REVIEW DATE:8:12:9:9

Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things marks the first movie And You Thought It Was Safe has reviewed by request. If nothing else, this should prove to those of you who sent me movie titles that, no, I'm not ignoring you. It's just that some of these movies can be hard to find, take this one, for instance. Four, count 'em, four video stores in as many days. I'd almost given up hope.

Then fate reached out and turned my head to the left instead of the right. There I found it, slightly yellowed cover depicting a female hand poking up from the ground, no doubt reaching for human flesh of some kind.

Unlike other such touches of fate (which lead me to find things like Alien Terminator and Up From the Depths) I can say with pride that, this time, I got my money's worth.

Yes, a movie called Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things was actually worth my time to watch. Not only was it worth the time spent, but it actually rewarded me for spending that time with (*gasp*) entertainment value. A rare commodity in low budget horror movies.

Two minuets into the picture, a cemetery keeper dies at the hands of two Marilyn Manson fans wearing bed sheets for capes. They proceed to dig up a corpse, remove it, and one of them takes its place in the coffin.

Four minuets into the picture we meet our characters, a theater troop led by a quite demented director, whom I will refer to a Sleazy, the eighth dwarf. Okay, his real name is Alan (Alan Ormsby, writer of The Substitute) but "Sleaze" fits much better with this melodramatic personality. To prepare his "children" for an upcoming play he plans to take them to a secluded cabin, built within spittin' distance of the above-mentioned cemetery. Once there, he dons his wizardry cloak and pulls a book of spells out of a trunk. The plan: to dig up a corpse and then resurrect it with the powers of Satan!

Hmmmm . . . a bunch of people are going into a secluded area next to a cemetery with plans to make the dead live. I wonder what will happen. . .

But wait! This is 1972! Years before Friday the 13th and Evil Dead are but gleams in their screenwriter's eyes. Now what do you think will happen?

Let's meet the zombie kibble, shall we? There's Paul (Valerie Mamches), the big athletic dude who isn't to enthusiastic about grave robing; Terry (Jane Daly), Paul's chick and the "virgin" of the acting troop, since she has loaned Paul a part of her brain, she's not much for digging up corpses either; Anya (Anya Ormsby), the spiritual hippie chick; Jeff (Jeffrey Gillen), who has no character what so ever, and Val (Valerie Mamches), who trades insults with Alan and looks like Cher. We no return you to the plot, already in progress.

So, after a brief rest to settle in and explore their haunted cabin, the troop goes a corpse huntin'. Alan spins tales of death and mayhem (which he seams to have in endless supply) until a likely suspect is found . . . the same grave that those Manson fans in bed sheets robbed!

As the one Manson fan who isn't six feet under watches from a distance, the troop digs his buddy up. Alan orders Jeff to drag the corpse out of its coffin, Jeff (the good little lap dog) agrees aaaaand. . .the corpse grabs back!

Never saw that one coming did ya? Did YA!?

What you probably didn't see coming (no, really) was this little factoid: the Manson fans are actors too. Yes, that's right, it was all one of Alan's pranks. They're actors and they're gay. Obviously gay. The kind of obviously gay that would make Robin Williams blush. Oh, my stars!

Okay, it's not over, so don't worry. Instead of putting him back they wrap the corpse (named Orville) around a cross, draw a pentagram on his grave, and Alan proceeds to chant that certain spell which will raise the dead. Nothing happens. Oh well, in the spirit of eternal optimism, Alan has Jeff and Paul carry Orville back with them, while the two Token Gay Actors fill in the grave.

Left behind, the two TGA's become the first victims when the dead do rise from their graves. Apparently that spell had a time delay on it, thus allowing any one who knew what they were doing to get the hell out of there. Since Alan has no idea what he's doing, the troop becomes trapped in a boarded up cabin surrounded by flesh eating zombies.

Sound familiar?

Yep, we've been here before. Sorta. Even though Friday the 13th and Evil Dead are both a good decade away there is still one revolutionary horror movie to be ripped off. You guessed it: Night of the Living Dead. Writers Bob Clark and Alan Ormsby aren't to concerned with hiding their movie's origins. In fact, director Clark seams to clone some of Night's visuals to his movie.

Before you scream "Blasphemy" let me reiterate: I liked this movie. Yes, liked. Why? Simple: it's more comedy then it is horror. To be blunt: the jokes are funny. I know that may not sound very professional, but listen to this, it's my favorite line in the movie:

Terry: We should have some respect for the dead

Alan: Why? The dead are losers. If anyone hasn't earned my respect, it's the dead.

Now, that's comedy, dang nabit! And, since Ormsby obviously wrote the part for himself, he gets all the good, funny lines like that. And he plays Sleazy's character by purposefully overacting!! This makes Sleazy a lot of fun to watch, and I was hoping that things would get even more fun when the dead came to life and Sleazy suffers a nerves break down. Unfortunatly, Alan remains stubbornly sane throughout the whole zombie attack. I guess you can't win 'em all.

These actors sure can't. Despite the good lines they have to spew, it still doesn't eclipse the fact that these characters have almost no character. We don't know anything about them, not their pasts, their interests, their hopes and dreams. We only know what their personalities looked like for this little 90-minuet slice of life. Darn.

Instead, the characters are given traits: Anya is the hippie chick, Paul and Terry are "disgusted" by this whole affair, Val fights with Alan, Jeff stands around, and the two TGAs are gay. It may not sound like much, but these actors have a lot of fun with their rolls, stretching the limits of their underwritten parts. And it's damn funny to watch them do it. Then, suddenly, the movie violently switches tone, from light send up of the genre, to atmospheric rip-off a genre king. It's very sudden, and a bit jarring, the audience having been lulled into a false sense of security.

Splatter punks won't like this one much. The gore boils down to some red paint splattered on actor's clothing. Zombie movie fans, however, will like the first half for it's comedy, and its original set up. Plus the living dead won't hurt its appeal either.

As for the rest of you . . . maybe, try it and see. You might like what you find.

RATING (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

THAT'S A LOT OF ZOMBIES.