There's something special about zombies in cinema. As a viewer we immediately know where the dangers comes from, as a writer the undead are rife for allegory, and as a producer you can really accomplish a lot with a shoestring budget. It's probably this last that made them so prolific as to become a genre of their own.

In 1972 Bob Clark and Alan Ormsby teamed up to make Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things , a story about an acting troupe that raises the dead on a small island. The both worked on the screenplay, and Alan starred while Bob directed.

Bob Clark isn't well known as a horror director, in fact he only has two other horror credits. One of those is for Black Christmas, the massively influential holiday slasher, although his more well known holiday movie would have to be A Christmas Story - drink your Ovaltine! He's probably still more well known for Porky's or maybe even Baby Geniuses, so it probably isn't surprising that Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things leans heavily on comedy.

The movie was shot on a budget of $50,000 and it shows. The opening shots in particular are pretty rough, in fact the first scare is pretty artlessly done and is clearly a guy in cheap ghoul makeup - although later in the film we discover the opening ghoul is indeed one of the actors who came to the island for giggles. Production quality improves as the film progresses, as do the effects. In fact, star/writer Alan Ormsby is perhaps more well known as a practical makeup artist and when the ghouls kick off in earnest we can see he does a pretty good job.

As is often the case in zombie flicks, the true horrors aren't the zombies but the people who are somehow worse than the flesh eating dead. In this case, the horrors are at-will employment and predators in the entertainment industry.

These horrors are embodied virtually solely within Alan playing the eponymous Alan, the producer for the acting troupe and the reason the gang goes to the island. He's such a sleaze and a loser that honestly it was pretty difficult to watch - but we all know that makes for a more satisfying comeuppance. Alan uses his position as the manager (even going so far as to say he owns the actors) to force the troupe to an island graveyard for a night of fun, games, and hijinks. Any dissent is met with a reminder that he could release them from their contract at any point, and for somebody who is off for a trip of "fun and games" he sure is a killjoy wet blanket.

Alan's ultimate goal is to prank the actors with a good scare. In the context of a film, it is a pretty good one that goes off more or less without a hitch. Although in reality, and as is remarked on in the film, it is a ludicrously dangerous, wildly unsafe joke - but it still leaves him in stitches.

Presumably for more giggles and to take advantage of his captive audience, Alan then attempts to summon the dead with a satanic ritual from a grimoire he brought with him. Weirdly, he does seem to be genuinely disappointed that the spell did not raise the dead - although that probably leads to a greater surprise when the dead rise anyway.

What does make this entry a little unusual as far as zombie movies go is that the first zombie doesn't make a move until a little over an hour into the movie - and the film only has an 87 minute running length. That's an awful lot of build up, but once the dead start to boogie they never stop. Perhaps the film has some problems with pacing leading up to this point, but the tonal shift is stark and the remaining twenty minutes do not disappoint.

For a movie that has until this point been a comedy, the zombies are a truly brutal foil. These aren't the laconic shamblers of Night of the Living Dead, nor are they the screaming sprinting virals of 28 Days Later, but they stagger with purpose and viciously grab at their prey. The cast begins to evaporate almost as quickly as the gags dry up, and as is remarked just earlier in the film, there's nothing funny about any of this.

The climax of the movie comes with what is perhaps my favorite and most enduring zombie moment in cinema. It's also in the last two minutes of the film, so naturally, this is a heavy spoiler.

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things can be found on YouTube and the Internet Archive