Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things is a 1972 horror movie by Bob Clark (Black Christmas). I found it to be a quite clever and entertaining flick.

The plot of CSPWDT is simple. An eccentric film director, Alan, and a couple of actors go to a deserted island to perform some supposedly mock Satanic rituals, do a little graverobbing, and then have a party back a secluded cabin in the woods. Unfortunately, the rituals work and the island becomes overrun by zombies.

This one is full of good stuff and not just in terms of horror. The zombies actually don't show up until the last half hour or so. The movie starts out pretty lighthearted (especially for what the characters are doing) and contains some surprisingly good dialogue. Not just one liners but generally in the characters relating to each other. The main character, Alan, is an interesting one as well. He starts off as an odd but generally charismatic film director with an affinity for telling ghost stories. His character undergoes an interesting arc however as his charming surface deteriorates and we are able to see what a slimy, mean spirited character he really is.

The plot itself undergoes an arc as well. It starts out relatively lighthearted but when the graverobbing starts, the movie starts to get gradually darker and when the characters start having fake marriages with the corpse (respectively named Orville) and necrophiliac undertones starts to pop up, it becomes pretty bleak (and the zombies haven't even shown up yet).

Finally, when the zombies show up, it becomes a balls out horror flick. The zombie effects are decent but still not that great. That's probably why the movie relies much more on suspense and implication than gore. People aren't shown being killed but the aftermath is so the violence is kept subtle for the most part. The movie finally ends on a really creepy, satisfying note with a final confrontation between Alan and Orville.

All in all, pretty decent little horror flick. Hard to believe this guy went from this and Black Christmas to Baby Geniuses years later .

This movie is incredibly kickass in my book, and Orville is still one of the coolest monsters I have ever seen.

An interesting anecdote in relation to this movie, is that when I was younger and my brother would receive the chore of babysitting me, he would always insist on me watching The Muppet Movie to shut me up.  All in all that would have been fine, except he would show me The Muppet Movie box and put the tape in without me knowing that he had switched it to CSPWDT.

The opening scene scared the crap out of me when I was four years old, but now I own it on VHS and find it wonderful as well as nostalgic.

EDIT: Actually I want to modify this to ask for your interpretation of something.

SPOILER

At the end, when Alan throws the girl into the crowd of zombies, did you get the feeling that they weren't going to kill her because she respected them throughout the film, or that they were just incredibly surprised that he just threw her at them?

Oooh I gotta see this movie. I heard somebody is remaking it though, so I gotta see this before it is remade.

Sean

Ah, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things.
Pretty good for its day.
Still fun to watch now and then.  Creepy.

Alan Ormsby and Bob Clark also did Deathdream.  
One of my favorite vampire tales.  
Deathdream has carried different titles, such as The Night Andy Came Home and Dead of Night.
This movie is a variation on the old Monkey's Paw story.

Check out the ending.  It is weird and wild.

Anybody remember the zombie flick "Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue"?
I think I saw it back in the '70s as "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie."
I thought it was a Brit production, but it has a Spanish cast and crew.

Quoted from Shelton At the end, when Alan throws the girl into the crowd of zombies, did you get the feeling that they weren't going to kill her because she respected them throughout the film, or that they were just incredibly surprised that he just threw her at them?

Hmm... I did think she got carried away gently, with all the zombies supporting her, while the others weren't so lucky. She didn't look particularly scared either. I think she knew they weren't going to harm her. I could be wrong, of course. The ending is kind of ambiguous.

And yes, they are remaking CSPWDT. Bob Clark himself is writing and directing. Don't know why anyone would want to direct the same movie twice but oh well. I guess we'll have to see how it goes.

lol my mom bought me that movie years ago at some garage sale for like a buck.  After I watched it (on an old vhs format) I quickly went out and got it on DVD.  It's still one of my favorites to this day.

Children is a rather good movie... It's a lousy Zombie movie, however. Anyone expecting it to be a good zombie movie has about 55 minutes of disappointment on their hands. The movie is a build up to no avail in most cases and it seldom takes itself serious enough for you to take it serious enough. (AS A ZOMBIE MOVIE)

Zombies, actually, only eat 1 person in the movie and it's only for a split second that you get to even see the slightest hint of that.  Random things happen and the cast is killed off quicker than a WB show.

With that said... the movie does so many things right "OUTSIDE" the realm of zombie movie. It's a character driven occult flick above all else. If you like "Blood Orgy" --> you'll like Children.

Zombie 3 "like it, love it or hate it" is a better, more enjoyable, zombie flick than 95% of all Zombie movies, though. It had it all and anyone who says otherwise is a fool. It might not have executed the genre as well as some... but no other Zombie movie gave you what Zombie 3 did in content. That's for damn sure.

"And yes... I know Zombie is spelt like Zombi but I choose to spell it Zombie"

Long-time horror fan here.  I've always enjoyed Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (James, you're right on the alternate title) much more than Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things.  CSPWDT is kooky, sure, and had its moments, but Let Sleeping Corpses Lie has better photography, effects, story (though it, too, is off-kilter)...

I have a habit of comparing most 70s zombie flicks to Romero's Night of the Living Dead, but what's weird is that in some ways it feels like a lot of movies which came after Night actually seem older than Night.  I don't know how to explain this, really, it's likely just my warped perspective.  But when I watch Night now, it still seems so much more fresh than both Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Burial Ground, Fulci's Zombie and the slew of other 70s Night spawns.  I dunno...just weird.