Suspense movie about bad parents with bad kids(might have been a tv movie)

[Damien Valley]

I think this was a TV movie from the 80s but it may have come out in theaters.  I saw it on TV in the early 90s.

It is basically about a family and I think they have four kids.  The two older kids are bad or at least the parents think they are bad and make them live out in a shed or something in the backyard with a barbed wire fence or a fence made out of barbed wire going around it or something.  I think there is a skull and cross bone sign on the fenced made out of barbed wire.

I think the two older kids are a boy and a girl.

In one part I remember one of the younger kids waves or something to one of the older kids and one of the parents tell the younger kid to get away from there.

Near the end of the movie I think the two older kids get out and I guess it turns out the parents are crazy and they try to hunt down the kids in the house.  I think the dad chases them with an axe.

I'm not real sure but I believe it was based off a true story because at the end of the movie it tells what happened to the kids.


The older two kids are like teens while the younger ones are around probably 8 and 9.


Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

[Skull]

wow sounds like a crazy story from the 80's to 90's although it sounds "too good" It seems like a mix of Flowers in the Attic and The People Under the Stairs. (Although from my understanding Was Craven was going to make Flowers and the deal broke... which may be the reason why both stories are simular except people is focused with a thrill ride vs Flowers a more drama story.)

Although neither story (as I remember forces the children to live in the shed) so it's quite likely this story your looking for is a rip-off from Flowers/People.


I was looking at possible rip-offs and having no luck in finding such movie.


I did find a movie called Army Brats [Schatjes!] (1984) that may match the movie your talking about, although I have not seen it but from my understanding it's a comedy. The ending of the trailer seemed to match what your looking for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1nMLT5FZFs

[Damien Valley]

That may be it but it's really hard to tell since I haven't seen it in a long time.  I don't think it is unless the movie was dubbed in English.

I don't think the movie I'm thinking of is quite that old but I'm not sure.

[Damien Valley]

I just watched the trailer and some other parts on youtube.  I can't tell if it is the same movie I'm thinking of or not.  There is a very strong possibility that it is though from what I've seen.  If it is I must have watched the dubbed version and had no idea that it was a dark comedy because I remember it as a drama/suspense.

[Skull]

The movie seems to be dubbed.

The move was made in 1984 and it's likely to make a few showings on TV in the early 1990's.

One reviewer also describes the movie as:

Schatjes starts blackly comic and veers into action-thriller territory and finally ends up with a horror sequence, homaging Kubrick's The Shining.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088050/

I do believe it's worth looking into... :)


It also looks like WB [Warner Home Video] has released the movie on VHS so my gut is telling my this is the movie your looking for...

[Damien Valley]

Yeah I'm pretty sure your right.  I'll have to find a copy of the dubbed version to make sure.  thanks

[BoyScoutKevin]

Actually, I never heard of this film. Maybe because it was a Dutch film. And apparently it was a big hit, both commercially and critically, when it played in the Netherlands. It was such a hit, that two years later, in 1986, it spawned a sequel called Schatjes 2 or in English "Mama Is Boos!"