Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Roedy Green The music was so corny I almost abandoned the video immediately. It was extremely bad and amateurish. It almost makes the film unwatchable, like something in a high school video project.The video is broken into 10-minute segments, each with opening and closing credits and a recap of the previous segment. This is tedious.The science is pretty shaky, but at one point went completely off the rails. They decide some stones point up permanently aligned with a star in Ursa Major. Vertical stones in England would never align so far north. Further, no English stones would be permanently aligned anywhere because the earth rotates and revolves around the sun.In general, the science is utterly embarrassing. It would be too silly even for an Austin Powers movie.I think the writer went to a math library and grabbed snippets and formulae at random to include in the script. Given that there is so much of this and that it is central to the plot, I think they could have hired a real (or at least student) mathematician to compose some plausible dialogue.The movie is carried by Matthew, a scientist's ten-year-old son. He is unusually intelligent, curious and spunky. He is a considerably better actor than any of the adults in the movie. The acting, in general, has a stagy feel with lots of contrived exposition.They show you something strange, then let you sit with it for a long time before giving their explanation. It does a good job that way of building suspense. The way they build unease is by showing you very ordinary things, but that just should not happen, like a giant stone appearing in a different place. There is almost nothing that would count as a special effect, other than possibly a dissolve.Despite all the negative things I said about the movie, it was engaging. I cared about the characters. It was creepy. The very last reel was high camp. I expected the villain to play Toccata and Fugue on an organ.

emuir-1 This TV serial aired thirty three years ago and brought back a lot of memories of the originality of UK children's TV in those days. It is probably a little too "talky" for today's audiences and it does require one's whole attention. Back then, there were many TV serials, books and films dealing with the occult or prechristian pagan themes, and like murder mysteries, they were invariably set in picture postcard English villages, where everyone seems to be addicted to afternoon tea with cakes, and which makes one wonder just WHAT is going on in those little villages. Many, if not all, villages date from ancient times, especially if they are near a river or water source, and thanks to the laws which prevented people moving away from the parish or estate that they were tied to, the villagers' ancestry goes back as far as the village. Old customs and practices linger on, which adds to the mystery and folk lore. Unless you have visited Avebury and the general area, you can have no conception of how huge these monuments are, and how many circles and long barrows (neolithic burial chambers) there are. We know next to nothing about their builders and for what purpose they were built, which leaves room for fanciful imagination. We do know that what remains today is but a fraction of what once stood. Even the Avebury Circle and Stonehenge are mere fragments of what used to be.As I grew up listening to Journey Into Space and the Quatermass Experiment on radio, the time warp and parallel universe themes were no surprise. Throw in a bit of pagan witchcraft and I was on familiar ground. Without giving away any of the plot (everyone else has done that for me) I cannot help wondering whether the creators of LOST watched this show in their youth, as there are many similarities. So many in fact that I would go so far as to say that the finale of LOST will show that the island was on a circular parallel time where events kept repeating themselves.I would have given this show a rating of 10 for sheer originality, but the lack of close captions hampered me, being age related hearing impaired, and I could not follow the plot at all. Had it not been for reviews on the Internet I would not have had a clue what was going on. I am surprised how many viewers found it scary, as I did not find it so, but that is perhaps because I could not hear the actors very clearly.

Kenesay10 This was a movie that US Nickelodeon channel used to show when I was young (and Nickelodeon channel was new). I loved the movie then because it was so unlike any other movies I had seen. Would definitely recommend it (it is now available on DVD but is fairly expensive for US markets).When I had a chance to go to England for school, I actually went to Avebury and saw the stone circle (which is older than Stonehenge). The movie itself is a nice blend of factual history, science, science fiction and eerie music.This is one of those lost gems that might be well worth another look!

gnb If ever any one ITV region was the head of the pack when it came to producing children's TV, then HTV West, on the merit of "Children of the Stones" alone, would be it.Broadcast in 1977, COTS is a 7-part fantasy series set in the fictional village of Milbury. Starring a pre-Blake's 7 Gareth Thomas and 70s telly stalwart Iain Cuthbertson, this delightful little series concerns a scientist and his son's attempts to discover the secret power behind the Milbury stone circle.This is an incredibly eerie sci-fi series and to call it a kids show is a bit of an insult. It is a well crafted tale, brought to the screen with some very adept direction and a remarkably haunting musical score.The performances from the cast are uniformly excellent and special praise must got to the talented youngsters involved.If you can get a hold of this tremendous series then I can highly recommend it. However, it has been deleted on video in the UK for some time.COTS is kids TV at its best - thoughtfully written, well acted, amazingly directed and a delightful, summery, eerie masterpiece. Because of its folksy score and pagan references COTS has been referred to as "The Wicker Man" for kids - it could be called a lot worse.