Inside My Head – Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema: Children of the Living Dead (2001)

Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema: Children of the Living Dead (2001)

It’s one thing to make an unofficial remake of a horror film. A tribute, if you will. The unofficial 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead clearly demonstrated the innocent fun to be found in such remake spirit – free to include nuances and slight differences without criticism due to its ‘unofficial’ nature.

It’s when folks start to toe the line between campy tribute and flat-out cinematic disaster that my Sketch Cinema spidey-senses start a’ tingling. Never one to resist pure horror catastrophe, I treated myself to a late-night, mid-week screening of one of the most puzzling and saddening straight-to-video films of all time. In honor of Halloween, my sketch-loving friends, I bring you Tor A. Ramsey’s Children of the Living Dead.

Don’t let the title confuse you, however. At no point, whatsoever, during the duration of this film were any children spawned from zombies.

That’s right. None. Not even any zombie coitus, making-out, or heavy petting.

But there were, after all, zombies. So we shall continue.

COTLD attempts to pick up where the bastardized version of Night of ends…cavalcades of red-necked, pickup-truck-driving, saw-off-shotgun-totin locals roaming bland-looking fields, knocking off massive amounts of the undead, one by one. The zom-tastrophe appears to be well in control thanks to our film’s hero, ex-cop-turned-survivalist Hughes (theatrically portrayed by Tom Savini), who clearly needed an outlet for his anti-undead-acrobatic skills.

Unfortunately for Hughes (and even more unfortunate for his partner, Sheriff Randolph, who is pretty much a useless, pompous donkey), his ninja-like prowess is nothing for our leader of the undead pack, one Abbott Hayes. Hayes was a local feller with a penchant for raping and torturing women who, after being murdered in prison, disappeared from the morgue (we suppose so, anyway – my neck still hurts from the whiplash-y time-jumping way in which the movie refuses to tell us an actual story) only to return as a dapper, well-dressed zombie (sporting clean-as-whistle wing tips). Hughes’ acrobatics are ineffective on Hayes, who merely reaches in, Mola Ram-style, and rips Hughes’ beating heart out of his chest. After his body is thrown down the barn door, Hughes has enough time to explain to Sheriff Rudolph what has transpired, even asking him to shoot him.

Fourteen years later, after a mysterious car wreck that claimed the lives of four local teens, it seems our pal Abbott Hayes is still roaming the area of his former home, and this time, he’s lonely. He happens upon the caskets of our young victims, and loving nibbles each to bring them into his zombified world.

Oh, and throughout this whole debacle, some rich dude decides he’s going to send his son out there to build a car dealership, directly on top of Hayes’ family graveyard. Well, not actually on top – they dug up the caskets and dumped them all into a huge pit rather than relocating them to another cemetery. Because that’s a good idea.

Hilary ensues, as one could naturally imagine, as our half-hearted cast of characters run around between the cemetery, the motel, and the diner, muttering to themselves and forgetting to clue the rest of us in on key elements of plotline. The movie strays from conventional zombie wisdom, however, in key ways:

Sneaky Little Bastards. Although we, the viewers, can clearly hear Abbott and his zombie friends wheezing and moaning and generally not being so stealth, it appears not only quite possible, but also quite commonplace, for a zombie to successfully sneak up on a living human, completely unsuspected, and eat them.
The Failure of Inference. We don’t know why Abbott Hayes became a zombie. We don’t know why or how he disappeared from the morgue. Hell, we don’t even really know who the hell he even is save for the tiny bits of info we’re spoon fed throughout the duration of the film. So who cares?
Pediophobia. Apparently, according to Children of the Living Dead, zombies aren’t attracted to children. Who’da thunk?
Zombies are Smooth . Unlike their stiff and uptight ancestors, our zombies move fluidly, albeit slowly, and much like John Cleese in his trademark Ministry of Silly Walks sketch.

Why, Tom Savini...Why??

One might simply conclude that, despite the obvious failures of the film, a zombie movie, no matter how horrible, is still an enjoyable experience. I implore you to toss that silly notion aside, as COTLD refuses to even show on camera any actual zombie killings, instead cutting away to attempted ‘artistic’ camera angles and leaving the viewer to deduce what occurred.

Art-nouveau, zombie-style? I think not.

And now, on this day before Halloween, I leave you with this week’s Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema quote of the week:

Matthew Micheals: “Of all the places in all the world my dad could have picked to build his dealership, he picked the one right down the street from Walking Dead Central.”

Rating: 9.0/10 (2 votes cast)

Rating: +2 (from 2 votes)

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