Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

I had my opening line all ready for this one: "Canadians shouldn't play with movie cameras." Generally that's true, but trouble is the late, great director Bob Clark wasn't Canadian. It's an honest mistake, as Clark improved Canada's national cinema immeasurably by shooting Deathdream, Black Christmas, A Christmas Story, and Porky's in Canada. But yeah, he wasn't Canadian. More importantly, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things definitely isn't Canadian, as it was shot in the United States with an American crew and American actors, although some shots are so grainy they look like they were recorded by shining a flashlight through sandpaper (a popular Canadian aesthetic choice) so I'm sure you can understand my confusion. But most important of all, while I expected this movie to be really, really crappy, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's a really great debut.

The story is about a theatre troupe -- led by a jackass director -- who end up on an island filled with buried criminals. For some reason, the troupe director dresses like Willy Wonka from the neck down, cape and all, and a mega-pretentious theatre major from the neck up, including an overgrown Vladimir Lenin goatee. If a turtleneck could have been attached to this character's cape, he would have been all over that. Things get out of hand during a fake ritual, zombies come to life, and we got ourselves a showdown on the 31st of October.

Overall, this feels the way a good first film should feel. The actors are all young and slightly overacting because Clark was young when he made the movie and he was just getting his bearings behind the camera. The costumes look like the actors' own clothes, which they probably were. The film combines well-thought out camera set ups and a self-referential love of zombie movies with what must have been last minute solutions to unexpected on-set problems. And, oh... the slow-mo shots in this movie! They are truly something to behold for their beautiful creepiness.

The extras on the 35th Anniversary Edition are both a loving tribute to Bob Clark and an informative trip down memory lane for the cast. The extras make the new edition worth picking up, but hang on to the DVD release from 1999, as this new version's transfer is spotty, and it's shorter than the uncut 1999 release. -- Jason Woloski