her friend’s
dad’s house. The guy’s best mate took
one look at me- when I was 46- and said ‘Didn’t you play that gay bloke in that
movie?....unreal”.
By the time the adults put two and two together, Liz
is breaking the fourth wall, saying the film’s title “SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN”
straight to camera, which acts as a rallying call to the troops. In a sequence on which the majority of the
film’s notoriety rests, the kids –now totally under Liz’s control- arm
themselves with knives, hammers and wooden stakes, then violently turn against
the adults. It’s what Suffer Little
Children has been building up to, the sedate, dialogue driven tone of many of
the earlier scenes leaving you unprepared for the hyperactive burst of energy
that has been held back for the finale.
Screaming, yelling and heavy metal assault you on the soundtrack, Liz
uses her telekinesis to hurl inanimate objects in Maurice and Jenny’s
direction, and forces one of the dinner ladies to repeatedly stab herself in
the leg. The adults make a mad dash to
the attic, where Elizabeth is held up and a Satanic ritual is in full force
(with the kids chanting “come devil come”).
Most of the adults wind up bloody messes at the hands of the kids, but
Mick somehow finds his way to the attic, only to be crucified by Liz’s minions. It is impossible to discuss Suffer Little
Children and not let the cat out of the bag over what has to be one of the most
unique, bizarre, unexpected plot twists ever seen in a British horror
film. Apropos to nothing, the crucified
Mick is suddenly resurrected as Jesus Christ, complete with crown of thorns. Not to be outdone, Elizabeth transforms into
an adult woman (played by Nicola Diana’s real life mum), and a crazed, strobe
lit battle between Jesus and Nicola Diana’s mother commences. C’mon admit it...the second coming of Christ
in New Malden...nobody could have seen that coming.
It has to be said that Jesus’ behaviour in Suffer
Little Children does strike you as being errr...a little out of character. Surely the good and proper Jesus thing to do
would be to save the children’s souls and restore their victims to life, Jesus
after all being quite famous for that kind of thing. It seems though that not even Jesus was immune
from the 1980s mean spirited streak, as he points, zaps the kids with energy
and causes them to freak out and be consigned to oblivion on the attic’s strobe
lit floor. Evidentially no wimpy, goody two shoes ‘they all lived happily ever
after’ ending would cut it with the kids who made Suffer Little Children. Their ending finds everybody either dead,
covered in blood or screaming hysterically...which of course is how all good
horror movies should end.
For a glorified home movie, made on a budget of around
£7,000, Suffer Little Children managed to blow into the British consciousness
in a major way throughout 1984/85.
Amateur horror films had been around for decades beforehand, but rarely
troubled anyone outside of film societies and the filmmakers’ nearest and
dearest. Arriving at just the right time
and place, Suffer Little Children was born into a newfangled video industry
that was hungry for low-budget horror.
In spite of its budgetary shortcomings, Briggs’ film attracted the
attention of Palace Video, only for them to be pipped to the post by Films
Galore, a company that had enjoyed success in the distribution side of the
video industry, and were now looking to begin putting out product of their
own. “Palace were about to sign the deal
but we got in there first” boasted Film Galore’s George Goody “I’m confident
that Suffer Little Children is going to become the most sought after video in
any library in a few short weeks”.
The film’s profile was raised further by a publicity
launch held at the swanky Dorchester Hotel, a bash partly paid for –according
to Briggs- by the parents of the child actors.
Comedian Freddie Starr was roped into being part of the film’s publicity
drive, with one Suffer Little Children cast member finding herself sitting on
Starr’s lap. Positive notices also came
from The Surrey Comet newspaper which praised the film as a local success
story, and Meg Shanks as an enabler of young talent. The cosy relationship between the filmmakers,
the VHS distributor and the press wouldn’t last for long.
By the time the story made the national papers, the
moral finger waiving had begun “Vicar Rap’s Evil Video” claimed The Sun
newspaper.
“A vicar
slammed yesterday the making of a horror video called ‘Suffer Little Children’
as offensive and dangerous. The video is
being made by the Meg Shanks Theatre School, Kingston, Surrey, but local Vicar
Rev Peter Rich said “like the path from soft to hard drugs the journey along
the road of supernatural evil can be an insidious one with horrifying and life
destroying results”. The video’s
producer, Alan Briggs said “The man is a cretin who hasn’t even seen the
script. It is a strong anti-Satanism film”.
