Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

 I had the chance to rewatch Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972) on the new version of Creature Features this last weekend. I'm going to be honest, I have avoided rewatching this film since the first time I saw it back in the early 80s. I saw this for the first time on The Ghoul's Saturday afternoon show, and I remember watching it on a tiny black and white 13 inch TV in my bedroom, and it scared the living hell out of me. This was my first exposure to the Zombie genre.... some people had Romero's films... I had this one. 

Its still pretty damn scary, to be honest. Not just from the perspective of the living dead rising to eat people, but from the perspective that the villain of the piece is just a horrible human being, running things through fear, and messing with forces he doesn't understand.... which really stands in for a large number of people, especially in politics, today. 

What we have, aside from a zombie apocalypse, is an egotistical theatrical director, Alan (played by Alan Ormsby) who really is just the worst human being... Alan makes lewd comments to his actresses and implies he intends to exact sexual favors from them, he talks down to his actors, insults them, threatens them, and even patronizes them by calling them his 'children', he delights in making them all uncomfortable, but threatens them into compliance with his whims, he conducts cruel practical jokes on them, and continues to push the boundaries of taste even when the others object, he makes himself out to be the smartest person in the room, when he's clearly not, he's willing to sacrifice anyone else for his own benefit.... hmm... who does this sound like in the political/business world?

Perhaps to drive home this point, there is a sequence at the end of the film where he and Anya are the only characters left and they are being backed slowly up the stairs by a zombie horde. Alan is literally cowering behind Anya, who has been one of the few people arguing for respect of the dead in the film. Alan finally shoves Anya from behind into the Zombies…. And the reaction of the zombies is one of the funniest parts of the film, because rather than instantly tearing her apart, they just stop for a moment and all turn to look at Alan with an expression that can only be read as “Dude! what the hell is wrong with you?” Anya is passed to the back of the crowd where she is presumably dispatched, but the ones in the front continue after Alan.

While this may be a bit of a spoiler, he is LITERALLY the last person to die in the film, and even the nice, helpful people that try to save anyone else in the film all die horrible first. In fact, one of those scenes is one which stuck with me from my first viewing of it. One young man offers to sprint to the boat and get help for them. So everyone draws the zombies to one side of the shack, and he goes out the back door. When the others retreat back inside, and lock the front door, they hear a keening sound, and look out the back door to see he got about 10 feet before a zombie took him down and is currently feasting on him. A heroic act... which fails utterly. That image, of the 'hero' lying there while a single zombie eats him just terrified me and stuck with me. It may be that scene alone which makes me afraid of zombie movies to this day.

The downbeat ending is de rigeur of course, but in this case... The world is doomed due to Alan's ego and poor taste. The zombies board the boat to sail over to Miami.  Thats the other scene that stuck with me. 

This film was directed by Bob Clark... Bob Clark went on to a fairly prestigious film career which included directing Black Christmas (1974), Murder By Decree (1979), Porky's (1981), Porky's II (1983), A Christmas Story (1983), and Turk 182 (1985) among others. He apparently wanted to film a reboot of this film, and was in the planning stages when he was, unfortunately, killed in a car accident in 2007.

Alan Ormsby went on to a fairly decent career as a screenwriter, with credits such as Deathdream (1974), My Bodyguard (!980), Cat People (1980), Porky's II (1983), and The Substitute (1996). 

Put into context of the time it was released, this is one of the earliest 'living dead' films in the vein of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). 1972 also saw the release of Garden of the Dead, and Tomb of the Blind Dead but the flesh eating Romero style zombie really wasn't all that common just yet. 1973 and especially 1974 saw the release of a few more of this type to really get the ball rolling. In those years we get Return of the Blind Dead (1973) and The Ghost Galleon (1974) to continue the Blind Dead series, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (AKA Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) (1974), and The Corpse Eaters (1974). Sugar Hill (1974) was the last gasp of the voodoo style zombie.

