Oct 06 2004
Movie: “Children of the Living Dead” (2001)
“Children of the Living Dead” (2001) directed by Tor Ramsey.
(MF Title: “Forget the zombies, shoot the director in the head!”)
Starring: Tom Savini, Marty Schiff, Damien Luvara and Jamie McCoy.
Zombie Film Rating: 
Overview: This movie is the genital herpes of the Zombie Film Genre. Not even bad enough to be good, it still manages to combine bad acting, flimsy logic, poor camera work and a sort of generic incoherence into a package that at best is a dismal effort at a zombie film, and at worst is a cheap effort to cash in on the “of the dead” series of films. If you feel you must inflict this movie on yourself, do it when you’re well fortified with alcohol or illicit drugs.
Summary: The movie opens (promisingly) with Deputy turned survivalist Hughes (Tom Savini) whooping zombie butt, but the fun soon ends as he is joined by Deputy Randolf and they check out the “old hayes place”.
It seems Abbott Hayes was a serial killer in their neck of the woods, and he escaped from prison when the zombie outbreak took place (we presume this portion of the movie to run roughly in line with “Dawn of the Dead”). He has since become an intelligent zombie!
Hughes and Randolf find a group of kids inside the barn (Coralled by a zombie? WTF?) and while Randolf escorts the kids to safety, Hughes takes on Hayes in the loft. Despite Hughes previous zombie-butt kicking expertise, he is killed by Hayes, and Randolf is too afraid to go in and help…
-Flash forward to present day- (sort of…)
A group of kids are travelling to a concert, naturally they stop off at the old Hayes place to have a beer, insult the dead and say “Candyman” three times (Drat, wrong film.. you get the idea though). As they leave a zombie steps out in front of them and the van veers off a cliff (where the hell did that cliff come from? All the footage I’ve seen of this area shows farmland!).
-Flash forward to actual present day-
Some idiot (Mr. Michaels) has decided to build an auto mega-mall on the site of the graveyard in town (Um, once again…isn’t this an isolated graveyard, if its isolated why not build next to it?). Anyway he has placed his son (Mathew Michaels) in nominal control of the groundbreaking operations. He notices the rapidly dwindling population almost immediately, but is too wrapped up in making time with the local greasy spoon waitress to put it together.
While these various unrelated and unresolved subplots are playing themselves out, Abbott Hayes has gathered an army of the undead, and marches forward to take over the country!
No not really… this army of the undead marches to the diner (the lynchpin of civilization, had Stalin or Hitler recognized this it would be a very different world today, let me tell you!). Thankfully, as the cowardly sheriff, Mathew and the waitress are standing around completely failing to barricade the diner in any way, shape or form the entire construction crew arrives, and begins Operation: Zombie Mayhem.
The mayhem I refer to is on par with a home movie of kids pretending they’re WWF stars in the back yard, but lacks the production values and acting. In the end Abbott Hayes escapes to rise again in our nightmares (but hopefully not in another movie).
Critique: Haven’t you been reading this?