Clearly never a man to mince his words, in later years
Alan Briggs was equally blunt about Films Galore honcho George Goody “a
complete lunatic” according to Briggs, who claimed Goody boasted of “travelling
around the universe in space ships with aliens who had become his
friends”. Whatever else can be said
about George Goody, he couldn’t be accused of not getting behind Suffer Little
Children. As well as promising to
finance future Meg Shanks productions – Star
Child, Fairly Soon, The Wimp (‘a horror/thriller about a psychopath’) and The
Soho Triangle (‘a cross between The Long Good Friday and The Triad’)- Films
Galore blitzed video industry magazines with advertising for Suffer Little
Children, hyping at as the most controversial horror film of the decade. “The
Evil Dead scared you, The Exorcist haunted you, this film you will remember for
the rest of your life”. It’s estimated
that the money spent on the advertising campaign for Suffer Little Children,
exceeded the film’s actual production costs.
Films Galore and the SLC cast toast to future success
Films Galore got the attention, just not the kind they were craving. In January 1985, the obscene publications squad raided the Wandsworth offices of Films Galore, seizing the master copies of the film. According to press reports at the time, Films Galore employees were forced up against the walls and into the spread legged position, terrifying several children who were also present. The case was then handed over to the DPP and considered for prosecution under both the obscene publications act and the protection of children and young persons act. The irony is that, by the lawless standards of the early video industry in Britain, Films Galore had been trying to play by the book. Submitting the film to the BBFC in December 1984, and reportedly receiving notification of the cuts the censors had asked for, just a day before the police raid. The DPP situation left the filmmakers and their distributor in the frustrating situation of knowing they had a likely hit on their hands, but thanks to the master tapes having been seized, without an actual product to release. Depending on who is telling the story, the number of advance orders for the £24.95 video was either 8,500 or 10,000. “Everyone is trying to promote films for the British film industry” Briggs complained to the press “and here we have bureaucrats holding up a film that will make number one in the charts”.
Briggs and Films Galore were not prepared to take the
police’s actions lying down, and began barking back at the authorities. Films Galore threatened to sue the DPP for
loss of earnings, only to themselves be sued by Video Trade Weekly. The BBFC were threatened with a protest
outside of their office by the Suffer Little Children cast, and found
themselves being stiffed by Films Galore, after Films Galore failed to pay the
BBFC’s classification fees for Suffer Little Children. As the story snowballed, star names found
themselves dragged into the controversy, with Richard Attenborough and
Hollywood legend Charles Bronson both being publically asked to come to the
film’s defense. After three nail biting
months, the DPP decided against prosecuting Suffer Little Children, and the
film was released on the 19th of April, 1985. The fate of Suffer Little Children’s master
tapes is one of many mysteries still surrounding the film. Were they ever returned to Films Galore? If
they were Alan Briggs never saw them again, and the disappearance of the master
tapes remained a particular source of bad blood between Briggs and Films Galore.
1985 VHS release, artwork by director Briggs
In a way, Suffer Little Children was the tabloid
press’ perfect victim...scenes of devil worship, the taboo use of child actors,
onscreen juvenile delinquency, a blood splattered ending...you can practically
hear those hack journalists rushing to their typewriters to alarm the nation’s
curtain twitchers with tales of Satanic panic and video violence. “People would stop Meg in the street and call
her a demonic witch” Briggs recalled in 2017.
To the censorious, Suffer Little Children must have
visualised all their worst fears about the video industry’s corrupting
influence on the young. Incriminating itself with scenes of children dabbling
in the occult, shouting expletives and arming themselves with household implements
in order to commit senseless acts of violence.
Now, young, impressionable people weren’t just watching Video Nasties,
they were making Video Nasties of their own.
Suffer Little Children really was the Blair Witch Project of its day,
its amateur, anti- professionalism,
unknown cast and general refusal to look and behave in ways that people
expected movies to look and behave all contributed to its sinister mystique. A mystique, of course, aided and abetted by
its own publicity department. The
opening voiceover in the film stating that Suffer Little Children was in fact “a reconstruction of events which took place
at 45 Kingston Road, New Malden, in August 1984. These events were never reported in the
press. The house is now derelict and
scheduled for demolition” a claim repeated on the VHS box. Ludicrous as the idea that a film- which keep
in mind culminates in the second coming of Christ- could be based on real
events might now seem, it speaks volumes about the climate of the Video Nasties
furore that such utter guff was taken serious enough for the police to raid the
offices of the VHS label and for the producer of the film to be harangued by
the public and accused of witchcraft.
