{"id":508,"date":"2015-10-06T07:19:59","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T12:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lasttheater.cnjradio.com\/?p=508"},"modified":"2017-05-04T09:41:56","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T14:41:56","slug":"children-shouldnt-play-with-dead-things-1972-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lasttheater.cnjradio.com\/?p=508","title":{"rendered":"Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1972) – Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When you think of the elements that make up a typical zombie horror movie, what comes to mind? Zombies, naturally, but what else? Maybe a cemetery where the dead rise from their graves? A group of diverse people, usually fairly young, trapped in an old house that they have to try to barricade? Probably some cheap makeup effects? Well, that\u2019s what I usually think of. <\/span>Children Shouldn\u2019t Play With Dead Things<\/span><\/i> fits my image of a typical zombie movie perfectly, and even though it\u2019s not the most well made zombie movie in existence, it has a charm that has made an indelible impression on me and makes me want to keep coming back to it year after year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Children Shouldn\u2019t Play With Dead Things<\/span><\/i> was directed by Bob Clark, the same man who would later direct <\/span>Porky\u2019s <\/span><\/i>and the Christmas classics <\/span>A Christmas Story <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Black Christmas<\/span><\/i>. With a resume like that, one can imagine that there would be a fair amount of comedy in this movie. There is, but the horror, when the movie gets to it, is taken pretty seriously.<\/span><\/p>\n

The story follows a group of young theater actors and their director, Alan, as they take a trip to a wooded island in the dark of night. Alan is not a nice person. He uses his power as director of the troupe to manipulate everyone into doing whatever he wants, repeatedly threatening to fire them if they refuse, and what Alan wants to do is decidedly reprehensible. His plan is to spend the night at an old abandoned house on the island and play around with satanic spells using a dug-up corpse at a nearby cemetery. His main goal seems to be to scare everyone and make them all feel as uncomfortable as possible, but when his spell to raise the dead doesn\u2019t seem to work, he gets genuinely upset and forces the group to take the corpse of a man named Orville back to the house. Alan might have acted prematurely though, because his spell might not have been a dud after all.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Alan
Alan leading his troupe. Alan’s a jerk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Everyone in <\/span>Children Shouldn\u2019t Play With Dead Things<\/span><\/i> is a comedian. Well, except for one girl, Anya, who is kind of spacey, but otherwise they are all very sarcastic and banter back and forth throughout the first two-thirds of the movie. Most of their jokes are kind of groan-worthy, but in a fun kind of way that makes the movie enjoyable as everything is being set into place. The sarcasm does kind of wear on your nerves after a while, but it works well in Alan\u2019s case because we\u2019re supposed to dislike him. While others might poke fun at him a little, Alan is quick to respond and his jokes are all very mean-spirited and get worse as the night moves along.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even though there are a lot of jokes and there are some genuinely funny moments, I would be hesitant to say this movie is a full-blown comedy. The sets and atmosphere are sufficiently creepy, so when most of the characters are joking around it feels like they\u2019re doing it more out of nervousness than anything else. It\u2019s like when people laugh after a big scare when watching a horror movie. They\u2019re not really willing to accept that they\u2019re scared and are reacting the only way they know how, with humor. When you look at it this way, it makes perfect sense that everyone in the movie laughs even at the bad jokes, and it helps the audience accept them.<\/p>\n

\"Alan
Alan giving Orville a shoulder rub as he sarcastically responds to someone.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Later on in the movie the jokes happen less and less as everyone, except Alan, gets more scared and disgusted with what\u2019s going on. There is a nice, slow progression from light-hearted to tense as Alan demands more and more of his actors and they begin to get fed up with his antics. It does take quite a while for the zombie action to start, but by the time the first rotten hand reaches up through the dirt, the audience should be very eager for it. <\/span>Children Shouldn\u2019t Play With Dead Things<\/span><\/i> is surprisingly good at building tension. Also, the time spent building up to the later part of the movie helps define the characters so the audience should have a very good feel for how all of the them will react when their lives are in danger.<\/span><\/p>\n

