Blu-ray Review: Child’s Play

Imprint # 283

Distributor: Via Vision Entertainment (Imprint)

Release Date: December 27, 2023

 Region: Region Free

Length: 01:40:00

 Video: 1080P (MPEG-4, AVC)

Main Audio: 2.0 English Mono Linear PCM Audio

Subtitles: English HOH

Ratio: 1.78:1

Notes: This Blu-ray is available as part of the “Directed By… Sidney Lumet: Volume One (1964-1973)” boxed set. Olive Films also released a Blu-ray edition of this title in 2012.

James Mason, Robert Preston, and Beau Bridges star in this 70’s psychological mystery drama directed by Sidney Lumet. It was based on a successful Broadway play by Robert Marasco. The play opened on February 12, 1970, at the Royale Theatre and ran for 342 performances. It would eventually close on December 12 that same year, but not before earning a number of nominations at the 24^th Annual Tony Awards—including Best Play, Best Direction (Joseph Hardy), Best Leading Actor (Fritz Weaver), Best Featured Actor (Paul Reese), Best Lighting Design (Jo Mielziner), and Best Scenic Design (Jo Mielziner). It would win for Best Direction, Best Leading Actor, Best Featured Actor, Best Lighting Design, and Best Scenic Design. It would, however, lose the Best Play award to Frank McMahon’s stage adaptation of Brendan Behan’s “Borstal Boy.” The play would also do well when it was produced for London’s West End in 1971. It opened at the Queen’s Theatre on March 16 of that year. Joseph Hardy would reprise his role as the director, and Jo Mielziner would serve as the production’s scenic and lighting design. Laurence Harvey, Rupert Davies and Derek Fowlds would portray the three primary characters in this British production of the play. All of this is to say that the stage play was a huge deal by all objective standards. It was only a matter of time before it would be adapted for the screen.

Robert Marasco’s original title was “The Dark,” and he was inspired by his experiences as a teacher of Greek and Latin at Regis High School (which was a rather highly regarded Jesuit school in Manhattan). However, these experiences only inspired the basic tone and atmosphere of his play and not the story itself. The plot follows a new gym teacher named Paul Reese (Paul Reis in the film version) who returns to his old Alma mater to teach. He is initially thrilled to be back at this private boy’s school where he spent most of formative years, but he is soon drawn into a mystery surrounding violent acts committed by the students at the school and its relation to a feud between two older instructors (Joseph Dobbs and Jerome Malley).

The film version was adapted for the screen (with some input by Sidney Lumet) by Leon Prochnik and follows the play rather closely. In fact, David Merrick had been the producer of the Broadway stage production and was producing this film as well. He was famously protective of the source material and railed against several changes devised by Lumet in an effort to fill in (or at least cover up) some of the play’s plot holes despite the fact that none of his suggestions would have altered the story or the characters in any real way. Most of those working on the production considered Merrick to be an impossible personality, and he and Lumet would clash enough that both became openly hostile towards one another by the end of the film’s production schedule.

Lumet wrote very briefly about this antagonism in “Making Movies.”

“I once did a picture for David Merrick, Child’s Play. Among other problems, we were undecided about how to end it, so I had shot two different endings. I ran both on the first screening. As the lights came up, Merrick derisively called from the back, ‘Is that it?’ I called back, ‘Ask me in that tone of voice again and I’ll smack you, you shit-heel.’ Like all bullies, he hurried out of the room.” —Sidney Lumet (Making Movies, 1995)

However, it seems that Merrick’s rather difficult personality managed to accidently serve the film in at least one respect. Sidney Lumet had cast Marlon Brando in the role of Joseph Dobbs (a role that doesn’t seem appropriate for the actor in this humble film geek’s opinion), but the actor disliked Merrick and clashed with the producer to such an extent that he ended up dropping out. Some film historians claim that he actually quit the film then he began to understand that James Mason had the better role, but it is more likely that both of these issues contributed to his decision. Luckily, Robert Preston was cast as his replacement, and he is much more appropriate for the role. Meanwhile, James Mason stole the show as Brando had predicted. He gives one of his most amazing performances of his career in this film.

