Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things
1972 film by Bob Clark
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (also known as Revenge of the Living Dead, Things from the Dead, and Zreaks) is a 1972 American comedy horror film directed by Bob Clark. It later became a cult classic. This low-budget zombie film is the third film of director Bob Clark, who later became famous for directing the films Black Christmas, A Christmas Story, and Porky's.
The film was shot in 14 days on a budget of $50,000. Clark employed some of his college friends on it.
In the film, a sadistic theatre director uses a necromantic ritual in an attempt to resurrect the dead in an island cemetery. The attempt backfires, as it creates aggressive zombies which attack the director and his theatrical troupe.
Plot
The story focuses on a theatre troupe who travel by boat to a small island off the coast of Miami that is mainly used as a cemetery for deranged criminals, to have a night of fun and games. Their director Alan (Alan Ormsby), a twisted, sadistic individual, tells his group — whom he refers as his "children" — numerous stories relating to the island's history and buried inhabitants.
Alan leads them to a cottage, where they are supposed to spend the night.
“Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things” enters the record as 1972 film by Bob Clark. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Children, Shouldn't and Play can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2963591. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.