Children of the Living Dead

Rating:
Summary: My Hometown is Now Makin' Movies
Review: Terrible production values, ridiculous story and subpar acting. The only reason worth seeing it: the "dramatic" scene of a zombie attack on a restaurant was filmed near my hometown in Columbiana County, Ohio. (East Palestine, Ohio, - Rt. 14 to be exact).

Unless you've found this beast at a yard sale, then take a pass.

Rating:
Summary: ...
Review: I wish John Russo would stop making movies especially when they have to do with zombies! George Romero should kill him for what he did to Night Of The Living Dead and now the horror continues. With each successive film he chips away at what little credit he should be given for working on and co-writing N.O.T.L.D.

The one saving grace here is Tom Savini's all to brief cameo at the beginning of the movie. It is good for a few laughs however. So pick it up if: 1.You have money to burn. 2.Liked the Special edition of Night Of The Living Dead or 3. Have ompletely lost your mind!

Rating:
Summary: www.homepageofthedead.com review
Review: You cannot comprehend how bad this film is. There is not a single facet of this film that is good, or even decent.

I had low expectations for this film, but this sunk even lower than I could have thought. It looked like the thing was shot on a camcorder. There was all of one lens used in the entire film, which gave it that nice camcorder feel. You can see the same background depth in every shot because of this. Usually you won't notice the background revealed to you in a film, but you will if there is no change at all over every single shot.

The lighting wasn't dramatic at all and it looked more like a home film than even my flick. It didn't even try to be scary... well it did, but it was so overtly done that it made you laugh more than quiver. They relied on the sunlight too much in the film and didn't attempt to compliment it with outside lighting at all. Then at night the cemetery and house settings are so obviously artificially lit, and you can even see the lights even though it's supposed to be out in the country.

The plot makes no sense at all. Karen Wolf made no attempt to explain why the hades the lead zombie abducted these kids and kept them alive. They are just sitting there when found as if just watching TV. She obviously never even attended a funeral in her life or would know that they bury people right after the funeral, not hours later. And then some grave robbers show up--somehow they knew the caskets would still be out of the ground--and one gets killed, the other is obviously miscast as an old man.

Similarly, the dialogue form the characters is mostly all small talk and you could cut half of it and never even notice. The characterization isn't there except for two characters who contrast from the rest of the others, but the acitng manages to botch up that distinguishing.

The sound is horrid. It's like they recorded on location and added the dialogue later. The lips often never move, but people are talking. If the lips are moving, they aren't moving at the same speed as the voice. The voices don't fit the facial expressions or have any real emotion to them. The zombies make groaning noises in the same way... some have their mouths open, some don't. And it's very obvious. The dialogue doesn't seem to come form any channel, and I wonder if it was recorded in monotone and from equal distance from the microphone for every character. I'm almost sure of it.

The direction was equally bad. There were close-ups where more distant shots could be used because the close-ups seemed forced and weak for the dialogue given. Then there are long shots that need to be drastically magnified to close-ups in order to give it more dramatic feeling. The way that we see the lead zombie as a zombie for the first time is like this. It's a full body shot and we can see all of this area surrounding him, and the guy doesn't seem scary at all, even though his make-up implies we are to think that way about him.

The photography complimented the direction in its ineptitude. The opening shots are tinted blue for some unknown reason--and it's very blatant and unfitting of the time of day of the shot. A yellow, orange or red tint would have looked better, especially for illuminating the zombies' faces in the sunlight. The blue tint better have been some homage to Dawn of the Dead's blue-faced zombies, but I doubt it. Even if it was, it is bad filmmaking. There should have been darker, less focal depth lenses used to make the lighting more dramatic in many, many, many scenes indoors. You would never know it is supposed to be a horror film in this regard in a whole lot of shots.

The editing and pacing of the scenes was bland. We get a little bit of drama with the music for one actual scene when the main character is scoping out his house, but the scene just up and ends abruptly, leaving the viewer to wonder "was that it?!" There's a shot where the lead zombie bites into the neck of a guy in one shot up-close, then it cuts to another shot for some unknown reason and the guy's neck is still immaculate. And when the lead character talks to his love interest while ordering coffee, she fills up his cup, then takes it away, refills, wipes the bottom of the saucer and refills his cup again... BEFORE HE EVEN TAKES A SIP!

The acting looks like they put an ad in the paper and accepted all non-SAG-eligible actors for parts without even giving them a screen test. Except for Tom Savini, of course, who even can't overcome bad script and direction to make his character seem cool, just a one-liner-spewing, macho idiot. It speaks volumes that they hired Bill Hinezman's daughter (?) for one of the more prominent zombie parts; it backs my theory up.

Like I've put in here several times, you usually don't notice when things are done correctly (ie: you don't go "that shot had great lighting!"), but you sure as heck notice when they go awry in a film, and they go awry in every scene and almost every shot. If they made a manual for showing how NOT to make a film, they would say "watch Children of the Living Dead."

Rating:
Summary: terrible waste of talent
Review: People want more zombies so they made Children of the Living Dead. That makes sense. Tom Savini is a genre favorite and make-up artist, he's worked on such films as the original Dawn of the Dead,directed the NOTLD remake, and he has fans who follow his work. His involvement in Children of the Living Dead makes sense. Bill Hinzman played the cemetary zombie in NOTLD, he reprised that role in the fun Flesh Eater, he has fans who appreciate him, and he worked behind the camera on The Crazies. Having him involved in COTLD is another sensible move. John Russo wrote the original NOTLD, provided the story for Return of the Living Dead, and Russo's inclusion on COTLD makes sense too. Savini, Hinzman, and Russo. That's a knock-out combo, but it didn't turn out that way. COTLD is an abomination. It's a total mess and a waste of time and talent.

