After
having forced myself to sit thru some pretty terrible new zombie movies I
thought it was about time to reward myself with an old favorite. This Bob Clark
classic is one of my favorite non-Romero zombie outings. Time to check in on
our favorite life of the party in spite of being dead… Orrville.
Some
theater people, actors and I think behind the scenes folks as well, are taken
out to an isolated island for a night of creepy fun. Well it might not be fun
for them, but their jerk of a director Alan is having a good time. He is a bit
of a control freak and likes to threaten them with losing their jobs whenever
they tell him he has gone too far, or God forbid try to leave. They must need
the job because they allow him to get away with almost anything. This includes
digging up a corpse and conducting a spell to raise the dead. He thinks it is
all good fun, especially when he freaks some of them out. What he doesn’t
realize is that the damn spell might work. Well this is a zombie movie so of
course it does work!
After a
decent buildup and establishing the characters the last twenty minutes of the
movie is the big payoff. Here the zombies dig and claw their way out of the
cemetery and trap the characters in the caretaker’s cabin. They board up the
windows and try to hold them off in a familiar turn of events. Though this
falls apart much quicker since we already know they aren’t going to cooperate and
choose to bicker rather than live. There is one last bit of Alan showing how
much of a jerk he is before the big finale.
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| Orrville...the life of the party |
I know
that a lot of people complain that this one is slow. I’ll admit it does take a
while to get to the zombies. But all the stuff before that from Alan being an
incredible ass, to another character named Anya being entertainingly loopy is entertaining.
There are so many funny lines and situations before the undead show up that it
more than makes up for the delay. The direction, writing, and cast are all top
notch without a weak link. There is a lot more to Children Shouldn’t Play with
Dead Things than just the zombies. The best zombie movies always have great
characters and that is something that Clark understands here and what always
made Romero’s flicks awesome. The cast brings them to life with great
performances that could have been hokey and over the top but avoid that. And the
dialogue is wonderfully twisted as they rip into each other in subtle and not
so subtle ways. Plus, this has the best line in any horror movie ever where a
character just keeps repeating, “I peed my pants.”
The makeup
effects are very simple, but effective. Remember this is before Tom Savini
raised the bar so the only thing to compare this to is Night of the Living
Dead. These zombies have more makeup caked on them with that same grey skin and
dark circles under the eyes that will have a familiar feel to it. We also get
some others that have age to them and while the makeup is a bit silly and are
obviously rubber masks I still like it. Somehow it just fits with this old
early seventies low budget drive-in flick. The kills are equally as tame with
just a bit of blood as most of the kills are implied and/or offscreen.
I love
this movie and always have. One of my best movie going experiences was getting
to see a midnight showing where they screened an old beat up print that was
turning pink and looked every bit of its forty years. If you haven’t seen this
one you really should. The word classic gets tossed around way too much, but
this is one. This October do yourself a favor and watch Children Shouldn’t Play
with Dead Things.
© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer
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