While plenty of parents love to say that their children are the light of their lives, we've got news for you: Kids have the potential to be pretty darn creepy. Sometimes, very cute things enjoy a second, terrifying life in horror movies. Things like clowns and dolls that were once adorable are now viewed with terror because films like It (2017) and Annabelle (2014) gave them a bad rep.

Movies like Village of the Damned (1960) proved just how scary kids can actually be. With their serious demeanor and unblinking gaze, the children in that movie are guaranteed to give viewers nightmares. The film's director, Wolf Rilla, spoke to Fangoria, where he explained that while he hired plenty of child actors to fill in the roles of the film's antagonists, they didn't actually need much directing.

"I've got to confess, I've been complimented over the years for my 'direction of the children,'" said Rilla. "And who am I to scoff at compliments? In fact, there was no particular art to directing these children. The trick was entirely in the concept - the children, having no emotion, didn't have to do any acting.

The only direction that Rilla seemed to give these kids was to, quite simply, not act like children.

"The only principle from which I started was that the normal behavior of children is very restless," said the director. "They are always moving about, they just can't sit still, they fidget, their hands and legs move, they don't move at a steady pace. It is a very childlike characteristic, this inability to keep still...Now, I made these children keep very still at all times, and move very deliberately, in a very unchildlike way, in a stilted way, if you like. They sat very upright and very still; they stood very still, very deliberately. All these stilted manners are very unlike children's behavior. That is what made them rather frightening."