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.