5/5 From an Executive Producer of A Nightmare on Elm Street
  by Mimi (IL)
Description: "The plague continues... When Matthew Michaels arrives in a rural town in Pennsylvania to fulfill his father's wishes of developing a small, seemingly innocent piece of land, it marks the beginning of a horrifying phenomenon. The land is an old cemetery and those buried there are awakened and begin to walk the earth once again."

Starring: Tom Savini, Martin Schiff, Damien Luvara, Jamie McCoy, Sam Nicotero, Heidi Hinzman, Tom Stoviak, Philip Bower

Genre: Horror
Runtime: 90 mins.
Rating: R (Horror, Violence, Gore, Language
Release Date: 2001
Label: Artisan Entertainment
Director: Tor A. Ramsey

1/5 Avoid it.
  by C. Bennett
I guess I'm what you'd call a zombie aficionado. I buy every movie I can find involving the walking dead. Doing so I've had to sit through some real stinkers and let me tell you, Children of the Living Dead is the worst.

There are a lot of bad zombie films out there...Some have a bit of charm about them, Burial Ground for instance...Awful film, but an enjoyable watch. The only thing enjoyable about this film however, is when the credits roll.

I guess I'll get into the story. It jumps around a lot which is pretty annoying, you've got Tom Savini doing karate...Some annoying sheriff with a huge birthmark on his face looking around an old farm house. Oh, and there's this zombie serial killer on the loose. Abbot Hayes, I believe that was his name.

Sorry for real lack of a description, but that's all you really need to know about this movie. Bad acting, bad directing, awful script, did I mention bad acting?

If you're a real glutton for punishment and you're dead set on seeing this film...Don't.

1/5 I feel dirty even giving this one star...
  by S. Stanton (Manchester, Michigan United States)
Avoid this movie at all costs.

Karen L Wolf should be allowed nowhere near a pen and paper, a computer, or any other medium to which she can inflict this type of torture upon zombie fans.

Unless you are a hardcore zombie fan like I am do not watch this movie. Even if you are a hardcore zombie fan you may wish to avoid contaminating your brain and movie collection with this trash.

2/5 Wasted Opportunity
  by Graboidz (Westminster, Maryland)
You know, I just started to write a fairly detailed review of "Children of the Living Dead", and basically deleted the whole thing. What was I thinking or why should I bother? "Children of the Living Dead" is a lousy flick. A very loosely based sequel to "Night of the Living Dead" and "Return of the Living Dead", "Children of the Living Dead" is John Russo's latest attempt to cash in on the zombie phenomenon he help create with George Romero in the late 60's. It's a sequel in only the vaguest fashion. One character references the earlier films in a forgettable scene.

Tom Savini, in an extended cameo, plays a commando-like deputy in the early scenes, but rest assured, none of his trademark special effects are present here. Alan Howarth, who helped create the music in a few John Carpenter classic horror flicks such as "Prince of Darkness" does lay down a decent film score, but it's wasted on this lousy film.

The film unfolds more like a vampire tale than a typical zombie flick. The lead zombie, the reanimated corpse of a serial killer and rapist, goes about creating zombies about every 15 years. Unlike other zombie flicks, the zombies here seem to target their victims...and do an extremely poor job at it.

Unfortunately, "Children of the Living Dead" is just a bad film, it's not even in the league of so-bad-its-good zombie films like "Hard Rock Zombies". This is just kind of a borefest. What a real wasted opportunity, as there are some seeds of originality here, and the main zombie cuts a pretty impressively creepy figure, but nothing comes together and the film turns into a real snoozer. Not recommended.

1/5 'Children' Should Have Been Aborted
  by Dead Kev (www.allthingszombie.com)
Even if you're pro-life, you have got to admit that this thing should have been aborted immediately. To submit this heap to anyone with more than a few brain cells is downright criminal.

Mathew Michaels (Damien Luvara) is helping oversee the construction of his father's (Philip Bowers) new car dealership in a rural Pennsylvania town. They secured a good deal on the land because it formerly used for the local cemetery. The law, Deputy Randolph (Marty Schiff), has conveniently agreed to turn the other cheek as they relocate the graves. The townsfolk, the construction crew, and everyone else nearby eventually learn the hard way that it's not a good idea to mess with someone's final resting place. An undead serial killer named Abbott Hayes would see to that.

From what I've read about the behind-the-scenes action, the vast majority of problems that this movie has can be laid squarely at the feet of screenwriter Karen Wolf. She helped produce COTLD along with her father Joseph Wolf (A Nightmare on Elm Street) and John Russo (co-writer of Night of the Living Dead). Director Tor Ramsey has let it be known that Karen Wolf was obsessive, and indeed on the verge of lunacy, regarding her script and intense micromanagement of filmmaking details that she had little experience with or knowledge of. There were to be no changes in the script, and Wolf threatened to fire anybody that tried to change something or who disagreed with her ideas. And you'd think it would be important research, but apparently she had never even seen DAWN OF THE DEAD or DAY OF THE DEAD.

If you like mysteries, there are plenty of them to find here. Like why do they wait until dark to bury the bodies in the cemetery after a funeral? Why are Abbott Hayes' hands like two times as large as a normal hand? How did he become undead in the first place? Why doesn't anybody call the cops when they witness somebody get eaten by a zombie? Why didn't the guy that got killed and thrown in a coffin turn into a zombie? How come much of the time the dialogue doesn't match the actors' mouths? There are many more, just watch and make a game of finding all the nonsense.

The one shred of respectability in the entire film is the opening 15 minutes. The reason? Tom Savini. The town's previous zombie outbreak is shown to set up the rest of the movie. Savini plays a former cop turned survivalist enlisted to help deal it. What a tease. There's this big group of people hunting down and exterminating patches of zombies. Lots of guns, a helicopter, high production value kinda stuff. Then Tom Savini is gone and so is any hope for a good flick. Ramsey noted that the beginning works largely because it was only after this portion was filmed that Wolf went on her destructive rampage.

So who do blame? Was it an arrogant producer's daughter who killed a potentially decent flick? Or was it just a combination of bad writing, bad acting, bad directing, and bad producing all coming together? Regardless of whose fault it is, COTLD is a pointless waste of time.