Criminally Insane 2

Nick Millard aka Nick Phillips should have left well-enough alone when he made "Criminally Insane" 10 years before the release of this god-awful waste of time and effort. The fact that the original "Criminally Insane" was less than an hour in length should have clued him into the fact that he had probably milked this storyline for all he was going to get out of it...but instead he opts to use TONS of footage from the original in this one as well, even to the point of recycling the original opening credit sequence! Unfortunately, bringing back the rapidly aging Priscilla Alden did not save this one. What little bit of original footage there was in this flick looks as if it were filmed with a rented hand-held camcorder! If this film cost more than $100 to make I would be very surprised and I would be equally surprised if it made anything close to that amount! Avoid this one and watch the original instead!

Due to budget cuts, Ethel Janowski (again played by Priscilla Alden) is released from a mental institution (even though she killed six people) and delivered to the Hope Bartholomew halfway house. Once there, she immediately relapses into her criminally insane ways and kills anyone who gets between her and her food.

HOLY MOLY! Does this movie suck! You know you are in trouble when the open credits start up and they are just the credits from the first film, apparently filmed off a TV screen. Nick Millard (under his pseudonym Nick Phillips) decided to return to the world of Crazy Fat Ethel over ten years later and with a budget that probably covered the cost of a blank tape and a video camera rental for the weekend. Let's just say that Millard's unique style doesn't translate well to video. Seriously, I have made home movies with more production value than this. And Millard tries to pull a SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 2 by padding half the running time with footage from the first film (which looks like it was taken off a worn VHS copy). Alden is again good as Ethel but the film is so inept that you start to feel sorry for her for starring in this garbage. I mean, at least the first film tried. Here we have no music, weaker effects (if that is at all possible), shaky camera work, horrible audio and editing that looks like it was done with two VCRs hooked up. Avoid this at all costs!

There are some bad movies out there. Most of them are rather fun. "Criminally Insane 1" was one of those flicks. So bad that it was enjoyable and had re-watch value to it. "Criminally Insane 2" has to be one of the worst movies ever made and coming from me, that's saying a lot because I am not the type of person to say anything is the worst. But trust me, this was just completely awful and running just 1 hour is 1 hour too long.

The movie has a rather incoherent storyline, but who cares about story when all you want to see is a big fat woman running around killing people because she isn't being fed. Well, you don't see that in this movie, except for all of the flashback sequences that are from the first one. The new storyline could have been really funny with Ethel being sent to a halfway house and murdering everyone in there, but nothing happens until the last 20 minutes of the movie and at that point you are already falling asleep.

The camera work in this movie is just atrocious. This literally reminds me of something I shot with friends of mine back when I was 15. The sound quality is something else as you can't understand a word most of the characters are saying. To give an example of how bad it is, go into a New York Subway and try to understand what is being said over the loud speakers, that is what this movie sounds like. Not that it matters what they are talking about anyway because the actors are about as dry as a dead piece of wood.

Now I know that saying this is the worst movie out there is pretty harsh but words can't describe just how bad this movie is. If you don't believe me, see it for yourself. 1/10

It's not a surprise that "Criminally Insane 2" makes the original look better because face it, belated and unnecessary sequels to cult classics often fail to deliver. However, things go further than that: "Criminally Insane 2" actually manages to make the original look expensive! Part 1 only cost $30000 to make, but this one seems like it's literally made for nothing. To give you a rough idea about how much money and effort making this movie took: the opening credit sequence is just the "Criminally Insane" credits taped of a TV screen. Yikes. There wasn't even any money for actual film this time around either, so writer/director Nick Millard actually resorts to shooting the whole thing with a freaking camcorder. Well, the whole thing...that's not entirely true, given that about half of the movie is stock footage from the first one (cleverly disguised as Ethel's dreams). There's roughly 35 minutes worth of new stuff (presumably all filmed in one afternoon), and each second of it makes you want to burn something down. Your "new" story only lasts half an hour, how the hell can it be so mind-numbingly boring? It's truly unbelievable how much this movie drags, these boring, faceless characters take forever to die. And even when Ethel finally kills them all, she does it in aggravatingly lame ways. This isn't just a lackluster sequel, this is nothing more than a scam. It's sad something like this can be so widely distributed, let's just pretend it never happened.

Ah yes. Crazy fat Ethel is back...and she's still hungry. But did the world really need this sequel? Don't get me wrong, there's a soft spot in my heart for the original slice of movie cheese. How could you go wrong with a premise so...well...delicious. A fat woman dispenses with anyone who gets in the way of her and a refrigerator. And the movie will forever be on our guilty pleasure list of 70's drive-in sleaze that we must go back and view every couple of years.

But along comes this sequel, shot entirely on camcorder with no music, no real edits, and no real point. Crazy fat Ethel (now minus a few pounds) is released from the mental ward into a halfway house where she begins killing anyone who gets in the way of her eating. Old habits die hard, I guess.

However, all of that only takes up about ten minutes of screen time. The rest of the running time is padded with flashback footage from the original film. So we'll get new scenes of Ethel taking a nap, the camcorder zooms in to her face, and we cut to old scenes from part one. Repeated ad nauseum. So much footage from part one is used that, if you've never seen the original, you'll see it all here. And it looks like a masterpiece compared to the new footage.

We get ridiculously long scenes of a character eating an entire candy bar, Ethel eating an entire bowl of pudding, Ethel dancing around out back with a bloody knife, etc. And since it's filmed on camcorder, there's crummy picture and sound to back it all up. Seeing this with the original footage only made me appreciate the original that much more.

So, skip this and stick with the original.