Unlike the Blair Witch people though, the makers of Suffer Little
Children were never able to monetize the controversy they’d created.
By the time the film was released the tabloid outrage
had become yesterday’s fish and chip wrapping, and the publicity Suffer Little
Children garnered after its release, tended to deflate the controversy, rather
than add to it. “After 86 minutes locked
in a darkened South London stockroom” wrote The Guardian “I was left with the
burning question ‘just what is all the fuss about’”. The makers of Suffer Little Children had
gotten the shaft from the British authorities, but the goldmine remained out of
reach.
C’ mon, admit it though, if you’d been a child actor
in the 1980s, who would you rather have been? A posh little twerp in a
do-gooding Children’s Film Foundation production, or one of the Suffer Little
Children cast who got to swear, chant “come devil come” and throw gore around
in their film. They were the cool
kids. When the film began to shock and
offend the nation’s tabloids, the kids from Suffer Little Children must have
felt like they’d joined the Sex Pistols.
In the 1990s and 2000s, the film was in a state of
limbo, forgotten by the public, known only to VHS dupers and British horror aficionados
and long vanished from the video shelves.
Films Galore having crashed and burned in June 1985, with debts in the
region of £80,000, and the BBFC and Video Trade Weekly listed among their
creditors. Personally, I’ve always felt
that Suffer Little Children is a great ideas film, it’s just the execution that
proves a deal breaker to many. Whenever I’d
try and turn people onto the film during that period, I’d always throw in the
proviso that you need to have a high tolerance towards low budget filmmaking to
get anything out of Suffer Little Children.
Go into it with prejudices against cheaply made, shot on video productions
and make no mistake, Suffer Little Children will destroy you. Out of all those early British shot on video
productions like G.B.H and Death Shock, Suffer Little Children is the hardest
sell of that particular, unholy threesome.
G.B.H (1983) tries to overcompensate for its shot on video origins by
offering more punch-ups, car chases and shoot-outs than any ‘real’ movie. Death Shock (1981) is little more than wall
to wall sex, which let’s face it will always make punters turn a blind eye to
technical shortcomings and bad acting.
Of the three, Suffer Little Children is the least cinematic, and most claustrophobic
of the bunch, rarely escaping the confines of the children’s home. A reluctance to venture outside this location
likely being motivated by fears of equipment being stolen from the abandoned house
they were shooting at, or worse still squatters taking control of the place in
the filmmakers’ absence. Paul Newbery
remembers being tasked with guarding the equipment while the rest of the crew
made a ‘school trip’ to shoot the Cloudbusters scene. As I say though, if you can look past the
filmmaking here being, to put it politely, as rough as a butcher’s dog, there
is so much creativity, out of left field ideas and eccentricity at play in
Suffer Little Children...the zombie picnic, Evil Liz and her menacing, dirty
looks aren’t forgotten in a hurry, ditto the second coming of Christ.
In fairness, put yourself in the mindset of a 1985 audience
here. Video renting was relatively new, and your average punter’s idea of movie
going would still have entailed a night out at the local cinema to see a Dirty
Harry, Star Wars or James Bond film in all its big budget, big screen glory. To go from that kind of experience to renting
out G.B.H or Suffer Little Children, would have been a massive culture
shock. To dive deep into 1980s nostalgia
nerd-dom and quote a line from Back to the Future “I guess you guys aren’t
ready for that yet, but your kids are gonna love it”....well, they’ll buy it on
DVD, at least.
Seeing Suffer Little Children on the DVD shelves of
HMV was my big, out of body experience of 2017.
Of all the films from the pre-cert VHS era, this was one that appeared
destined to be consigned to the past.
Like Ghetto Blasters, Space Invaders and Roland Rat, Suffer Little
Children is so explicitly tied to the 1980s, it’s hard to think of it having a
place in the modern world, but there it was sharing shelf space with all the
brand new, crystal clear, shot on digital 21st century horror
movies. In terms of picture quality,
Suffer Little Children will always be the ugly girl in school that nobody
wanted to date, yet the shot on video production values and dated technology
the film was made on, which were once seen as a deal breaker, now have become
selling points during the renewal of interest in shot on video horror movies
that we are going through now. Maybe,
like 1980s culture in general, we’ve sufficiently moved on enough that even
once vilified relics from the 1980s are now afforded nostalgia from people who
were around back then, and exert curiosity over those who weren’t. Not bad for “one of the cheapest, worse
projects ever packaged”.
