Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.
When you get to the bottom of a giant ranked list like the They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They? list, you get one of three things. The Zombies list essentially ranks films by their appearance on other compiled lists of horror films. So, at the bottom, one possibility is a newer movie that simply hasn’t been added to a lot of other “best of” lists. True to form, the bottom few hundred positions are home to most of the listed films from the last few years. Another possibility is a film that is only tangentially related to horror, meaning it won’t show up on a lot of “purer” lists. The third possibility is a film that isn’t that good, and so a lot of people don’t include it. Sadly, Bloody Birthday falls into the third type. The real question is why the hell this thing showed up on TCM.
Here’s the pitch—a trio of children are born virtually simultaneously during a solar eclipse. Now, according to the movie, this means that their astrological readings are off the charts weird, and in Bloody Birthday, astrology is a real thing. Something about Saturn, apparently. Anyway, for no other explained reason, a few days before they all turn 10, all three children become homicidal maniacs and start killing off people around their town.
