YMMV / Beware! Children at Play

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: There's a part in the movie where Cleo is restrained by Ross (who is her uncle), and for whatever reason, she gets aroused and asks him to touch her. He doesn't, utterly confused by her request, and the advances never go past that nor are they mentioned agian.
• It Was His Sled: The film is generally only known for its ending, a graphic finale where all of the children are graphically killed off on-screen. Horror films about evil children are very common, but even the most graphic films of that type avoid showing their deaths.
• Narm: Not a whole lot, which is surprising given the poor acting and who distributes it, but there are some moments.
  • When Cleo gets turned on out of nowhere, and asks her uncle if he can touch her. Her actress seems almost as baffled as the audience is at that moment.
  • The psychic lady's bizarre yell when the children slit her throat, as well as her actress casually licking her lips as it happens. The latter only occurs in full-frame prints, it’s cropped out in the widescreen Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray.
  • A kid wearing a New York Yankees cap is confronted, with two guns pointed directly at his head. His final words? A simple, Elliot Moore-esque "No".
• Nightmare Fuel: The finale, Special Effect Failures aside, is pretty chilling, mainly because you're watching children get graphically killed for nearly 5 minutes.
  • The film's idea is unsettling, even if its execution doesn't do it justice. Imagine if you had a child, and you happened to be living in the film's town. One little mistake and, at best, your child could be kidnapped, or at worst, they could be brainwashed to become a cannibal...
• The Scrappy: The psychic lady, if only because she never stops saying "deary". Chances are you probably won't mind it when she dies.
• Special Effect Failure: Even for Troma standards, this movie's special effects are quite poor.
  • If you watch when Glenn's father gets caught in the bear trap at the start, you can see that he's deliberately putting his foot into it.
  • The effects in the infamous finale range from "somewhat convincing" to "very fake". The children take a bit to drop to the ground moments after being shot or hit, and you can see a number of their "corpses" still breathing.
  • The kid with the Yankees cap suddenly transforms into a rock with a clay head when he meets his demise.
  • When Dale runs into the spiked log and is impaled, the shot of her falling over shows that the spikes poking through her back are glued there, as they move when she moves.
• Tearjerker: During the finale, one of the children runs to his mother for protection, having seemingly regained his sanity. As he screams "mama!" and runs into his mother's arms, his mother stabs him in the back, killing him.

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