One rumour that has attached itself to Suffer Little
Children over the years is that around three hours of footage was shot for the
film. A likely exaggeration, in light of
the fact that the film was made in around 14 days. Nevertheless, what was released by Films
Galore in 1985 does tend to resemble an ‘edited highlights’ package...and not
without good reason. “It was cut to
bits, from 90 minutes to 68, I think that was the final running time” clamed
Briggs “while we were trying to make the cuts in a narrative manner, Goody just
had somebody go in and chop great chunks out with no sense of story, or time,
or even anything resembling skill”.
Goody’s butchery left its scars on the released product. There are numerous name checks of, not to
mention phone calls to, a Dr Stokely in Suffer Little Children. A character who is meant to be trying to
discover why Elizabeth can’t speak, as well as caring for the injured
Basil. The role is prominently billed in
the end credits too, yet Dr Stokely barely appears in the released version of
the film, save for the closing few seconds.
Suspiciously also curtailed is the storyline about the two dinner
ladies, one of whom simply disappears entirely towards the end of the
film. The other makes an appearance in
the climatic massacre, but in a bed ridden, incapacitated state which goes
unexplained. By far the biggest mystery
of Suffer Little Children has to be the swimming pool incident. In the 1985 video release at least, you see
the children leaving for a trip to the local baths, then later hear many
references to several of the children nearly drowning and speculation from
Jenny that Elizabeth was responsible.
However, this seemingly important scene is a noticeable no-show in the
film. Since the master tapes have long
disappeared, any missing or stray footage from Suffer Little Children is likely
to stay that way. Briggs’ own VHS copy is
all the releasing label, Severin, seemingly had to work with for the 2017 DVD
release. I don’t think this is widely
known, but the Severin DVD is in fact a different edit of the film than was
released during the VHS era. A close comparison
of the two versions revealed enough differences- some minor, others significant-
to warrant a mention here...so, this is what I’ve found.
-The 1985 VHS
release opens with the credit "FGL Films Presents", which is missing
from the 2017 DVD release. One assumes the version committed to DVD dates from
before Films Galore Ltd was involved with the film.
-The opening credits are slightly different in the VHS and DVD releases. In the VHS, the credits appear in larger lettering and a different font style to the DVD version.
-The DVD contains an additional shot of Jenny rifling through her handbag in the opening scene, which is missing from the VHS release (the shot appears immediately before one of the girls asks Jenny if she can stay up late to watch a film on TV)
-In the VHS release, the shot of the note Elizabeth brings to the children's home (“Please take care of Elizabeth, she can’t speak. This is the right place for her”) plays while Jenny is reading the note. In the DVD release, the shot of the note appears later on in the scene, after Jenny has handed the note to Maurice, giving the impression that Maurice is reading the note, even though the hand holding the note is clearly female.
-In the zombie dream sequence, the VHS release includes an additional shot of Elizabeth, just before the two other girls begin to explore the garden. The shot is missing from the DVD release.
-The dialogue is far more audible in the VHS release. One common complaint about the DVD release is that the sound mix often buries the dialogue under the music tracks. While many online reviewers, whose only history with the film is the DVD release, jump to the conclusion that the original filmmaking conditions are to blame for the poor sound, the dialogue that is obscured in the DVD release is a little clearer in the VHS incarnation.
-The DVD release contains footage of Basil spitting up blood at the bottom of the staircase, which –presumably due to censorship- was missing from the VHS release.
-After Basil's accident, the VHS release contains a scene of Maurice and Jenny interrogating Elizabeth about what happened to Basil, which is missing from the DVD. It’s hard not to question why Maurice and Jenny are trying to get answers from a character who can’t actually speak. Even so, the scene does also contain a chilling moment when Jenny speculates on Elizabeth's background ("I can't help but think that her parents must be pretty unique, wherever they are"). Making its absence from the DVD release regrettable.
-The Cloudbusters club sequence is slightly different in the VHS and the DVD release. In the VHS release, Elizabeth's supernatural powers are shown to be the sole reason for the party goers mobbing Mick and Jenny. While the DVD release includes unique footage of the club's MC announcing Mick's presence to the rest of the club, which is depicted as the reason for Mick and Jenny being mobbed by the crowd.