The movie was made with a low budget, so not all of the zombies look all that great, but they\u2019re not terrible either. Some of the makeup work is better than others, but overall I like the look of the zombies. They\u2019re the classic, slow moving, arms stretched out in front of them type of zombie with rotten faces and filthy clothes. Some look like they\u2019re obviously wearing masks while others just have some pale makeup and blood, but it\u2019s not really all that distracting.<\/p>\n

\"The
The zombies are plentiful and relentless.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Speaking of blood, there\u2019s not a whole lot of it in the movie. There\u2019s certainly some, especially when we see the aftermath of an attack, but the zombie attacks themselves often feel more claustrophobic than bloody and brutal. People tend to disappear into a horde rather than be ripped apart, and there\u2019s nothing wrong with that.<\/p>\n

I think for me, <\/span>Children Shouldn\u2019t Play With Dead Things<\/span><\/i> reminds of why I like zombie movies so much. It came out in 1972, just four years after <\/span>Night of the Living Dead<\/span><\/i>, so I would say that <\/span>Children Shouldn\u2019t Play With Dead Things<\/span><\/i> is part of the reason why we tend to think of spooky graveyards and barricaded houses when we think of zombie movies. \u00a0Sure, its story has a lot in common with Romero\u2019s groundbreaking movie and some might see it as unoriginal, but I like to think of it as classic. There\u2019s no reason to mess with a classic formula.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"It
It doesn’t get much more classic than a hand reaching up from a grave.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

RATING<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

6\u00a0–\u00a0Pretty Good<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

Personally, I love this movie, but I understand that others might not see the same charm in it. If you like low budget zombie movies, then you have no reason\u00a0not to watch this. Others might not enjoy it as much, but I think the characters, especially Alan, will grab the attention of many movie watchers. He’s a great guy to hate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RECOMMENDATION FOR FURTHER WATCHING<\/u><\/b><\/h3>\n

Dead of Night<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0(1974)
\n\"\"Dead of Night<\/em> (also known at\u00a0Death\u00a0Dream<\/em>) was also directed by Bob Clark and written by Alan Ormsby (who played Alan and co-wrote the script for\u00a0Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things<\/em>). It’s about a young man who is shot and killed in Vietnam only to come back as a sort of vampiric zombie. There’s horror in it, but it’s also about how Andy’s family is affected by everything that is happening.<\/p>\n

Watch the\u00a0Dead of Night\u00a0<\/em>trailer.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DETAILS<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

English Title: Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things<\/em>
\n<\/em>Year: 1972
\nDirector:\u00a0Bob Clark
\nWriter:\u00a0Alan Ormsby, Bob Clark
\nFeatured Cast:\u00a0Alan Ormsby, Valerie Mamches, Jeff Gillen, Anya Ormsby, Paul Cronin, Jane Daly, Seth Sklarey
\nRun Time: 87\u00a0minutes<\/p>\n

Availability:\u00a0Available on DVD<\/p>\n

Watch the Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>trailer.<\/a><\/p>\n

REFERENCES<\/span>
\nhttp:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0068370\/<\/a> (IMDB page)<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things a classic of the zombie genre, or a derivative piece of low budget horror?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442,5],"tags":[245,238,239,237,235,246,247,243,241,248,242,244,240,236],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-review","category-review","tag-245","tag-alan-ormsby","tag-anya-ormsby","tag-bob-clark","tag-children-shouldnt-play-with-dead-things","tag-dead-of-night","tag-death-dream","tag-jane-daly","tag-jeff-gillen","tag-night-of-the-living-dead","tag-paul-cronin","tag-seth-sklarey","tag-valerie-mamches","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lasttheater.cnjradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lasttheater.cnjradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lasttheater.cnjradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lasttheater.cnjradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lasttheater.cnjradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/lasttheater.cnjradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":523,"href":"http:\/\/lasttheater.cnjradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions\/523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lasttheater.cnjradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lasttheater.cnjradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lasttheater.cnjradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lasttheater.cnjradio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}