Reviewed By: Chris Wright, Morehorror.com
Directed By: Bob Clark
Written By: Bob Clark & Alan Ormsby
Starring: Alan Ormsby (Alan), Valerie Mamches (Val), Jeff Gillen (Jeff), Anya Ormsby (Anya), Paul Cronin (Paul), Jane Daly (Terry), Roy Engleman (Roy), Robert Philip (Emerson), Bruce Solomon (Winns), Alecs Baird (Caretaker), Seth Sklarey (Orville)
Long before Bob Clark brought his name to fame in the horror community with “Black Christmas”, he put out a much lower budgeted flick in this third directorial debut with “Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things.” This movie was a pleasant little surprise to me as when I hear horror movies are “comedies” they are hits and misses. I am not the biggest fan of horror comedies thankfully this wasn’t what I thought it was at all. It was more morbid than anything else.
The movie is about a small group of unemployed actors lead by Alan (Alan Ormsby) got to a remote island to perform real satanic rituals and unearth a corpse named Orville to take back to their lodge. What they find out is the rituals they performed worked and the zombies are coming after them. This isn’t your typical zombie flick where the chaos just happens in a Romero style. This film has a morbidity that you don’t see often in horror flicks as they are actually playing around with dead people. It has some funny scenes but it is nothing like what we classify as a horror comedy today.
In classic low budget early 70s fashion, the actors are a bit over the top especially Alan. The hair and acting can be out there too. The rest are obnoxious and snobby at times like many actors can be so it has a touch of realism to it. I am under the impression these actors have a few screws lose as I have no clue how they went from acting to this level of sadistic. The way they perform in this movie gives the viewers the sense that you will like seeing their gruesome outcome and I did especially Alan the director who was the worst of them all!
The special effects are nothing elaborate but it does the movie justice. The atmosphere and setting in the film makes up for lack of gore. My favorite scene happens close to an hour into the film when the zombies finally rise from their graves. It was wonderfully atmospheric and very well done. It is a film like this that restores my faith in a low budget film. It does not take that much to make a film work especially in horror. “Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things” has that eerie realism that worked so well for “The Evil Dead.”
I can’t entirely praise this movie because one of the things it suffers from the most is the slow pace from the start. Usually I am all for pace and character development but I had an idea who these characters were from the start. It took about 45 minutes in to a 90 minute film for anything to really get going.
From campy 70s characters, Satanism, and necrophilia, this film has a mixture of it all. This movie is best suited for low budget lovers as this is a big departure from a traditional zombie flick that many are accustomed to. I give this film 4 out of 5 stars for being a pleasant change up from this genre of horror. It has a 5.5/10 on IMDB.