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cult
Director
Narciso Ibáñez Serrador
Year
1976
Country
Spain
Runtime
100 min

Also released as

  • ¿Quién puede matar a un niño?
  • Island of the Damned
  • Death Is Child's Play
  • Trapped!
  • The Hex Massacre
  • Los niños
  • Death is Child's Play
  • La isla de los malditos
  • Island of Death
  • Quem Pode Matar uma Criança?
  • Игры убийц
  • Opstand in jaar 2000
  • Scream
  • The Hex
  • Ein Kind zu töten…
  • ザ・チャイルド
  • Would You Kill a Child?

Filed under

Who Can Kill a Child?

Opens with eight minutes of real famine footage, then asks its title question literally.

Opens with eight minutes of documentary footage of children dying in famines, wars and camps, and then asks its title question literally for ninety minutes.

An English couple, she heavily pregnant, take a boat to a small Spanish island. The town is empty except for children, who are playing, and who are pleased to see them.

Narciso Ibáñez Serrador does not explain it. There is one line of speculation and the film declines to confirm it.

The horror is entirely the premise: two adults who physically cannot bring themselves to do the only thing that would save them, surrounded by people who know it.

The prologue is a truly confrontational piece of film-making, and its argument, that children are always the ones who pay, is what earns the rest.

Filmed in Menorca with local children who were reportedly told very little.

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Trailer

The sleeves

The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.

poster
EN · poster
EN · poster
ES · poster
IT · poster
EN · poster
EN · poster

Where to watch

Legal sources only. Availability data from JustWatch via TMDB.

Checked 9 Aug 2026

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