The weird thing about this film is how fast it seems to move... while at the same time, putting off the raising of the zombies. I guess its a credit to the script that it holds your interest for the entire time, albeit watching how horrible Alan is, and seeing exactly how low he is willing to go with his increasingly unfunny 'pranks'. The zombies aren't active until probably the last third of the film, but once they get started, they waste little time. 

The story is essentially the same as Night of the Living Dead (1968), in that our survivors are holed up in an old house besieged by flesh-eating zombies, however, despite the infighting among Romero's crew, they work together like a well-oiled machine compared to the idiots in this film. Alan's pompous proclamations (including invoking something he calls 'primal juncture' to try and bed the new starlet Terry.... he is TRYING to use the term Prima Nocte, or Droit du Seigneur, but botches it horrible... He also seems to mix it up with the term ‘primogeniture’ which is the medieval right of the first born son to inherit his father’s titles and lands.  Is this bad screenwriting, or a subtle clue that he is making things up as he goes, and is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is?), Anya's genuinely crazy new age babbling (Anya played by Alan Ormsby's real life wife Anya Ormsby), Jeff (Jeff Gillen) is ALMOST as disrespectful as Alan, and goes along with his every gag... These are not people you would trust to go out an buy coffee, let alone help you survive a zombie apocalypse.

Its billed as a 'Horror Comedy' but I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. It doesn't feel like a comedy to me, but.... I have been accused of not having a great sense of humor. I tend to feel I have a somewhat GOOD sense of humor, but I prefer better taste comedy than mocking the dead... So, your mileage may vary wildly humor-wise.

The Flesh Eaters (1964)

 I don't know if I remember things poorly or not. Sometimes, when I rewatch films I saw a long time ago, I have some distinct memories of them. Sometimes, I don't. Is it because they were heavily edited for television back then? Maybe, but in some cases, it seems almost arbitrary what got cut.

I remember, for example, watching The Thing from Another World (1951) on Superhost back in the 1970s. The scene where they are in the barracks, and the Thing bursts in, and they splash gasoline on it and set it on fire was completely cut out. It was my first time seeing the film, so... how did I know? The next week, Superhost explained that he'd gotten letters asking why that had been removed, and he went on to say it had been an editorial decision to cut it out because it was deemed 'too scary' for younger viewers... but THEN actually showed the clip of the censored portion in its entirety. It wasn't too scary for me, of course, I loved it! But it was my first dim awareness of how things came to be edited for content on television, and how perceptions of that content can vary.

(As a side note, I loved the fact that they went and re-evaluated the edit based on viewer feedback, and changed their opinion on it. You don't see that very much these days.)

Cut to this last weekend, as I rewatched the low-budget 1964 film The Flesh Eaters. 

Wow. Did they really show a film this brutal on Saturday Mad Theater back in the 70s? For kids? Yes... yes they did. I had forgotten how dark and vicious this film was, but... I remember every gore scene distinctly. This didn't get cut, from what I remember, and I'm not really certain why or how that came to be...

The film was directed by Jack Curtis (who did the cinematography under the pseudonym Carson Davidson). Curtis was primarily known as a voice actor, and did dubbing and incidental voices in films like Killer's Kiss (1955), Planet of the Vampires (1965), Godzilla vs The Thing (1964) and on television he provided the English language of many voices on Speed Racer including Pops Racer and Inspector Detector. The script was provided by comic book writer Arnold Drake, who may be best known as the creator of DC Comics Doom Patrol. Apparently, he provided very detailed storyboards for the film in Comic Book style, which led to some very interestingly framed shots in the film itself.

The story is straightforward for the most part. There will be spoilers from here on out.

The film opens with a gruesome scene as a honeymooning couple on a yacht enter the water for a swim, and are devoured by something in the sea. As the woman sinks down into the depths, there is a dark cloud of what is apparently blood that fills the sea where she sank, screaming. Its a tense and scary scene! I couldn't help but be reminded of Jaws (1977), and I wonder if Spielberg was influenced by this. It was a mere 13 years earlier, after all. 