Unfortunately, terrific performances weren’t enough to save what were fundamental flaws in the material in the eyes of Lumet.

“With time, most technical problems can be fixed. But on a picture called Child’s Play, something much graver happened. Child’s Play had been quite successful on Broadway. It was a gothic murder mystery, set in a boys’ parochial school. As a play, it had a spooky, theatrical effectiveness that worked. But around the third day of rushes, I realized that I’d completely deceived myself. Whatever I’d seen in the script and throughout the pre-production period simply didn’t exist.

Whatever had worked about it as a play remained in the theater. What once appeared scary now seemed totally unthreatening. A terrific gothic melodrama on stage had become a mundane mystery with a telegraphed resolution. It couldn’t transfer to the screen — or at least I couldn’t do it. What was worse, I couldn’t fix it. I didn’t know what the problem was, so I couldn’t solve it. All I knew was that it was fake. It wasn’t going to work, and I was facing seven more weeks of shooting.

And worst of all was the fact that I was the director, so I couldn’t tell anybody. If there was any hope of salvaging a movie out of the mess, everyone needed his confidence. I didn’t want to shatter it. There was nothing to do but bite my lip for the next seven weeks and try to make the movie look as professional as possible.” —Sidney Lumet (Making Movies, 1995)

It seems that critical opinion mirrored Lumet’s own feelings towards the finished film. It was released to New York theaters on December 12^th and would hit screens the following day in Los Angeles. It would see a release in other territories as well, but James Mason once commented that it was “more of a trickle than a release.” This might be because the critics weren’t very welcoming. One could be kind and call the reviews “mixed” since there were a few positive reviews hidden amongst the hostility, but the balance leaned more heavily towards the negative end of the scale.

The trouble — as is almost always the case with film critics — lies less within the film’s execution than in the fact that it isn’t what they expected or wanted it to be (and this is the black heart of bad criticism). Pauline Kael wrote a review for The New Yorker that illustrates this point. “You can’t help being frightened at times, especially when Beau Bridges, as the young gym teacher, is surrounded by malignant boys, but the mutilation of children for our enjoyment is not to my taste,” she whined. “The picture seems to me fairly disgusting and might have even if it had been elegantly contrived, without blood and without noisy vipers on the track.”

Roger Ebert seemed as if he had hoped for a supernatural thriller to the extent that most of his review discusses Child’s Play as if it were intended as a genre movie.

“This seems to be a season for hauntings, possessions and other alarming manifestations: the supernatural is just about the hottest thing on TV and in paperback (edged out, respectively, only by sports and diet revolutions). Little did we know back in 1968 what Rosemary’s Baby was about to wreak. The supernatural movie everybody is waiting for, of course, is William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, due later this year as soon as Ken Nordine (who’s doing the soundtrack) can decide how Satan giggles.

In the meantime, there’s Sidney Lumet’s Child’s Play, a well-acted movie about possession (or something) in a Catholic boy’s boarding school. The place is steeped in tradition and relics, especially relics like James Mason, who has been teaching Latin 11-B for the last 30 years. He’s in charge of the senior class, and every student in it loathes him. Robert Preston teaches the juniors, on the other hand, and is universally beloved. As the movie opens, Beau Bridges has just signed on as the new gym teacher. Then all hell breaks loose (to coin a phrase).

There are strange noises. Mutilated religious pictures are thrown against locked doors. Spontaneous fights break out among the students. One student is blinded, and another is hung in the school chapel (not by the neck, fortunately). Mason, who is paranoid, accuses Preston of trying to drive him out with cruel tricks like obscene telephone calls and anonymous pornographic magazines in his mailbox. And then … well, then things get a little confusing. One of the key elements in a supernatural tale has to be a certain level of pseudo-scientific detail. We may know in our hearts that none of this stuff is possible, but the characters in the story have got to believe it. Otherwise, where’s the fun? Rosemary’s Baby had all that stuff about the black mass, and The Exorcist was a masterpiece of detailed research…

…But back to our subject. Child’s Play, which is beautifully acted and very nicely directed, doesn’t seem to know whether it’s really about the supernatural or not. The direction is by Sidney Lumet who keeps his camera almost entirely indoors and his confrontations in gloomy underlit alcoves and creepy shadows. That works, but then the end comes, and we’re confused. I’m still not certain exactly what was going on in that school. Was Preston really sending Mason the dirty magazines, or did Bridges only think so? Were the students possessed by the devil, or merely hypnotized? Is there a Freudian hint of latent homosexuality drifting around somewhere, or is Preston merely too proud of his teaching?

