Blue Blood / Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1975 / 1972) UK Quad Poster

Blue Blood, a demonic variant of Harold Pinter's The Servant, was co-written by director Andrew Sinclair and Alexander Thynne - a pseudonym for the Marquis of Bath, whose country home - Longleat House, was the principle location. Filmed in 1973, it didn't receive a release until 1975, on this very double bill. The high powered cast give mostly excellent performances, but are scuppered by an indifferent and confused script, which touches on satanism, class and power struggles. The German title is the most interesting take on Thynne's obsessions.

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things is the horror debut of Canada's greatest exploitation director, Bob Clark (his first film was She-Man: A Story of Fixation in 1967). A theatrical troupe unearth a corpse for a mock Satanic ritual, where things inevitably go wrong and a nightmarish finale ensues as the dead come for revenge. Clark's co-screenwriter Alan Ormsby stars as the theatrical director (with wife Anya) and despite the low budget, sharp scripting and effective ghouls combine to make this one of the best zombie films ever. Clark also directed Dead of Night and Black Christmas (both 1974), Murder by Decree (1979), Porky's (1981 and 1st sequel) and the evergreen classic A Christmas Story (1983).

Aka: I diavoli n° 2 (it was pushed as a sequel to Ken Russell's The Devils), Der Lord, der ein Diener sein wollte (The Lord who Wanted to be a Servant) / Zombie Graveyard. La noche de los muertos, Revenge of the Living Dead

Condition: VERY GOOD - Light creasing, slight grubbiness in whites

Cast: Oliver Reed, Derek Jacobi, Fiona Lewis, Anna Gaël, Meg Wynn Owen / Alan Ormsby, Anya Ormsby, Jane Daly, Bruce Solomon