Zombie Film Review:

Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things…

Year: 1972

Director: Bob Clark

A.k.a.: Revenge of the Living Dead

Tagline: Your invited to Orvilles coming out party. It'll be a scream… YOURS.

Review: A strange film crew on a boat and some immaculately dressed ghouls open up this zombie flick, the clothes are unfortunately one of the memorable things about this film and although I am not usually fixated by fashion, I cannot believe that people actually wore clothes this bad, even in the seventies. It turns from a highly camp, B-movie flick with plenty of overacting into a NOTLD meets ‘That Seventies Show.' I.E. It is not that funny, but it also not that scary… One thing that you can say about the characters is that I challenge you to find a character who deserves to die more than the actors director Alan, from the moment he opens his mouth and you see his trousers, you will be wanting him to suffer!

Zombie Quality: ***

The main zombie/corpse Orville looks like he has been covered in glue and then white greasepaint, but it does give him and unpleasant pallor, the rest of the zombies are what you would expect, a mixture of grey, blacks and white and obviously a coupe that the make up team spent a little more time and money on… Considering that this was the first colour zombie film to be made after NOTLD, and it is at a time BS (Before Savini) the team do an excellent job, as although the zombies are not of a high quality, they are cutting edge!

Zombie Behaviour: **

It's a little while before these demon raised, walking corpses actually do appear, but when they do, although dated, the bizarreness of this scene will stick with you. They rise from the ground to most weird of sound tracks and they do stagger around and eat flesh… They don't pass on the infection, but hey-ho, such is (un)life.

Zombie Threat: **

There are quite a lot of zombies on this small cursed island, but one of the camp actors seems to fend off one of the zombies by simply shining a torch in it's face, so as far as killing machines go and the lack of infecting their victims, these are pretty lame, but the hunky ‘Kung Fu' Joe character gets overpowered off screen, which must mean that the small hungry female zombies are a lot more hungry than big groups of full ones ???

Gore Content: *

There is a bit of blood, but there isn't really anything of note, apart from screaming people having blood splattered on them from their attacking ‘zombies' mouths… No gouges or things to make you go ‘MMMmmm' but then again it was made in 1972, eight years before Zombie Flesh Eaters!

Overall Quality: **

The acting is lousy, (or maybe that is irony about the amateur status of the theatre troupe) the dialogue is crazy, the music insane and the desire to see the cast eaten is probably the strongest I have felt… This is certainly a milestone in Zombie cinema history, but unless you are a zombie film historian, it may be best to buy something a bit more lively... Interesting, but no cigar.