1. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972)
Now this film really impressed me with what it managed to achieve on a shooting schedule of 14 days and a paltry budget of $70,000. A theatre troupe director called Alan takes his 'children' - the rest of the troup to an island where dead criminals are buried for 'fun'. He frightens the pants off the troupe when he talks about the dead people and at midnight, Alan gets the bright decision to dig up a corpse. The corpse is called Orville and they try to hold a seance to revive him. Alan is pretty disappointed that Orville does not wake up and he takes his spite out on the corpse - using him for mean tricks among the crew. However, Alan's little seance to raise the dead awakens all the dead bodies on the island. The troupe are under siege and it is the zombies' time to shine and take the lead role. A cracking little film which is creepy and atmospheric, you spend the whole time on your seat, just willing the zombies to come to life and get rid of smug bastard Alan. The director makes good use of the locations and the whole cast are obviously having a blast filming the movie. The make up effects on the zombies are excellent and put Romero's green faced zombies to shame in Dawn of the Dead. There is also some seriously bad 1970s hairdos and dress to keep the viewer entertained. A minor classic which deserves a bigger audience.