Child deaths in movies

On the way home from work today my brain randomly latched onto how the deaths of children are portrayed in movies, assuming such deaths are portrayed at all. The way I see it, we consider the death of a child to be of greater import, and more disturbing, than that of an adult, or even a teenager. After all, we see teenagers get whacked all the time in slasher flicks, but never pre-teen children. Yet, sometimes childrens' deaths are portrayed in movies, though how they are portrayed varies. I would say that, usually, it's as a dramatic element which leads to some sort of conflict. For example, a married couple's child dies and they have trouble reconciling themselves to the fact that he or she is gone. The marriage starts falling apart and this provides the dramatic hook that drives the plot.

But occasionally a child's death is portrayed for the shock value. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I came up with three movies which I think fit this description.

"The Beastmaster" (1982)
In this low-budget, but generally well-done sword and sorcery flick, the main bad guy is Maax (pronounced may-ax), played by Rip Torn. He is the leader of a religious cult whose members are fanatically devoted, willing even to commit suicide at his command. During one scene, he is presiding over a worship ritual and commands his minions to go out into the crowd and bring him a child. The first child is brought to him, he raises the boy above his head, and then throws him into a large bonfire as a sacrifice to his god. The second child is saved by the eagle companion of the titular hero and much derring-do ensues.

In this case, the death of the child serves a purpose in showing that Maax is irredeemably evil and ruthless. It was still somewhat gratuitous in that the point could have been made almost as well by having the first child be the one that was saved.

"Maximum Overdrive" (1986)
In this mediocre thriller written and directed by Stephen King, the machines of the world go on a rampage after the earth passes through the tail of a comet. The first part of the movie deals with how the machines go nuts and start killing everyone they can. One scene shows a little league baseball team whose coach is killed by a soft drink vending machine that fires a can at him so hard it visibly dents his head. One of the kids is out in a grassy area when a rampaging steamroller crashes through some nearby bushes and runs him over.

This one pretty much only served to show that the machines were indiscriminate in their killing. It didn't really advance the plot any.

"The Blob" (1988)
This remake of the 1958 original is understandably more gory and violent than its predecessor. During one scene, the main female character and her kid brother (I think), along with the kid's young friend, are trying to escape the Blob which has just consumed a large portion of a movie theater's audience. They're underground in a flooded room of some kind and the friend is trailing behind the other two when he is suddenly yanked backward and under the water. A few seconds later he reappears, engulfed by the translucent blob, and is being visibly dissolved and absorbed by the creature.

Of the three, this one shocked me the most as it was the most obviously violent. The other two involved fairly quick deaths which were not graphically portrayed but this one was much more protracted and you saw the kid as he was being consumed. It was also pretty gratuitous although it did serve a small purpose. After he watched his friend die, the kid brother said that he'd never sneak into the theater again.

For the most part, though, the unwritten taboo against showing the violent deaths of children is observed in the movies and on television. That's probably part of the reason it seems so shocking when a movie actually does show such a death. Still, I hope I never get to the point where such a portrayal fails to shock and disturb me.