Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things
(1972)
[DVD Info]

A group of actors go to a graveyard on an island to dig up a fresh body. They’re lead by Alan (Alan Ormsby), the director of their troupe who says “children” too many times. They break into the caretaker’s house, which is boarded up, and after they settle in Alan tells them that they’re going to raise the dead. Anyone who opposes will lose their spot in the play or film they’re going to do. When they dig up a corpse, it comes alive and grabs Jeff (Jeff Gillen). It turns out it was all a joke and the two “corpses” are actually a couple of gay actors that Alan commissioned. When Alan is done laughing he decides to actually try to raise the dead with the corpse they removed from the coffin in the first place. When nothing happens Alan demands that the corpse be taken back to the house so they may throw it a party. Little do they know they actually DID raise the dead and the more they disrespect the corpse, the worse their fate will be.

It’s okay to own the dried blood of an unborn infant.
The penalty for grave robbing is hanging…a suspended sentence.
Satan is a keratinous clown.
Even corpses can dream of a white wedding.
The undead know how to sail a boat.

"I wonder what he’s thinking?" ~Anya to the newly dug up corpse.

ALAN!!!!!!!!!
Corpses don’t smell?

I have mixed feelings about this movie. On one hand I hated it. It was terrible, annoying, and slow. On the other hand, I guess it wasn’t so bad. It was really slow though. Painfully slow. The undead didn’t start even doing anything until 63 minutes into the movie and the movie was 83 minutes long. All I could do was listen to ALAN talk, talk, talk his pompous sick-o head off. I’m sure it was the director’s intent for Alan to be obnoxious…but phew…man…I wanted to murder him the whole time. Certainly not just any murder would do either…that guy deserved the worst death punishment possible. Buh. And he was the LAST to die. I could barely take it. The only way to save my sanity was humming “Thriller” while all the undead walked about. If only…if only they had a dance number! The thing that bothered me most about Alan is how utterly real he was. Alan was the many sleazy, nerdy, drama geeks that roamed the halls of my high school and looked down their perfect little noses at anyone who wasn’t of the same caliber. How Alan was is exactly how I imagine Quentin Tarrintino to be. I love his movies, but what a douche bag.

One thing I didn’t understand is how all these people were still doing everything he was telling them to do. He kept threatening to fire them, but who the hell needs a necrophiliac sick bastard like that to keep them employed? Okay, well he’s not a necrophiliac since he didn’t do sex to dead people but he really looked like he was going to. If the dead hadn’t become undead and everyone had made it to the boat, they would’ve gotten very acquainted with each other. Anyway, I wouldn’t’ve let it get that far for sure. Also…don’t badly decomposed corpses, heck, corpses in general…smell?! Alan and Jeff were cuddling up to it and not one person complained of the smell. The only thing is movie really had going for it was Jeff and Val. They had the best lines and were amusing. I will admit though, when Alan goes into the room at the end and the corpse he’s been harassing all night is sitting up and staring at him…that was CREEPY! The corpses would’ve been cooler if they showed up half an hour earlier, but my brain had already turned to mush and visions of Michael Jackson danced in my head (aha! Literally!) for me to care. There was something about it that made me not hate it completely, I don’t know what it is…but I care not to find out since I never want to see this movie again. You’ve come a long way from Porky’s my friend. A long, long way. Because of this, the jury gives this flick:

(Crazy!)

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