A town with a history of zombies and haunted by the corpse of an infamous serial rapist/murderer is overtaken by the living dead, again.

Set up as a quasi-sequel to Night of the Living Dead, much like Return of the Living Dead was, but more consistent. The dead rose in ’68, were killed (Dawn and Day never happened) and now they’re coming back again. I’m not a huge fan of diminishing the Dead Trilogy like that, but it’s an entertaining take on it.

The oddest aspect is that in Children of the Living Dead, zombies don’t hurt children. Which annoys me, I don’t like my zombies to care who they hurt, I want them to eat everyone. On the other side of the coin is the idea that zombies not only rot, but age as time passes. I’m not saying that’s a great idea, but it’s unique and I liked it in this flick.

The dialog is ultra-cheesy, and most the acting sucks. Tom Savini as a “survivalist jagoff” is probably the best of them. Several brutally stupid ideas made it into this flick, but isn’t that always the case?

The zombies look great, a little over-the-top at times, but still great. The gory and rotting zombies I prefer were sometimes replaced with cartoonish gray ones with long fingers. But hey, The Horrorist loves infinite variety, and the rotting, gory ones look beautiful. I’m not a fan of the leader zombie concept, but Abbott Hayes is a pretty cool creation and adds a lot of personality to just another zombie flick.

Once the flick gets going, it goes pretty good. The dialog loses its awkwardness, the characters all fall into place, the ambiguous ending pleased me. It’s by no means one of the best zombie movies, but it’s a hell of a lot better than most recent American zombie flicks. Most resort to stupid humor when they can’t make it to scary, Children of the Dead never stoops to that. They wanted to make a horror movie, so they did.

All in all, a decent effort. I bought the DVD and didn’t regret it, and that’s as good a compliment as anyone can ask for on a straight-to-video flick. They got my money, if they make a sequel they’ll get more.

6 out of 10 legendary serial zombies