Ketrivie
It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
IndridC0ld
After seeing this film, and then immediately watching Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video, it is plain to see that Landis lifted his entire graveyard scene, and most of his zombies directly from this movie. Children Shouldn't play With Dead things was the first film to feature a mass rising of the dead from a cemetery. If you watch both sequences side by side, without sound, you will know that the earlier one was STOLEN from the other.
TheRedDeath30
If I was judging this movie on the final act, it would be one of my favorite horror films ever. Amateurish and a little silly, absolutely, I'll not argue that point, but the look, the music, the style, the subject matter, all of it combines for something that is right up my wheelhouse. That's all the final act, though. The first hour of this movie, though, leaves a lot to be desired and that's what, ultimately, drags the score down for me.Let's make no mistake, fellow horror fiends, this movie is not going to be for everyone. In fact, I would say that it is not going to be for most people, but I love this style of film. To begin with, there is a very unique niche of movies that filled the early 70s. Horror was really finding its' ways. The days of the Gothic monster movie, crusaded by the House of Hammer, were dying out. Vietnam had brought an end to the innocence of the 60s. Then, Romero released NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and the game changed. The mix of brutal horror with a social message sent other horror directors searching for something similar. In the wake of that classic came several imitators, such as this movie and LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE, that each brought their own spin on the newly created zombie sub-genre.This movie has a lot in common with NOTLD as far as the creative team behind it. This movie was in no way created by professionals. This is, basically, a homemade movie with a group of friends "acting", so it takes a certain patience for bad dialog and bad acting. Many of the lines feel improvised and made up on the spot. The characters are not so much developed and polished as much as being one step above what you and your childhood friends would create when playing "make believe". The main character, played by Alan Ormsby, is probably the most obnoxious part of the movie. He's that guy you went to high school with that was far too impressed with his "acting skill" and thought he was funny, or clever, and by the end of an evening you just wanted to punch him in the face. Yeah, that's him. The rest of the cast is not much better. All of it is preamble, though, to a fantastic finale. This is the sort of movie that really fits into my personal aesthetic. We each have a style and a taste developed by our unique personal background. For me, born in the mid-70s, growing up on comic books and monster movies and a steady diet of Scooby Doo, this movie is divine. It's an EC Comic book come to life, full of technicolor monsters, hellbent on destroying the fools who have tampered with forces they didn't understand. The makeup is incredible. It's so amateur and homemade, yet so lovable. This isn't Romero's blue tone creepers or Fulci's rotting stalkers. These monsters look like something straight off a comic book page and have a look to them that is so unique to this movie. The scenes of the zombies crawling from their graves, combined with a screeching score, create a nightmarish vision. Admittedly, some sections border on silly. The monsters can be a terrifying force one moment, eviscerating their victims and eating the victuals, the next moment they are reaching blindly for people a foot away from them and being pushed around by 80 pound women. Yet, the horde will not be stopped and, in the end, have their vengeance.If you like SHOCK WAVES, Fulci's zombie films, or any other pre-80s zombie flicks, then this is required viewing.
Michael_Elliott
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972)** 1/2 (out of 4) Absolutely bonkers film from Bob Clark has a group of people being led into a cemetery where their leader Alan (Alan Ormsby) plans to use black magic to bring to life a corpse he has dug up. Soon the kids begin to have a little party and before they know it they're under attack by the living dead.This film deserves to go down in history for having one of the greatest titles ever to grace a movie. I mean, who couldn't read the title and not either be amused or never forget that you read it? As for the film itself, it's really a mixed bag because it's really not all that good but at the same time it's just so crazy, so weird and so..... I don't know. So silly that you can't help but be entertained by it.What's so strange about the movie is that for the first hour there's really not much that happens. There aren't any zombie attacks or anything else as the people pretty much talk about silly things and do weird black magic rituals. Director Clark certainly builds up a strange atmosphere during this hour but considering this is a horror movie it's pretty gutsy not to have any horror moments. Once we get to the zombie attacks they certainly aren't what you'd call scary but at the same time you can't help but have a good time with them.Performances are pretty decent considering this was a $50,000 movie. Ormsby is certainly a character here and you can't help but be entertained by him. The gore and zombie make-up effects aren't the greatest but they work. Orville, the zombie that they dig up, is also quite memorable. CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS isn't really a complete success and I must admit that I probably won't ever watch it again but at the same time I can respect Clark and company with what they made.
Neil Welch
A group of unpleasant young people, having (eventually) carried out a mock Satanic ritual, are discomfited when the dead come back to life and start killing them.I am sometimes bemused at the reactions I see towards certain movies at the IMDb, and this is one such film. We are all entitled to our own opinions, and none is any more or less valid than another. Even so, I do wonder whether some of the effusive praise for this film is coming from blind and deaf people. It is slow, the script is lame, the makeup is awful, the acting is shockingly bad, and the film looks even cheaper than it actually is. Which is clearly cheap. It isn't even good at being the type of film it purports to be: it aims to be a low-budget horror comedy, and succeeds only in being low-budget.Definitely one to avoid.
