The Walking Dead Fan Club

Greeting my shambling shuffling friends!

I have been doin alot of reading lately that GEORGE ROMERO, the godfather of the Dead, and master of zombie movies, has agreed to direct the remake of the original 1972 film CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS. Believe it or not this film made it into my collection years ago, and somehow I let it slip through the cracks and never watched it.

Directed by BOB CLARK (best known for his 1982 christmas holiday epic A CHRISTMAS STORY) this movie was filmed over 14 days with a 70,000 dollar budget, yet still looked incredibly good with the production values, acting, and fx courtesy of TOM SAVINI, (of course $70,000 then would be like $400,000 now, which is more than most indie zom"B" films are budgeted with). ALAN ORMSBY played the role of a power hunger ego tripping theater troupe director, who constantly threatened the other characters with losing their theater contracts if they dont go along with the fun. Alan's character also named Alan, was very annoying, I really ended up disliking him, he was such a chicken that he threw another character to the zombies to help himself escape, like a real coward, so I was delighted to watch him get eaten buy a zombie. Another actor called Jeff, in real life was named JEFF GILLEN, later became the Santa Clause that told Ralphie he would shoot his eye out if he got a red ryder bb gun, and then used his boot to shove poor Ralphie down the christmas slide in BOB CLARKS masterpeice A CHRISTMAS STORY.

CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS is a classic zombie movie, although what differs is the use of satanic spells from an ancient book to raise the dead which drives down the reality factor, but is still cool none the less, everyone dies at the end, and the final shots of the film show the zombies boarding their boat with city lights in the distance.

Let's see how this will rate with the G.R.E.A.T. zombie movie grading scale.

G-ore: The makeup was not bad for the time period, and there was some decent gore, although nothing over the top. 6.0

R-ealism: There are no magic spells that will bring the dead back to life, but aside from that the good acting added a touch of realism 4.5

E-ntertainment: Aside from the magic spells, this movie pretty much stuck to the zombie rules, and used good suspence to keep me interested, although the first half of the film was rather zombie free 6.5

A-cting: The acting was great, Alan was annoying, but we were meant to not like him, also the fear reactions in the others characters faces was fantastic 8.0

T-hrills: Nothing made me jump out of my seat and scream like a little girl, but the zombies ambushing the people after they thought they had gone back to the graveyard was pretty good, and the genuine looks of fear in the actors faces kept me excited. 6.5

The combined G.R.E.A.T. score averages 6.3

This movie is about to be REMADE thanks to Fangoria Entertainment’s start-up Gravesend Film Enterprises and production company Accelerator, and I am excited that GEORGE ROMERO was tapped to direct.

Fangoria Entertainment president Thomas DeFeo said: “I’m very excited... I’m a big Bob Clark fan, and that’s why we chose to remake this movie. There are going to be a lot of zombies, a lot of good stuff, and we’re assembling a wonderful production team—the best—and also a great cast. This is going to be the start of many more great horror movies—originals and remakes."

You can find CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS on amazon.com

My closing question for you is:

Jeffie pee's his pants when he gets scared during a cemetary scene, but will he be man enough to admit to it?

You will have to watch CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS to find out.

Thanks for reading, and until my next post, I will be shuffling along with the lost.

Jimmy Blue Eyes

jbe.zombieblog@yahoo.com