Here are two theater giveaways used for promoting Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things: a Graveyard Goodies menu and the Interment Insurance Company Policy. They spared no expense in the layout and printing (and I do mean no expense at all by the look of them).
Direct to you from The Radio Reaper’s not so small reliquary (by way of Granny Creech’s overgrown backyard, through some creepy woods, and now here at last, are the almost endless radio spots for the creepy cult favorite: Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1972). It starts off as a horror comedy but gets dark and deadly as the children learn their terminal lessons. This is one of those movies best experienced on VHS, but hell, digital is easier to use these days. For 50 grand, you get a slow but really eerie story where you wind up rooting for the zombies (yeah, admit it, you always root for the zombies, you sick bastard). Stay tuned as we have thousands of cool radio spots just itching to light up your night, courtesy of two very generous horror hoarders, Granny Creech and The Radio Reaper.
Here are some creepy radio spots to devour!
The Devil Rides Out is one of those movies, like Casablanca, that I can watch again and again. I wish Hammer had continued a franchise with Christopher Lee as the occult investigator, Duc de Richleau. Terence Fisher and Richard Matheson (screenplay) did a marvelous job with Dennis Wheatley’s rambling book, and the depiction of the more nefarious theme of Satanism (not the fun-loving Sabrina-esque one we’ve come to love these days), is still effective though not quite as shocking. Wheatley had written a few books around Duc de Rickleau and Lee, after meeting the author at a lecture, urged Hammer to lens one of his books. Lee is noted as saying this was his favorite Hammer movie (cited from IMDb). Considering he played the good guy fighting evil, for a change, I can see why.
Executive producer Anthony Hinds was inexplicably depressed by the rushes, and made a special request to composer James Bernard to detract from the film’s shortcomings. While Bernard was working on his score, hinds hired Patrick Allen to re-voice co-star Leon Greene, inadvertently compromising the film even more. A pivotal special effects sequence, a close-up of the Angle of Death, was left unfinished. ( The Hammer Vault, Treasures From the Archive of Hammer Films by Marcus Hearn)
Nevertheless, it would seem that Hinds was not the only person who had reservations about Greene’s acting abilities. Commented Christopher Lee in a letter to his fan club shortly after the completion of shooting, “What I have seen of the film, with the possible exception of one member of the cast, promises to be surprisingly good.” Ouch! (Hammer Complete: The Films, the Personnel, the Company by Howard Maxford)
…
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer (The Black Cat 1934, The Man From Planet X), this, little less than an hour, AIP movie may not get much love, but it is kind of fun to kill some time. IMDb listed the budget at 100 grand. It Came From Hollywood sent these pressbook scans along to help you make up your mind. Ulmer started as a set designer, and worked as an assistant director on influential German Expressionist films like F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh and Faust in the 1920s (cited from Britannica). He ran afoul of the studios after having an affair with the wife of someone with enough clout to get him blackballed. That moved him into B and lower-budgeted movies, which actually worked out pretty well for sci fi and noir fans. Jack Lewis, the writer, wrote screenplays for Johnny Mack Brown and other Western cowboy actors.
…