The Chestnut Hill Film Group (CHFG) will be screening “Who Can Kill A Child?,” a 1976 Spanish horror film directed by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, as part of its Halloween Film Frights programming. “¿Quién Puede Matar a un Niño?” is the film group’s second of eight international films this season, but the only film with a strong R rating for disturbing content.

The CHFG is excited to screen this cult classic about an English man (Lewis Fiander) and his pregnant wife (Prunella Ransome) on holiday on a remote Spanish island, where the streets are eerily deserted except for children, who are far more dangerous than they seem. While “Who Can Kill A Child?” shares some thematic qualities with Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” as well as “The Omen” and “Children of the Corn,” it is more graphic and disturbing in its approach. The mondo cut of the film opens with 10 minutes of documentary footage of real wartime deaths that is arguably more upsetting than the rest of the film. The American version cuts that opening but is still intense, nearing the realm of exploitation and grindhouse horror of the 1970s.

Directed by celebrated Spanish filmmaker Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, “¿Quién Puede Matar a un Niño?” was released just one year after Francisco Franco’s death and the year before the Pact of Forgetting was codified in the 1977 Spanish Amnesty Law. Pacto de Olvido (the Pact of Forgetting) was an informal agreement by both the right and left political parties in Spain to ensure a peaceful transition from Franco’s authoritarian dictatorship to democracy. After nearly four decades under Franco, from 1936 to 1975, the citizens of Spain agreed not to prosecute persons who had committed executions, torture and other state-sanctioned violence during the Francoist regime.

“Who Can Kill A Child?” could be viewed in relation to Franco’s mass executions and death squads, as well as the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The film was also released just one year after the end of the Vietnam War. “Who Can Kill A Child?” grapples with 40 years of civil violence at home, as well as the darkness of war throughout the world. Like many horror films, there is meaning being explored that goes beyond its premise and the more obvious genre elements.

Serrador was not new to the genre, he had hosted a popular horror anthology television series, “Historias para no dormir,” since 1966. His first feature film, “The House that Screamed,” was made under Francoist censorship, in 1969. The film is a moody gothic horror set in a school for wayward girls. The school administration’s cruelty and oppression lead to gruesome and bloody violence. This film debut, a progenitor of the slasher subgenre, inspired Dario Argento’s horror masterpiece, “Suspiria.” Positioned as just an entertaining horror film, “The House that Screamed” was a clever way for the filmmaker to criticize Spain’s oppressive nationalist government.

All cultural activities in Spain were censored under Franco, especially those evincing liberal European values or any criticism of the nationalist government. One of Spain’s most beautiful films to be released, toward the end of Franco’s regime, was Victor Erice’s “The Spirit of the Beehive” (1973) about a child’s experience of the Spanish Civil War. It barely skirted censorship by dealing mostly in symbolism and was deemed “too slow paced and arty” for most people to care to see it. It is now in the Criterion Collection and was an inspiration for Guillermo del Toro’s films “The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth.”

“Who Can Kill A Child?” is worthwhile viewing for horror fans. Woodmere is screening the Americanized “Island of Death” cut, sans war footage of actual atrocities. The film is effective enough and readers of this article will still be able to bring that context to bear on a film that was made post fascist censorship but by a director who was steeped in that climate and learned how to speak truths obliquely but viscerally.

“Who Can Kill A Child?” screens at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 27, as part of the Tuesday Nights at the Movies series at Woodmere, 9201 Germantown Ave., in Chestnut Hill. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and light refreshments will be provided prior to the screening. Tuesday Nights at the Movies screenings are free to the public, but donations are greatly appreciated.