Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things - Trailer
A troupe of method actors and their despotic director head out to Coconut Grove, Florida where, as a prank, they exhume a corpse called Orville and are subsequently horrified when his similarly deceased friends emerge from their graves to play some deadly games of their own. Filmed as America experienced its post-60s comedown, director Bob Clark's first horror feature began a truly terrifying trilogy that continued with the powerful anti-Vietnam war statement Dead Of Night and climaxed with the classic seasonal (and subsequently re-made) scarefest Black Christmas. This weird and unique horror debut - so lysergic in places you can almost smell the Florida grass - is a long way from Clark's later Murder by Decree, which pitted Sherlock Holmes against Jack The Ripper in the fog-shrouded streets of Victorian London. Featuring a cast assembled from various friends, including future Cat People re-make writer Alan Ormsby (who with co-cast member Jeff Gillen went on to direct Deranged, another masterpiece) as well as Jane Daly (one of American TV's most recognisable faces), Clark created one of US independent horror cinema's offbeat classics. Like Let's Scare Jessica to Death, Axe, Devil Times Five and Death Bed, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things shows what can be done with inspiration, determination and a limited budget. An unsettling, minimalist electronic score from Carl Zittrer and some of the most outrageous zombies you'll ever see also await within this cult horror classic. And remember, just because somebody's called Orville, it doesn't mean that they're your "very best friend"!
