By DR. BENNY GRAVES

Starring Alan Ormsby, Valerie Mamches and Jeff Gillen
Written by Alan Ormsby and Benjamin Clark
Directed by Bob Clark
Released on Blu-Ray by VCI

Bob Clark is many things to many people. To those obsessed with holiday coming-of-age tales, he is responsible for 1983’s A Christmas Story (Its perpetual marathoning on cable has to be some Manchurian Candidate-esque conditioning that has yet to be triggered). For the boner comedy pervs, he created cinema’s most famous peephole when he brought Porky’s to the screen in 1981. However, when it comes to horror fans, it’s Clark’s output in the early 1970s that shines like fresh blood in the moonlight.

In 1974, Bob Clark directed two legitimately disturbing horror films: Deathdream is a chilling take on “The Monkey’s Paw” in which a young soldier dies in combat in Vietnam, only to be resurrected by his mother’s prayers. Returning home, Andy Brooks (Richard Backus) is changed and withdrawn – in stark contrast to the idyllic Americana he lives in. Things become more complicated when we find out his mental decay is also physical and can only be delayed by consuming human blood. The film’s bleak examination of the horrors of war and the disparity between those who live it and those removed from it will stay with you long after the credits roll. Clark’s follow-up to Deathdream is the legendary holiday slasher Black Christmas (predating  John Carpenter’s Halloween as the template that all subsequent slashers would follow). There’s little that hasn’t already been written when it comes to this fantastic Yuletide tale of terror. Suffice it to say, it is required winter viewing in Dr. Graves’ household.

However, two years before these amazing films were released, Clark was responsible for yet another horror classic and his first effort in the genre. CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS is a fairly straightforward tale on its surface. A  theatre troupe arrives at an island cemetery with the intention of raising the dead through an occult ritual. Unaware of their success in the endeavor, the group retires to an abandoned home only to come under siege by the reanimated corpses. Sounds like yet another zombie flick aping Romero’s 1968 genre-maker right? Not quite.

A massive strength of Clark’s film is the characters. The troupe is led by Alan (portrayed by a scene-stealing Alan Ormsby), and ladies and gentlemen, Alan is legendary when it comes to horror movie bastards. This is a character more apathetic than Scotty from The Evil Dead and more cruel than Harry Cooper from Night of The Living Dead. Alan understands the power he has as director of the troupe and wields it like a cold killer hefts a butcher knife. The rest of the group is expected to fall in line or collect their walking papers. It is Alan who brings the group that he refers to as his “children” to the island cemetery. Only there does he reveal his intention of exhuming a corpse so he can perform a ritual of necromancy. Some of the group is revolted by the idea, but most keep their thoughts to themselves. The carnage that follows makes them all wish they had protested.

Clark wastes no time in fleshing out these characters, specifically in how they deal with life under Alan’s totalitarian regime. Through banter, we learn that acerbic Val (Valerie Mamches) is a veteran of the group and the least tolerant of the dictatorship, while hippie Anya (Anya Ormsby) is predominantly portrayed as a space cadet who turns livid when she determines they are disrespecting the dead. A mutiny is always at a low burn for this group, but the right catalyst hasn’t come into play. Through it all, Alan cavorts and vamps, manipulates and threatens. To Alan, all the world’s a stage, and everything, be it human, moral, or otherworldly, are his props. Each of Alan’s threats drips with a vitriol that comes from a life without consequences. In many ways, the character represents the earliest example of what we would now call an “edge lord.” The extent of his cruelty is genuinely unpleasant, making it doubly cathartic when karma finally catches up, mouth agape, with a hunger for his thin-skinned flesh.

Beyond the great character dynamics, Clark creates a pitch-perfect midnight movie feel. The soil of the cemetery grounds is coated in a blanket of rotting leaves while slithering tendrils of fog wrap around trees and obscure gravestones. Black candles and ancient grimoires make up the ingredients for the necromancy ritual, making the whole event occult horror eye candy. When the dead finally do rise, they are shambling but vicious, black-rimmed eyes stark against their pale desiccated flesh, clothing moldering from communion with the grave. The soundtrack by Carl Zittrer (Available from Terror Vision Records) is a synthesized nightmare, warbling with the promises of psychedelic evil. CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS succeeds on so many levels and feels timeless as a result. Bob Clark constructed a cautionary tale of what happens when there is a line not to be crossed and you piss over it. The consequences are terrifying. Within the story, we see what an endless font of evil humanity can be and the results of falling in step rather than questioning such behavior. Watching this film feels like an early Black Sabbath album, gothic and dissonant, with just the right pinch of wry humor and a drizzle of Satanic majesty. Now, light those candles, children, it’s time to have some fun.

Death to false horror,
Dr. Benny Graves