-After the Cloudbusters incident, the VHS release includes footage of Mick and Jenny walking up the steps of the children's home and entering the hallway. The DVD release is missing this footage.
-The DVD
release omits three, lengthy scenes. A scene of the children having breakfast,
a scene of the children leaving for the swimming pool, and a scene of Maurice
doing paperwork at the children's home (while the noise of the commotion at the
swimming pool plays over the soundtrack). All three of these scenes are present
on the VHS release, and appear in between the scene of Mick and Jenny
discussing Basil's accident and the scene of Jenny drying her hair and
explaining the swimming pool incident to Maurice.
-The "Satanic" voiceover that plays
over scenes of children attacking adults towards the end of the film is far
more audible in the DVD release, whereas in the VHS release it is significantly
muted and buried under the music. Maybe it’s because the VHS release was my
first port of call for Suffer Little Children, but I tend to favour the VHS
edit in this regard. The voiceover just
feels out of place - given that it is a male voice that is meant to be coming
from Elizabeth, a young female character- and all in all rather hammy and
clichéd.
-Where the DVD does have the upper hand over
the VHS is of course when it comes to the gore.
In the VHS much of the violence in the climactic bloodbath has been removed
(a knife going through a character’s mouth) or reduced (the stabbings of
Maurice and Hustler, Mick being crucified by the children). Thankfully, all the once missing gore has
been reinstated for the DVD.
In his
interview on the DVD release, Briggs claims that Films Galore rush released an
unfinished, uncompleted version of the film onto the VHS market, but if
anything it’s the DVD version that appears to be an earlier edit of Suffer
Little Children. The VHS release
correcting audio issues, continuity mistakes (e.g. the shot of Elizabeth’s
note) and implementing the cuts that the BBFC asked for. So, there really isn’t a definite version of
the film out there. If you want to see
the gore intacto you need the DVD release.
If you want to hear what the actors are saying and see four scenes that
never made it to DVD then be prepared to dig deep into your pockets for a copy
of the 1980s VHS, in order to complete the Suffer Little Children experience.
Meg
Shanks would go on to marry Alan Briggs, and in later life became a sex
therapist. “During shooting, we loathed
each other” recalled Briggs in 2012 “but we got married that December, and
agreed never to work together again”. Alan
Briggs made at least one other movie, ‘Ghetto Wars’ (1986), a Mad Max style tale of “violence and
scantily clad women in a ruined city where the only laws are the ones you need
to survive”. The filming conditions
don’t appear to have been any better than Suffer Little Children, Ghetto Wars
having been filmed around what was left of London’s docklands by the
mid-1980s. Briggs remembered “working a
day ahead of the bulldozers that were tearing it all down at the time”. Ghetto Wars had been conceived by the heavy
metal band Venom, but plans for the film came apart when Briggs’ cast–which
included professional minder to the stars Pat Callahan and Page 3 girl Monica
Ramone- struggled to record their dialogue.
“It fell into limbo when the actors proved useless at accurately
dubbing” recalled Briggs “studio time ate up the budget till we couldn’t go any
further”. In 1987 it was announced that
Briggs was working in association with the IVS video label on an ambitious plan
to develop two TV series and several movie projects, including Genocide (“a
post nuclear shocker”), Jamaica Love, Zombie Island, and Street Law. None of which came to fruition. In 2015, Briggs briefly resurfaced with plans
for what was either going to be a sequel to or remake of Suffer Little
Children, relocated to Leith, a project that faltered before even the rehearsal
stage. Sadly the Facebook pages of Meg
Shanks and Alan Briggs are now archived and indicate that both are now
deceased. The two main players in this
story may be gone, but Suffer Little Children lives on to corrupt young,
impressionable minds on DVD and Amazon Prime, over the incidents that befell 45
Kingston Road, New Malden, Surrey in August 1984.
“As far as I know none of us ended up on a remote Scottish island devil worshipping and certainly none of the women bore any babies named Rosemary” remembers Paul Newbery “it gave us ‘kids’ our first chance to be involved with a film and taught me to a certain degree a level of teenage responsibility that no ‘youth club’ could attain”.
Special thanks to Kev (The Movie Samurai), Neil Longley, Paul Newbery, The Hellfire Video Club and Barney Broom, for their help and assistance with this article.
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