Truly demented
Added 10/28/2009
The title, "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things," should be a tipoff to the sort of movie that is going to follow: a creepy, ghoulish, genuinely disturbing horror film with a demented sense of humor. Usually this kind of bizarre horror/comedy was the province of British filmmakers (see "Horror Hospital"), but here the strangeness is home grown. The plot concerns a thoroughly disfunctional theatrical troupe who are forced by their director (Alan Ormsby, in one of the worst performances ever captured on celuloid) to travel to a deserted island that houses an ancient graveyard, where he invokes demonic powers to raise the dead. It all appears to be an elaborate, very sick joke...until it works. This film was made for ten cents, and it shows, but somehow that doesn't hinder the effect. The direction by Benjamin "Bob" Clark (later of "Porky's" and "A Christmas Story" fame) is quite good, and the script is filled with funny lines, if not the soundest character motivations. Today's PC audiences may find offense in a couple camp characters, but even they are played for laughs and not malice. Most of the acting is surprisingly good, too, given that the cast is very young and totally unknown (only Bruce Solomon went on to achieve any kind of prominence), and the living dead makeup, while a bit crude, is very effective. The big, big weak spot is Ormsby, whose character not only has no redeeming characteristics, he has very few recognizably human ones. The part requires an older actor who can toss off the Clifton Webb-ish acerbic lines and attitudes, while providing some kind of rationale for the character's seemingly insane behavior. Instead we get someone who looks younger and more baby-faced than anyone else in the film, and who gives smirking recitations of his lines in an annoying nasal voice (to be fair to Ormsby, though, he also co-wrote the script and created the special makeup, much more successfully on both fronts). Even with that major flaw, though, there is enough entertainment value in "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things" to make for a great, trashy evening of viewing.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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An influential classic - the "IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE" of zombie films
Added 6/2/2009
Despite being almost forgotten by horror fans, CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS is, arguably, the first modern zombie movie. But thanks to a growing cult following, it's reputation is slowly building - much like its deceptively slow burning plot.
Filmed less than 48 months (!) after the release of George Romero's pre-modern zombie classic Night of the Living Dead, CHILDREN introduced many a zombie movie first - the spectacle of true full color flesh eating living dead (6 years before Romero's Dawn of the Dead); a completely unnerving electronic music soundtrack (7 years before the classic synth sounds in Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters); a spooky island setting (again, like Fulci's much-more well known later release); several very well-done night time graveyard set pieces (Return of the Living Dead, anyone?); plus a level of hyper-realistic blood and gore unseen in any previous undead release - and all this in 1972. Most importantly - unlike the largely bloodless black and white shamblers in Romero's groundbreaking Night - CHILDREN's terrifyingly aggressive flesheaters *look* and *act* like modern zombies. (In fact, zombie makeup legend Tom Savini got his start working on CHILDREN director Bob Clark's DEAD OF NIGHT, which was filmed concurrently with this film.)
CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS is also truly frightening - watch it alone on a dark night, and see if it doesn't give you some serious creeps. Many modern movie-goers are confused by it's deliberately slow pace, but that misses the point (SPOILERS AHEAD.) Unlike most zombie films, CHILDREN does not introduce the zombie element until the final act. Thus, it's structured less like a survival picture and more like an episode of the Twilight Zone (something bad's going to happen to these people, but what? When?) It's an intentionally suspenseful build-up. And the deliberately hammy quality of the acting and dialog only adds to the tension. At first, it seems unlikely that anything truly horrible could happen in a movie populated by such campy protagonists. And yet.... (I believe director Clark intended the theater troupe's banter and repore to function as a subtle and well-crafted ruse).
Alan Ormsby's character, with his garish clothing and grandiose pronouncements, is particularly annoying. But he's definitely supposed to be - in fact, Ormsby's cult-making performance is spot on, practically telegraphing the idea of "comeuppance." And there in lies the other bit of innovation here - the victims in CHILDREN *deserve* to die. They have dabbled in witchcraft, invoked Satan, and worse still, defiled the dead. Thus, they must eventually be punished. It's a theme that would repeat over and over again in the zombie genre - and unlike the more random deaths in Romero's Night, it happened here first.
