A group of children, and one supervising nun, survive a car crash and end up at a house where a group of bickering adults have assembled for the time being. The adults are trying to make business plans, as well as sorting out some tensions between family/friends, and the arrival of the kids proves to be a welcome distraction for their own troubles. Unfortunately, the children are, and there isn’t really any other way to put this, murderous psychopaths. Initially trying to be sneaky and secret with their plans, they eventually reveal their true natures. The shocked adults know what must be done, but it might be too late for them already.
Written by John Durren, who also has an onscreen role as the child-like adult named Ralph (the kind of sensitive and nuanced performance you might expect in this kind of film *ahem*), Devil Times Five has a suitably childish glee running through it, a real sense of the adults being boring and tired out while the kids have much more energy and creativity, even if they happen to use that creativity to come up with ways to kill people.
Director Sean MacGregor might have done some good work, but we'll never really know. Fired after a few weeks of filming, his job was given to David Sheldon, who went uncredited. The end result is a film that aims for enjoyably sleazy strangeness and uncomfortable moments ahead of any real artistry. This is a down 'n' dirty movie, one determined to showcase the killer kids as maniacs with an intelligence beyond their years, and it works superbly in that regard.
The acting ranges from awful to passable, although Leif Garrett stands out, playing the nominal leader of the children, but that also just adds to the fun. Sorrell Brooke, playing Harvey Beckman, is involved in a number of the best scenes, usually dealing with Garrett's character, and Carolyn Stellar is having a ball as the kind of character you'd love to watch be catty and scheming in some glossy soap opera. It's not worth going through all of the cast list, but everyone is at least in line with the material.
If you want interesting psychological insights or layered social commentary then this is not the film for you. But if you want to see children planning to kill people in increasingly implausible ways (and we're talking about a film in which someone owns a tank full of piranhas) then this might just hit the spot. I started this with very low expectations. I ended it with a big smile on my face.
7/10
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