days of The Bad Seed and Village of the Damned has always 
skirted on the edges of what's acceptable, with films like Devil Times Five, Children of the Corn, Bloody Birthday, The Children, Mikey, The Good Son, and especially Who Can Kill a Child? unsettling viewers with the prospect of how far they'd go to defend themselves against pint-sized homicidal maniacs. Of course, the concept was mostly the stuff of wild fantasy until school violence became an epidemic starting in the late '90s, which pretty much put a fork in the idea except for the occasional out-there variant like Orphan. One of the cheapest and craziest of the killer kid movies mostly flew under the radar when Troma released Beware! Children at Play in the late '80s, even clearing out a Cannes showing of Tromeo & Juliet by running its outrageously violent trailer beforehand. The New Jersey-shot film marked the sole directorial effort for movie jack-of-all-trades Mik Cribben, who'd worked on everything from the prestige art film Hester Street to the slasher classic Nightmare and twisted adult films like The Naughty Victorians and The Defiance of Good. The film still doesn't have a great reputation to this day, which may be due to both its unusual tone and pacing as well as the fact that, until Vinegar Syndrome's 2022 Blu-ray release, it's always looked like garbage on home video.
with his family, 
testy writer John DeWolfe (Robertson) meets up with his brother-in-law, Ross (Hamilton), a sheriff whose daughter has gone missing. Since we see a particularly salty Bible pusher get whacked in half with a scythe as soon as John pulls in, it's clear that the cannibal kid plague is spreading rapidly with the incredibly inept parents either unable or unwilling to do much about it. As the body count piles up, it's clear this will only end in tears -- and a lot of blood.
Troma circles, and they didn't even bother trying to slip it through the U.K. at the height of the video nasty panic 
(or any time since). In 1998, Troma made this one of its first DVDs out of the gate with a mediocre transfer from the same master used for VHS, with extras including a Lloyd Kaufman video intro (1m34s), a Troma tour and intelligence test, Radiation March, PSAs, merchandise pitches, and a brief video statement (3m54s) from Mik Cribben about how he was inspired by Combat Shock and made the film for about $200,000. 
of dead space but does offer some decent info about the creation of the score, the problems with using generators to 
shoot out in the middle of nowhere, the involvement of Street Trash's Jim Muro, his methods of directing the adult and child actors, and other little challenges along the way. "Why I Don’t Have Children" (51m6s) is a very in-depth making-of documentary featuring interviews with the cast and crew including special effects directors Mark Dolson and Mark Kwiatek, actors Lori Tirgrath, Thatcher Long, Anthony Cartinella, and Peter Riga, and composer Herschel Dwellingham (who pretty much steals the show here), with the participants chatting about the original shooting title of Goblin, their recruiting into the production, the eventual cult following, and the execution of the very DIY-level gore effects. Finally Cribben turns up for a new interview (15m32s) about the original 30-page treatment of the film ("the gory parts"), his attempts to shop it around, and the experience of seeing it eventually seeing it come to life through Troma.Vinegar Syndrome (Blu-ray)
Troma (DVD)
