I have also been working of late on media constructions of childhood. One possible explanation for many of the films from the 1950s that you discuss centers around the dramatic shift in our conception of childhood and appropriate childrearing techniques. In the pre-wwII paradigm, children were assumed to be dominated by base desires and the goal of parents were to exercise strict authority to prevent them from acting on urges towards masterbation and sexual exploration. In the post-WWII paradigm, best represented by Benjamin Spock and labeled permissiveness, the belief was that children's errotic impulses could be sublimated and redirected into exploration and learning, if parents adopted a permissive and responsive mode of parenting. This is a very schematic summary of a dramatic change. What it meant was that parents were raising children by very different principles than they had been raised and there is plenty of sociological evidence suggesting anxiety about this transition. Many, such as Jules Henry, were harshly critical of this new style of parenting, suggesting that it would be likely to generate brats and monsterous children, while proponents constructed images of children as naturally innocent and benign. Both images run through the popular culture of the 1950s and may sometimes be merged within a single figure, as occurs in the figure of Dennis the Menace. The permissive paradigm came under increased attack in the 1960s and early 1970s from conservatives who blamed Spock for creating the anti-vietnam war protestors and the counterculture and calling for stronger discipline to restrain children's base desires. The permissive approach was also labor-intensive and assumed a full-time mother in the home. As economic reality shifted, its paradigm gave way to a variety of other alternatives and debates about appropriate childrearing were beginning to be intense by the 1970s, when the later horror films come out. I have mostly been looking at the 1950s films about children or for children but there might be some link between the 70s films you cite and the breakdown of permissiveness as the dominant model for talking about children and their sexuality. I offer this simply as a suggestion for further research and can provide cites for some basic sources on these shifts if you want to write me off-line. Henry Jenkins