Down-on-his-luck pilot Grant Murdoch (Byron Sanders) is hired by Jan Letterman (Barbara Wilkin) to fly her boss, aging actress Laura Winters (Rita Morley) from New York to Provincetown. (This is the one thing that strikes me odd... its only about 300 miles, so not a hugely long trip, and even in the sixties, it was pretty drivable). A storm forces them to land at an island somewhere along the coast, and they take shelter on the small island and make the acquaintance of the sole inhabitant of the place, a marine biologist named Professor Peter Bartell (Martin Kosleck) who is apparently doing some sort of research there. In the aftermath of the storm, their plane has been lost, and they start to discover skeletal remains... including humans, and worse, some sort of micro-organism in the sea that voraciously devours all flesh, and strips it to the bone. They are joined by Omar, a beatnik (Ray Tudor) from a raft, and then all their private agendas start coming to the fore as they try to find a way to get off the island and past the deadly little creatures in the water.

And when I say it gets brutal, I mean it. People die in horrible, bloody ways. The  beatnik is murdered by Prof. Bartell who slips one of the microbes into his drink, and he's eaten from the inside out. The professor records his death screams and puts the body back on his raft and sets it sailing with the recoded screams playing at full volume. The actress is knifed in the belly. Another person graphically shoots himself in the head with a bloody skeletal hand holding the gun. We hear stories of Nazi atrocities.... no punches are pulled here. And although its a black and white film, there is blood.

The film has some fantastic camera shots in it, and in this way it keeps true of Drake's vision of the film. The special effects are basic, but the very basic nature of them also makes them both weird and effective. The 'microbes' are little more than scratches on the film negative.. and their size varies wildly.

The characters ae effectively drawn, even if they seem to be caricatures. Their motivations are believable for the most part, with only Prof. Bartell seeming to be a little over the top. Of interest to me is Laura Winters.... This character reminds me of one of Arnold Drake's creations in The Doom Patrol comic; Rita Farr. Rita, or Elasti-Girl as she was known, was also a fading actress. While they are not exactly alike, it seems like Drake was experimenting with the character type here. I wonder if April Bowlby was familiar with this performance as she was researching Rita Farr in the Doom Patrol TV Series... they seem quite similar in mannerism and attitude.

I would also point out Murdoch's story about his short-lived marriage at the end of World War II. He explains that he got married to a girl in Texas, and then left to become a pilot in the War. He flew a dozen missions, and then returned.... to the shock and dismay of the bride. She had been running a scam, marrying soldiers in high risk military roles and then collecting on their life insurance when they were killed in action. This was a genuine scam that was run during the war, and Murdoch's story rings true in that regard. But beyond that, there is the 'punchline' to the story... she must have loved him a little, since she normally went for Tailgunners, because tailgunners were more likely to be killed than pilots... and his own admission that he really did 'love that little tramp' is tinged with exactly the right amount of both fondness and bitterness to make it believable. 

In researching it, I see that they released the film with a gimmick, of small packets of 'dehydrated blood' given to people in case of Flesh Eater attack. 

Apparently, George Romero originally intended to call 'Night of the Living Dead' 'Night of the Flesh Eaters'... however he was forced to change the name of the film to the more iconic one, to prevent confusion with this film. 

Martin Kosleck is probably the busiest actor in this film. His credits include a large number of TV appearances in things ranging from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to Sanford and Son. He often played Nazis, which is interesting since he fled from the Nazi regime in the 1930s to come to the United States. 

The creatures at the end of the film are pretty decently conceived and realized. They aren't the most memorable or iconic, but they are effective I suppose. Certainly, they LOOK like something bizarre and somewhat alien. Its a good look... but they seem underused.

Also... look at the tag line on the bottom of this poster... "The only people who will not be STERILIZED with FEAR are those among you who are already DEAD!"  .... Sterilized with Fear? When was that ever a phrase? What does that even mean?