There are other themes at work too, some of which are tricky to spot unless you are familiar with the period. For example, it's easy for modern viewers to dismiss the main characters as harmless with their quaint flowerchild mannerisms and Brady Bunch clothing. But this was the early seventies, a time when the hippie generation was in its death throes. With events such as the killing at Altamont and the Tate-LaBianca murders (not to mention the tragic deaths of key generational figures such as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix), there was a sinister hopeless quality surrounding young people with long hair - no longer just peace and free love. If anything this odd "theater troupe" is channeling the Manson family (there's a great bit near the beginning where Ormsby's Alan himself jokes about this).
Many of today's CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS fans first discovered it as kids while watching horror flicks on local UHF TV channels in the '70s (and '80s). So, in a way, this movie is the IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE of zombie cinema. To be fair, CHILDREN is still a low budget horror movie - it's script isn't perfect, the pacing has some issues, and it can be corny at times. But it's a must see for anyone interested in horror movie history, especially if you have an interest in the undead genre. It's also terrifically entertaining, and scary. If you dig deep enough, I'm sure you'll discover the same thing - this is where the modern zombie film started.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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A sadly overlooked, but eerie gem
Added 1/29/2009
Before he dropped Black Christmas and A Christmas Story, Bob Clark directed this little-known zombie movie in 1972 entitled Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. It is not unreasonable to expect a director's first offering to be a bit on the amateurish side...But on top of that it's a zombie flick?! This really could have gotten ugly, but fortunately it didn't. Make no mistake, this is unquestionably Z-grade stuff. However Children is a semi-impressive offering particularly due to its genuinely eerie atmosphere that saves it from being another dime-a-dozen living dead flick.
A troop of aspiring actors head off to a remote island at the insistence of their unbearably obnoxious mentor, Alan. Realizing that their only glimmer of hope in having a shot at the big time as an actor is to stick with Uncle Alan, these folks are more or less willing to do whatever this guy tells them. Leading them through a spooky, decaying cemetery in the woods, Alan orders them to exhume a corpse as he needs it to properly perform a satanic ritual to raise the dead. What they don't know is that the entire thing is an elaborate practical joke that they are about to fall right into. Needless to say they are not amused with the gag, but they do proceed to ridicule Alan after his ritual fails to raise the deceased as intended. Or so it seems. The rotting denizens of the island rise from their resting grounds to terrorize the unsuspecting group as they take refuge inside of an isolated shack.
I mostly give Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things merit for it's atmosphere. The graveyard is easily among the creepiest I have ever seen in a horror movie. Headstones chipped and worn away with age, deep within the dark woods and shrouded by a thick, sweeping mist. It just doesn't get much better than that. The soundtrack, although it is unfortunately the same thing looped endlessy, is very effective in conveying eerieness. It can best be described as ambient, electronic sounds with distant moans chiming in. Even if you only heard the soundtrack without seeing the movie, it would instantly evoke images of the zombies slowly shuffling through a graveyard.
Sounds good so far, so why only three stars? Well, it's mostly due to the fact that nothing even happens for the first hour. Other than a few shots of the exhumed corpse and aforementioned cemetery, it's largely comprised of dialogue. Much of the dialogue attempts humor with mixed results, depending on the person it could amuse just as easily as annoy. However with all this build up eventually comes the payoff, and it's in the form of a full blown zombie invasion with all the bells and whistles of Night of the Living Dead. (Although there is blood shed, don't expect a gore fest out of this.)
Overall it's a truly creepy little flick with a lot of underlying charm. Unsung clasic? Well it's definietly unsung, but classic might be stretching it a bit. If you're looking into this for the mind blowing special effects and breakneck paced action, you best look elsewhere. However for true fans of all things zombie related, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things is must-see material.
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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Witchcraft and voodoo creepfest
Added 12/18/2008
Dark and dreary atmosphere setting in a cemetary deep in the woods and you know that doom is in the future for this group of grave robbers within the first few seconds into the movie.This small budget horror from 1972 gave me the creeps and that's a hard feat to acomplish.Zombies,witchcraft and grave robbing make this a great horror movie.This guy Bob Clark(who I never heard of before this,but will look out for more features from him)did a great job with the small budget he had to work with.Every dollar put into this is unwasted as Bob Clark goes all the way with the finished product. Worth repeat viewings.If you like early 70's horror this would be a great addition to any zombie horror fan or just horror lover period.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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an oldie but a goody.
