Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1972) – Review

The filmography of Bob Clark is a truly interesting thing, his work includes such titles as the horror classic Black Christmas, the classic sex comedy Porky’s and one of the all-time greatest holiday movies A Christmas Story, but today we will look at one of his earliest offerings, a grim little horror flick called Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things.

The film follows a theatre troupe who decides to perform a black magic ritual on a graveyard island, hoping to raise the dead. However, they soon realize that their actions have dire consequences as the dead come back to life with a thirst for blood. Who could have seen that coming? Oh right, everybody who’s ever watched a horror film before, that’s who. The director of this troop of actors is Alan (Alan Ormsby), a twisted and sadistic individual, who refers to his people as “children” and is creepy as all get out.  His reasoning behind this excursion to an island, one that was used as a cemetery for deranged criminals, is suspect at best, and I’d loved to have witnessed a scene where Alan first broached this idea to the group, “Hey guys, let’s take a little boat ride to a small island and dig up the corpse of a long-dead criminal.” Was Miami nightlife in 1972 so bad that this seemed like a good option?

Would you follow this man anywhere, let alone to an island of the damned?

Alan isn’t just an asshole boss, anyone who disagrees with him is threatened with dismissal, he’s also a complete sociopath and the real villain of this piece. Using a supposedly authentic dark grimoire, Alan begins a ritual to raise the dead after digging up the body of a man named Orville Dunworth (Seth Sklarey), but this all turns out to be an elaborate prank and the body in the grave is actually one of Alan’s troupe, decked out in full zombie make-up, but scaring the crap out of his employees wasn’t enough, not for our Alan, he has the group drag the real corpse of Orville back to the cabin used by the island caretaker, who Alan and his cronies have left bound and gagged in the trees. Alan continues to degrade the actors, using Orville’s corpse for his own sick jokes until, surprise, surprise, the ritual he had performed earlier did, in fact, work and now the dead are popping out of their graves and looking for revenge.

We’re talking about your typical E.C. comic situation here.

Stray Observations:

• A group travelling to a small island for fun and games, who ends up encountering a horde of zombies, would later be the premise of Uwe Boll’s House of the Dead, which could be considered a spiritual remake of this film.
• Besieged by zombies, our cast of characters end up barricading themselves in a small house because Bob Clark clearly like George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.
• This movie should have included a disclaimer stating that “No Actors Were Hired in the Production of this film” The acting is just that bad.
• Most of the characters in this film share the same name as the actors who are portraying them, could this be to help bad actors remember who they are playing? Which I like to call the Tony Danza method.
• We learn that the previous caretaker went insane and murdered his wife and kids, could Stephen King have been inspired by this film when he wrote The Shining?
• When Alan’s bid to raise the dead seemingly fails he calls Satan a liar, which is an odd accusation to throw to a being known as The Prince of Lies, next, he’ll be calling Satan a bad person.

“I call shenanigans on all his evil works.”

The film’s standout feature is undoubtedly its bizarre and unsettling premise, which is both macabre and darkly humorous. The idea of a group of theatre actors playing with dark magic and inadvertently unleashing a zombie on themselves is both ridiculous and terrifying, and the movie does a good job of playing up the absurdity of the situation while still maintaining a sense of horror. You will often question why this group doesn’t just tell Alan to fuck the right off, the employment situation in Miami can’t be that bad, and that hampers one’s ability to become invested in these characters. From a technical standpoint, the movie suffers from poor lighting, amateurish acting, and subpar special effects, however, these shortcomings contribute to the film’s charm and enhance its eerie and unsettling atmosphere.

“Did someone say this party is dead?”

The movie’s low budget does add to its appeal, as it highlights the ingenuity and creativity of the filmmakers. You’ve got to hand it to Bob Clark, you give him lemons and he’ll provide you with a brutally macabre pitcher of lemonade. At its worst, Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things is a tasteless exercise in gore and cheap scares without any attempt at social commentary, something key to the success of Romero films, and it’s not helped by its severe pacing issues, though it does pick up towards the latter half but the film’s climax feels rushed and unsatisfying. Additionally, the characters are not particularly well-developed, which makes it difficult to care about their fates.

Cause of death, being incredibly stupid.

Despite its flaws, Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things remains a cult classic and an influential movie in the horror genre and its impact can be seen in subsequent films that have taken inspiration from its themes and style.  There are intense and gory scenes that will leave most horror fans satisfied as the zombie make-up is quite good and the soundtrack is also noteworthy, with an eerie and haunting score that amplifies the movie’s creepy ambiance. This is not a good film, in fact, it’s pretty bad at times, but if you watch it with a bunch of friends with the right frame of mind there is some entertainment value to be found.