The wait is over. After many sleepless nights and gallons of blood, sweat, and tears (especially blood), the fine, frightful people at New York-base production company Sideshow Pictures have released their latest Halloween horror short, Children of the Witch.
Written and directed by Frank Sabatella, Children of the Witch tells the tale of a fateful Halloween night that pits a horde of undead trick-or-treaters in disturbingly simple Depression-Era costumes against a gang of panty-clad co-eds. Who will survive the terror? Only the children will know for sure.
As always, Sideshow Pictures brings the blood level to fantastic new levels with the aid of Jeremy Selenfriend of Monster in My Closet FX. In the short time-frame that comes with the obviously named “short,” we are shown the ingenious, torturous uses of antique tools and, as Frank Sabatella promised, a reason to “always check your candy.”
But let’s not forget the stars of the film: the children. The theme of using children as the harbingers of horror is a tried and true symbol for the death of innocence which, in turn, instigates the death of everyone else in the film. Films like Village of the Damned, The Brood, The Omen, and Children of the Corn all use children to make the events of a movie even more bone-chilling, and Children of the Witch follows suit with flying entrails. There is even a slight nod to John Carpenter’s direction of young Michael Myers in Halloween.