The one thing I can tell you for sure — without giving away the ending — is that possession by the devil is apparently not what’s wrong with the kids. Yet the entire movie is set up to suggests supernatural overtones, so when we get a rather conventional Freudian, ending, we’re disappointed. The original fault lies with Robert Marasco’s Broadway play, I suppose. But it could have been fixed for the movie. Child’s Play seems to be about one thing and is actually about another, and that’s cheating.” —Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times, May 15, 1973)

One has to wonder if Mr. Ebert wasn’t taking a few cat naps on the job this time around. The problem isn’t that the movie “doesn’t seem to know whether it’s really about the supernatural or not.” The problem is that Roger Ebert “didn’t seem to know whether it’s really about the supernatural or not.” Here’s a clue for those who haven’t seen the film. It isn’t a supernatural thriller, and it was clearly never intended to be a supernatural thriller. It is a mystery thriller, and the screenplay (and the original stage play) merely makes the viewer question whether the story might turn into a supernatural thriller. The story isn’t a “who-done-it” so much as it is a “did-he-do-it,” so this is simply a red herring to throw the audience into doubt. This isn’t “cheating” because mysteries have to mislead the audience. It is a fairly common trope that one knows to watch for before they even bother purchasing their ticket.

What’s more, most of the questions Ebert asked in his review (“Was Preston really sending Mason the dirty magazines, or did Bridges only think so? Were the students possessed by the devil, or merely hypnotized?”) were answered by the film. They aren’t spelled out in expository dialogue, but any adult of average intelligence ought to be able to discern the answers with relative ease. One admits that the very last scene is vague on some level, but Ebert’s confusion was of his own making.

Gary Arnold’s review in The Washington Post suffered from a similar affliction: “In a better play or movie we might have learned what makes one man despise another so intensely that he thinks he’s justified in destroying him,” he muses. “In Child’s Play we get a load of ominous, evil-minded humbug, a vicious dumb show with schoolboys acting like zombie killers, constantly lurking in the shadows and inflicting nasty accidents…”

If Arnold had observed the goings on in the world around him before writing his review, he would have picked up on the fact that it actually doesn’t take much for a person to hate another person to that extent. This is a sad and scary fact that we must all either accept or fight against… but I digress. The movie gives plenty of reasonable explication for why “one man despises another” to the point he feels “justified in destroying him.”

Vincent Canby followed suit.

“With the exception of the performance of Mr. Mason, who is fine as the mad, exhausted Latin teacher, everything in Child’s Play seems to be rather cheaply tricky — such as the low-range photography and floor lighting designed to throw faces into eerie relief. In a more thoughtful film, the screen play and the performances might have been expected to create the sense of true menace and mystery. Even more irritating is the soundtrack, full of ominous clicking noises that are so loud and so resonant that one can’t believe that the characters inside the film can’t hear them, too.” —Vincent Canby (New York Times, 1973)

Variety offered one of the more positive reviews and called the film “a taut and suspenseful drama” before stating that “Sidney Lumet’s direction catches the mood and spirit of an unhealthy situation and he makes every move count.” Charles Champlin also praised the film in Los Angeles Times. The film he experienced wasn’t a “supernatural thriller” but a “a superior psychological thriller” that “works a few mild deceptions on the audience to achieve its ends, but no one is likely to care very much. Getting there is all the scary pleasure.” He also appreciated the excellent performance given by James Mason and went as far as to say that it “ranks with the best portrayals in his long, impressive career.”

Tony Mastroianni praised Lumet’s direction in his positive review for the Cleveland Press.