Added 10/10/2008
I got this DVD as a gift to my husband from my son. He loved it and wanted a better copy for his collection. He was very pleased with it.
Thanks.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Truly demented
Added 10/28/2009
The title, "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things," should be a tipoff to the sort of movie that is going to follow: a creepy, ghoulish, genuinely disturbing horror film with a demented sense of humor. Usually this kind of bizarre horror/comedy was the province of British filmmakers (see "Horror Hospital"), but here the strangeness is home grown. The plot concerns a thoroughly disfunctional theatrical troupe who are forced by their director (Alan Ormsby, in one of the worst performances ever captured on celuloid) to travel to a deserted island that houses an ancient graveyard, where he invokes demonic powers to raise the dead. It all appears to be an elaborate, very sick joke...until it works. This film was made for ten cents, and it shows, but somehow that doesn't hinder the effect. The direction by Benjamin "Bob" Clark (later of "Porky's" and "A Christmas Story" fame) is quite good, and the script is filled with funny lines, if not the soundest character motivations. Today's PC audiences may find offense in a couple camp characters, but even they are played for laughs and not malice. Most of the acting is surprisingly good, too, given that the cast is very young and totally unknown (only Bruce Solomon went on to achieve any kind of prominence), and the living dead makeup, while a bit crude, is very effective. The big, big weak spot is Ormsby, whose character not only has no redeeming characteristics, he has very few recognizably human ones. The part requires an older actor who can toss off the Clifton Webb-ish acerbic lines and attitudes, while providing some kind of rationale for the character's seemingly insane behavior. Instead we get someone who looks younger and more baby-faced than anyone else in the film, and who gives smirking recitations of his lines in an annoying nasal voice (to be fair to Ormsby, though, he also co-wrote the script and created the special makeup, much more successfully on both fronts). Even with that major flaw, though, there is enough entertainment value in "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things" to make for a great, trashy evening of viewing.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
An influential classic - the "IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE" of zombie films
Added 6/2/2009
Despite being almost forgotten by horror fans, CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS is, arguably, the first modern zombie movie. But thanks to a growing cult following, it's reputation is slowly building - much like its deceptively slow burning plot.
Filmed less than 48 months (!) after the release of George Romero's pre-modern zombie classic Night of the Living Dead, CHILDREN introduced many a zombie movie first - the spectacle of true full color flesh eating living dead (6 years before Romero's Dawn of the Dead); a completely unnerving electronic music soundtrack (7 years before the classic synth sounds in Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters); a spooky island setting (again, like Fulci's much-more well known later release); several very well-done night time graveyard set pieces (Return of the Living Dead, anyone?); plus a level of hyper-realistic blood and gore unseen in any previous undead release - and all this in 1972. Most importantly - unlike the largely bloodless black and white shamblers in Romero's groundbreaking Night - CHILDREN's terrifyingly aggressive flesheaters *look* and *act* like modern zombies. (In fact, zombie makeup legend Tom Savini got his start working on CHILDREN director Bob Clark's DEAD OF NIGHT, which was filmed concurrently with this film.)
CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS is also truly frightening - watch it alone on a dark night, and see if it doesn't give you some serious creeps. Many modern movie-goers are confused by it's deliberately slow pace, but that misses the point (SPOILERS AHEAD.) Unlike most zombie films, CHILDREN does not introduce the zombie element until the final act. Thus, it's structured less like a survival picture and more like an episode of the Twilight Zone (something bad's going to happen to these people, but what? When?) It's an intentionally suspenseful build-up. And the deliberately hammy quality of the acting and dialog only adds to the tension. At first, it seems unlikely that anything truly horrible could happen in a movie populated by such campy protagonists. And yet.... (I believe director Clark intended the theater troupe's banter and repore to function as a subtle and well-crafted ruse).
