Children of the Living Dead

Alternate titles : None

Tagline : "Thirty years later and they're walking again!"

Ugh, what a complete mess! For some reason the producers of the original Night of the Living Dead, John Russo and Bill Hinzeman, decided to make another zombie film and churned out this complete clunker.

To be fair, the film did look quite promising at the start, in which we see a group of sheriff's men and local rednecks taking part in a search and destroy mission, gunning down zombies in the fields surrounding a nearby town. One of the men being none other than Tom Savini (special effects guru and director of the "Night of the Living Dead" remake).

Unfortunately Savini's appearance is confined solely to the films intro, after which the film flashes forward some 14 years to where a group of construction workers are bulldozing the old town cemetery (a small grass field with a few fake tombstones), only to start a new zombie outbreak.

It seems that many years ago a convicted serial killer named Abbot Hayes was murdered in jail, but his body disappeared from the morgue and local legend has it that he still haunts the area. These legends prove to be true as the zombified Hayes, who's been hiding in an old barn close to the construction site, goes around biting the uprooted corpses, turning them into the living dead who subsequently attack the locals. As the walking dead start to mass, the local townsfolk and construction workers find themselves having to take up arms in an attempt to stave off this latest zombie outbreak and get them back to their graves for good.

The film claims to be a sort-of sequel to the original "Night of the Living Dead", although is little more than a rip off, which also steals ideas from "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (the kids in the van near the beginning), "Friday the 13th" (the killer in the barn) and even "Psycho" (the back-story behind zombie killer).

However, the real problem with the film is it's slow, unoriginal and disjointed and by the end you won't really care what happens, just as long as its over. Not content with confusing everyone with 2 separate prologues, the film also keeps jumping forward in stages, plus it seems that nightfall occurs shortly after daybreak on at least one occasion, which really makes you wonder just what the hell is going on.

Whilst this might not be the worst zombie film out there, it's certainly not the best either and is one I can only recommend to the morbidly curious.

Overall Marks : 3/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• The original cut of the film, which was edited by the director, was apparently quite different to the version released. Producer Karen Wolf didn't like the way he'd put the film together and so insisted on hiring a new editor to re-cut it.
• The film's budget was $500,000
• The marketing ads claimed this to be "The long awaited sequel to Night of the Living Dead". They are obviously oblivious to the fact that director George Romero had already made 2 official sequels at this point, namely "Dawn of the Dead" and "Day of the Dead" (Land of the Dead hadn't been filmed at this point).
• Apparently the director was pressurised by producers Karen Wolf and John Russo into using their friends to make film, rather than hiring professionals.
• Tom Savini was questioned about his involvement in the film, and said had they used the original cut it would have been a far better film, but the producer insisted on cutting it her way. He has since distanced himself from his involvement with the feature.
• The role of Candy, one of the girls killed in the car crash near the beginning, was played by Heidi Hinzeman who's the daughter of Producer Bill Hinzeman.
• Marty Schiff, who plays the sheriff, appeared in "Dawn of the Dead" and "Knightriders"
• The soundtrack was scored by Alan Howarth, who also provided the music for most of the Halloween sequels.
• Director Tor Ramsey spectacularly disowned the film in an expletive laden post on the Internet Movie Database, in which he publicly trashed producer Karen Wolf. Criticised John Russo's ability to produce and Bill Hinzeman's ability to use a camera. He also accused the producers of siphoning off funds from the budget for themselves and said he hadn't worked on such an amatuerish production since he was in film school.
• John Russo said in an interview with Horrornews.net he had written a screenplay based on Karen Wolf's script, but claims after signing on as producer, they then insisted on filming it exactly the way Karen had written it, even though the dialogue made no sense. He also claimed that this was one of the worst films he'd ever worked on, due to the way Karen and her father Joe were running things and nearly walked off set himself.

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