Say what you like about the 30th Anniversary Edition of NOTLD, but its major fault is that most of the added footage advanced a new plot that doesn't fit at all. None of the Rev Hicks stuff should have been put into NOTLD, but since they were determined to make a sequel they could have taken the mishandled ideas from the 30th Anniversary Edition and expanded on them so they'd make more sense. They could have had Savini handle the make-up or direct, let Russo write the damn thing (the 30th Anniversry Edition shows he's at least got an idea), and hell give Bill a chance to be a zombie again. Why not bring in Debbie Rochon too?All of that would have made some degree of sense, but instead Savini wasn't paid to handle the make-up or direct, Hinzman's beloved zombie was kept off screen, and Russo isn't the writer. Even Santa Claws is entertaining straight to video fare, but not COTLD. They went with a director who is unknown, and a writer that never wrote a horror movie of note, and somebody edited the film together in the most incoherent manner possible! ALL THE LINES ARE DUBBED AWFULLY TOO! None of this makes one bit of sense. The three guys who have entertained us in the past are almost completely left out of the loop. Don't be fooled by the inclusion of their names. Forget this one!

Rating:
Summary: WHAT HAPPENED?!
Review: TOM SAVINI IS A GOOD MAKE-UP ARTIST, BUT THIS TIME AROUND HE DOESN'T DO THE MAKE-UP AND ONLY POPS UP FOR A FEW MINUTES. INSTEAD WE GET SAVINI IN ACTOR MODE. OH NO!
BILL HINZMAN, WHO HAS WONDERFUL CHARM AS THE CEMETARY ZOMBIE IN NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD AND HECK EVEN THE CHEESY FLESH EATER, IS INVOLVED IN THIS ONE TOO, BUT THIS TIME AROUND HE DOESN'T DO ANY ACTING IN THE MOVIE! DOUBLE OH NO!!
THIS HAD A CHANCE AT BEING SOMETHING SLIGHTLY COOL AT LEAST IF SAVINI HAD BEEN THE EFFECTS GUY AND HINZMAN HAD DISPLAYED THE SPARK HE HAS AS HIS ZOMBIE ALTER-EGO. MAYBE THEN THINGS MIGHT HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT, BUT NOOOOO. WHY WOULD YOU NOT HAVE SAVINI DO MAKE-UP AND PUT BILL HINZMAN IN THE MOVIE IN THE ROLE HE HAS MADE FAMOUS AND HAS A KNACK FOR?! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!

Rating:
Summary: Awful Waste of Film
Review: Children of the Living Dead is an awful, low budget zombie film that is about, well, the living dead. It opens with a zombie plague being crushed completely by humans. However, one zombie escapes destruction and (after the film jumps ahead in time) ends up causing the demise of some snotty teens. The film then commits the cardinal sin of cinema of jumping ahead YET AGAIN in time and now we're treated to a car dealer wanting to build his car lot on top of a graveyard. Because the lone zombie is more of a vengeful ghost/killer than an instinct-driven flesh-eater from Dawn of the Dead, he starts reanimating more bodies to stop this. This film is extremely dull, has AWFUL "acting", and an extremely small budget which shows painfully throughout the movie. (I'd guess only a film shot by a teen armed with a camcorder in his backyard could have any lower of a budget.) One can only guess why Tom Savini decided to be in this dog of a film.

Pass on Children of the Living Dead. You won't be sorry you did.

Rating:
Summary: THE WORST ZOMBIE MOVIE EVER!!!!
Review: I SAW SOME STINKERS IN MY DAY BUT THIS ONE REALLY TAKES THE CAKE...DON'T BUY THIS MOVIE OR EVEN BOTHER RENTING IT. THE ONLY QUESTION THAT I STILL HAVE IS... WHY TOM SAVINI HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS

Rating:
Summary: What?
Review: I'm sure Tom Savini is still trying to figure out how he got mixed up in this one and so am I. It started off with a lot of potential, where Night of the Living Dead left off, shooting zombies in the field. Well after the opening scene this movie falls apart or should I say is ripped apart by a lot of bad acting and a really bad story. Tom Savini is lucky his character is killed off in the first scene. The rest of the movie is based around some cockamamey story about some guy named Abbott Hays who killed a lot of people however many years ago and he's still be alive and eating dead people which brings them back to life as zombies which are, after all, required to make this an actual zombie movie and so on and so forth, etc., etc., blah blah blah.
In short, buy a GOOD zombie movie, a category in which this movie does not fall.

Rating:
Summary: Well, hmmm.....
Review: This movie is ok. The first ten minutes rock, but then the movie does a 180 degree turn. I still have it in my collection. It is good to watch the first time, every time after put it in while you are busy doing something else for background noise. Don't feel bad if you hate it!

Rating:
Summary: I can't find a good thing to say about this movie
Review: This cinematic masterpiece is a worthy addition to the Living Dead Saga!! This is what I would be saying if I even remotely enjoyed this movie, but unfortunately I can say nothing of the sort. Perhaps it was the random, scattered, and unfocused plot. Or maybe it was the trite and flat dialogue. I won't even go into what I felt about the acting, but heed my warning, it's not good. I have to admit that the first 5 to 10 minutes showed promise. But drawing from my own experience, promise don't mean squat if you have no direction. I think the only good thing about this movie is it can be one to watch with friends to revel about how bad it is, but I am afraid they might get bored and go home.