Alan Ormsby's character, with his garish clothing and grandiose pronouncements, is particularly annoying. But he's definitely supposed to be - in fact, Ormsby's cult-making performance is spot on, practically telegraphing the idea of "comeuppance." And there in lies the other bit of innovation here - the victims in CHILDREN *deserve* to die. They have dabbled in witchcraft, invoked Satan, and worse still, defiled the dead. Thus, they must eventually be punished. It's a theme that would repeat over and over again in the zombie genre - and unlike the more random deaths in Romero's Night, it happened here first.
There are other themes at work too, some of which are tricky to spot unless you are familiar with the period. For example, it's easy for modern viewers to dismiss the main characters as harmless with their quaint flowerchild mannerisms and Brady Bunch clothing. But this was the early seventies, a time when the hippie generation was in its death throes. With events such as the killing at Altamont and the Tate-LaBianca murders (not to mention the tragic deaths of key generational figures such as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix), there was a sinister hopeless quality surrounding young people with long hair - no longer just peace and free love. If anything this odd "theater troupe" is channeling the Manson family (there's a great bit near the beginning where Ormsby's Alan himself jokes about this).
Many of today's CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS fans first discovered it as kids while watching horror flicks on local UHF TV channels in the '70s (and '80s). So, in a way, this movie is the IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE of zombie cinema. To be fair, CHILDREN is still a low budget horror movie - it's script isn't perfect, the pacing has some issues, and it can be corny at times. But it's a must see for anyone interested in horror movie history, especially if you have an interest in the undead genre. It's also terrifically entertaining, and scary. If you dig deep enough, I'm sure you'll discover the same thing - this is where the modern zombie film started.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
|
A sadly overlooked, but eerie gem
Added 1/29/2009
Before he dropped Black Christmas and A Christmas Story, Bob Clark directed this little-known zombie movie in 1972 entitled Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. It is not unreasonable to expect a director's first offering to be a bit on the amateurish side...But on top of that it's a zombie flick?! This really could have gotten ugly, but fortunately it didn't. Make no mistake, this is unquestionably Z-grade stuff. However Children is a semi-impressive offering particularly due to its genuinely eerie atmosphere that saves it from being another dime-a-dozen living dead flick.
A troop of aspiring actors head off to a remote island at the insistence of their unbearably obnoxious mentor, Alan. Realizing that their only glimmer of hope in having a shot at the big time as an actor is to stick with Uncle Alan, these folks are more or less willing to do whatever this guy tells them. Leading them through a spooky, decaying cemetery in the woods, Alan orders them to exhume a corpse as he needs it to properly perform a satanic ritual to raise the dead. What they don't know is that the entire thing is an elaborate practical joke that they are about to fall right into. Needless to say they are not amused with the gag, but they do proceed to ridicule Alan after his ritual fails to raise the deceased as intended. Or so it seems. The rotting denizens of the island rise from their resting grounds to terrorize the unsuspecting group as they take refuge inside of an isolated shack.
I mostly give Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things merit for it's atmosphere. The graveyard is easily among the creepiest I have ever seen in a horror movie. Headstones chipped and worn away with age, deep within the dark woods and shrouded by a thick, sweeping mist. It just doesn't get much better than that. The soundtrack, although it is unfortunately the same thing looped endlessy, is very effective in conveying eerieness. It can best be described as ambient, electronic sounds with distant moans chiming in. Even if you only heard the soundtrack without seeing the movie, it would instantly evoke images of the zombies slowly shuffling through a graveyard.
Sounds good so far, so why only three stars? Well, it's mostly due to the fact that nothing even happens for the first hour. Other than a few shots of the exhumed corpse and aforementioned cemetery, it's largely comprised of dialogue. Much of the dialogue attempts humor with mixed results, depending on the person it could amuse just as easily as annoy. However with all this build up eventually comes the payoff, and it's in the form of a full blown zombie invasion with all the bells and whistles of Night of the Living Dead. (Although there is blood shed, don't expect a gore fest out of this.)
Overall it's a truly creepy little flick with a lot of underlying charm. Unsung clasic? Well it's definietly unsung, but classic might be stretching it a bit. If you're looking into this for the mind blowing special effects and breakneck paced action, you best look elsewhere. However for true fans of all things zombie related, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things is must-see material.
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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