 |
Children Shouldn't Play With Dead ThingsDirector: Benjamin Clark Rating: R 18+ 87 mins Umbrella I've watched a lot of zombie films in my time but 'Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things' has evoked a new and unexpected response. Not shock, although there's no small amount of that; nor laughter, although again there are a few moments of humour (and, unusually, it's mainly intentional). No, the surprise is that the film is surprisingly good. It's hamstrung by the technical limitations of making a low-budget film rather than the usual problems of being a cheap, exploitative schlock horror film with no script and poor actors. Sure, the performers are clearly amateurs; but the script neatly explains this away by making them a go-nowhere theatre troupe; and if the small-group-of-people-trapped-in-a-house-surrounded-by-zombies motif is lifted wholesale from George Romero's 'Night Of The Living Dead', then points to director Benjamin Clark (aka Bob Clark, who was later to hit paydirt with 'Porky's') for at least doing it with panache. The film begins with the aforementioned theatre group assembling on a cemetery island to perform a secret ritual to raise the dead, lead by the company's founder and director Alan (played by co-writer Alan Ormsby). Alan is, to be blunt, a tool: campy, predatory, supercilious and manipulative, and anyone who's ever met a certain, irritatingly common breed of second year drama student will immediately recognise the type. You know: they've read some crib notes of De Sade and now decided that an interest in the occult and promiscuity suddenly makes them Alistair Crowley. Alan is the Platonic ideal of the uber-drama-cretin as he pulls some deliciously cruel stunts on his colleagues, then performs acts that are deliberately shocking just to prove that he's not part of their bourgeois, close-minded scene (man), including holding a wedding ceremony to marry a male corpse. Alan's sneering superiority leads both to one of the best-scripted scenes in the film (where one of the other actors mocks him for being an insurance clerk with delusions of theatrical grandeur) and the inevitable hubristic moment where he realises that his spell has worked, the dead are actually rising from the graves and now he doesn't have the faintest idea what to do. The other characters are standard sexy-teens-in-a-haunted-house, but even that's unusual since the film was made in 1972. In fact, aside from the zombie theme, 'Children...' is almost a proto-teen slasher flick. While the characters don't quite fall into the archetypes that would be defined later in the decade by films like 'Halloween' and 'Friday The 13th' you can see signs of the standard roles that would drag the genre to a creative standstill by the end of the 80s: the Final Girl, the Good Guy, the Stoner Dude, the Bitch/Slut, the Cassandra/Spiritual Girl Who Somehow Knows What's Coming But No-One Takes Any Notice Of Her Warnings etc. There are also two gay characters, and while I don't doubt that part of the decision was based on the comedic incongruity of two lisping queens playing terrifying zombies it's still an unusually positive choice for the period. The cinematography is sometimes rubbish (mainly the result of amateurs shooting on 16mm at night), but is offset by some of the most impressive makeup effects I've seen. 'Children...' should be held up to all independent filmmakers as proof that a few neat ideas and a bit of wit can enliven even the most low-budget fare.  |
|
The latest issue available now!     |
All content copyright dB Magazine