FINAL ANSWER

Yes, without hesitation. Now ask us a hard one.


Or maybe it’s a rhetorical question. Anyway, we’re kidding, because if we were willing to kill children, we’d have to start with ourselves. This 1976 film, which discussed the dilemma of child murder much more grippingly than you’d expect for a low budget potboiler, was originally a Spanish production called ¿Quien puede matar un niño? Basically, a couple end up stranded on an island of possessed, homicidal children. There used to be other adults there, but they’re all dead as the film opens because—you guessed it—they dared not kill a child. Wimps.

On a side note, various web sources claim there’s a curse associated with this film. Allegedly, a dozen of the cast members—including lead actress Prunella Ransome—died within six months of each other. We’re highly dubious of that claim, and a quick scan of IMDB confirmed only three deaths around the same time. That doesn’t mean the curse legend isn’t true, but we’re too lazy to do the heavy research on this today. We’ll look into it later, maybe.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1978—Giorgi Markov Assassinated

Bulgarian dissident Giorgi Markov is assassinated in a scene right out of a spy novel. As he’s waiting at a bus stop near Waterloo Bridge in London, he’s jabbed in the calf with an umbrella. The man holding the umbrella apologizes and walks away, but he is in reality a Bulgarian hired killer who has just injected a ricin pellet into Markov, who develops a high fever and dies three days later.

1901—McKinley Fatally Shot

Polish-born anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies September 12, and Czolgosz is later executed.

1939—U.S. Declares Neutrality in WW II

The Neutrality Acts, which had been passed in the 1930s when the United States considered foreign conflicts undesirable, prompts the nation to declare neutrality in World War II. The policy ended with the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941, which allowed the U.S. to sell, lend or give war materials to allied nations.

1972—Munich Massacre

During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, a paramilitary group calling itself Black September takes members of the Israeli olympic team hostage. Eventually the group, which represents the first glimpse of terrorists for most people in the Western world, kill eleven of the hostages along with one West German police officer during a rescue attempt by West German police that devolves into a firefight. Five of the eight members of Black September are also killed.

1957—U.S. National Guard Used Against Students

The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, mobilizes the National Guard to prevent nine African-American students known as the Little Rock Nine from enrolling in high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.

This awesome cover art is by Tommy Shoemaker, a new talent to us, but not to more experienced paperback illustration aficionados.
Ten covers from the popular French thriller series Les aventures de Zodiaque.
Sam Peffer cover art for Jonathan Latimer's Solomon's Vineyard, originally published in 1941.

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