“It is director Lumet who makes it all succeed as he concentrates on the strange and murky shadows, the flickering candles, [and] the suggestion of something about to happen. The mood is reinforced by liturgical sounding music as the suspense in certain seen mount.” —Tony Mastroianni (Cleveland Press, January 27, 1973)

One doesn’t wish to give the indication that this film is some sort of misunderstood masterpiece whose reputation has been trashed by a group of philistines. It’s not a perfect film by any means, but it also isn’t a bad film. Those who accept the film on its own terms will find that it is an engaging mystery that holds their attention. It may not belong on a short list of cinema’s best mysteries, but this is certainly better rainy day viewing than a great many movies that have better reputations.

The Presentation:

4 of 5 Stars

Via Vision Entertainment protects the disc in a clear Blu-ray case with a dual sided insert sleeve that features artwork that is essentially a slight alteration of the film’s original one sheet design. The primary difference here is that the textual credits on the bottom have been cropped, and there is more information at the left and the right side of the image. Also, the rather large tagline that reads “You Only Lose Once” has been moved down slightly for no discernable reason, and the three primary actors are credited below it. This makes things a bit busier than they need to be, but it is a provocative image. The interior includes a production still from one of the film’s scenes. This is essentially the same kind of case that Arrow Video uses for their releases (which is a good thing).

All of the movies included in the “Directed By… Sidney Lumet: Volume One (1964-1973)” collection fit into a very sturdy box that is incredibly attractive. Of course, those who wish to own the boxed set will need to act fast because this is a Limited Edition (only 1500 copies exist).

It is worth noting that the rating label is on the plastic wrapping and not on the actual box (nor is it on any of the individual insert sleeves for the films in this collection), so it does not mar the packaging in any way.

The disc’s static menu features attractive film related artwork and is intuitive to navigate.

Picture Quality:

4 of 5 Stars

Via Visions transfer is taken from a 2K scan of some sort, but we are not told what film element was used to create this 2K master. Whatever the case, the resulting image isn’t bad at all. There is some age-related damage and other anomalies on display, but they never distract the viewer. Contrast may also have a few minor deficiencies as there are moments when information is crushed in the shadows. Otherwise, everything looks great. There is quite a bit of fine detail evident throughout the film, colors look fairly natural and seem to reflect the original photography. Grain is heavy but resolves naturally as a rule. Of course, the film would likely look better with a brand new 4K restoration transfer, but this all-but-forgotten film isn’t likely to be given a loving restoration of any kind. Lumet fans are lucky that it is being made available on the format at all.

Sound Quality:

4 of 5 Stars

Purists will be pleased to learn that the 2.0 Mono LPCM Audio transfer is a solid rendering of the film’s original audio mix. Yes, it is a bit flat. It’s called “Mono.” Dialogue, ambience, the unusual score, and the effects are all well prioritized within the mix.

Special Features:

3 of 5 Stars

Feature Length Audio Commentary by film historian Howard Berger

Howard Berger’s commentary is one of the better commentaries included in the entire “Directed By… Sidney Lumet: Volume One (1964-1973)” set. It includes some very nice production information, and his thoughts and observations about the film tend to enhance the listener’s appreciation for the film.

Designing Sidney — (35:46)

Philip Rosenberg’s telephone interview is illustrated with plenty of Lumet films that Rosenberg worked on throughout the years as each film is discussed in the order that they were produced. It’s an excellent addition to the disc that Lumet fans will be pleased to watch.

Final Words:

Child’s Play doesn’t deserve to be brushed off as a mistake and forgotten completely, but this is what has happened. (One imagines the horror series about a certain killer “Good Guy” doll didn’t help matters any.) Anyone with a fondness for mysteries might want to give this film a proper chance. James Mason turns in an excellent performance, and it keeps the viewer engaged from the first frames to the final credit crawl. Luckily, this Imprint Edition is an excellent way to rediscover this underdog of a film.

Note: While we were provided with a screener for review purposes, this had no bearing on our review process. We do not feel under any obligation to hand out positive reviews.