Tales from the Quadead Zone

Chester Novell Turner returns from (or to?) Black Devil Doll territory with this anthology, which barely even qualifies as an anthology, as the framework apparently counts as one story, and there are only two stories presented.

Shirley Jones returns as well to play a woman haunted by her dead son's invisible ghost. She reads him a pair of stories from a book, the first involves a hillbilly killing his family, off-screen, in order to eat their sandwiches at dinnertime. Or, at least she starts to tell him the story. Turner seemingly either ran out of money, or interest in it, because crummy intertitles abruptly finish the tale for her, and the audience, after a short run time.

The second is about a guy who tries to bury his dead brother under his house. For some strange reason, he feels compelled to shout profanities at the dead body before dressing him as a clown and digging the grave. For some even stranger reason, being dressed as a clown somehow reanimates his brother's corpse, the two men battle it out in the cellar, while dead clown brother recites from cue cards lines of dialogue, which is then heavilly distorted to make it unintelligible.

That is the extent of the stories read by this woman. The third tale is, one supposes, the story of her husband coming home and whacking her over the head with the book from Hell, before getting himself shot and killed by her.

Slightly less annoying than Novell's earlier Black Devil Doll From Hell, and not quite as technically inept (we don't hear high pitched buzzing noises on the soundtrack this time around) Truthfully, the dead clown brother segment wasn't bad, in a zero-budget, late night cable television sort of way, but I doubt I could endure this a second time.

The closing credits read: "Tales from the Quadead Zone will return", implying that a sequel might emerge, which, thankfully, never happened.

This is sort of all about a book the way Black Devil Doll was about the Doll. Less out and out exploitation and better pacing set this beside that oddity as equally worth seeing for fans. Not only does this have the same Casio pre rap music score this time it has a title song!!!! It will sear your preconceptions of reality. So will "the clown" episode. So will the whispering sounds made by a dead little boy, and so will the ending.

The rest of the film is not on the same level of odd bad strangeness, it actually shows a better grasp of making a movie than Devil Doll which will make it I suppose a step down for some, but it retains much of the odd charm of that film and this time you get multiple stories each with its own oddness. This film is better acted and in many ways easier to watch, it doesn't have as many video glitches in it as Devil Doll did. Who would have thought that a short decade later video would be making inroads on traditional film production and a short decade after that be threatening film itself as a format. These little shot on video oddities show how far video has come. Wow! Poor sound remains major weak spot you'll have to play some things back a few times to hear every black-ed-wood type dialog moment that you should not miss.

Where is Chester Turner now? That's the big question, he deserves some discovery as a pioneer of shot on video horror. And someone please tell me if Black Devil Doll from Hell part 2 really exists or not.

C. M. Turner did it again with TALES... and this time it was even better! Rather then try to carry the entire running time of a movie by holding onto one story, Mr Turner throws out four stories to make it more interesting (?). Shirley Jones returns as the mother of a dead son who returns from the other side with a book, TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE. As she reads the stories to him they come to life on the screen. You just have to see it to believe it but this is one feat to ever make it into the public market. I am a die-hard bad movie enthusiast and I love this flick so if you don't like it, don't say I didn't warn you.

In the '80s, if you had nothing but loose change in your pocket and wanted to make a film, you had to make do with what you had to hand: a camcorder, friends and family for the cast, and a pair of video recorders so that you could edit tape-to-tape, resulting in a loss of sound and picture quality. Most people who shot such movies had the decency to restrict showings of their 'art' to their nearest and dearest, but somehow, a few managed to get their home-made travesties out to a wider audience. One such auteur was Chester N. Turner, whose work is unique, if nothing else.

Tales From The Quadead Zone is Chester's attempt at a horror anthology (if two stories count as such), shot on a negligible budget, with an amateur cast, a risible script, pitiful special effects, and a plinkety, plonkety Casio organ soundtrack guaranteed to grate on the nerves.

After ugly opening credits featuring amateurish drawings by the film's star Shirley L. Jones, the stories begin as a mother (Jones, sporting an extremely nasty hairdo and huge glasses) reads to her ghostly son from a book titled Tales From The Quadead Zone...

The first tale, Food for ?, sees a poverty stricken family of eight, with only enough food for four, resorting to a game of 'fastest gets to eat' at mealtimes. Eventually, one of the sons, a fat guy in dungarees, snaps and shoots several of his siblings, leaving enough grub for those left alive. The story ends with the killer given the death sentence (executed in the 'state gas chair') and his parents 'living high on the hog in witness protection program'. Everything about this tale stinks, from the script, to the acting, to the music, to the editing -- but at least it is mercifully short.

The second story is even worse, and lasts a whole lot longer. 'The Brothers' stars Keefe L. Turner as Ted, who has planned to kill his older brother Fred for stealing his wife and driving her to commit suicide. However, before Ted can carry out his dastardly deed, big bro' suffers a fatal heart attack. Still thirsting for revenge, Ted steals Fred's body from the morgue and, in an interminable monologue, tells the corpse exactly what he thinks of him, before humiliating the stiff by dressing it up as a clown and digging a grave for it in the basement. This diabolical scheme has Ted in stitches (although Turner's incessant, insufferable howling is no laughing matter for the viewer). Fred doesn't see the funny side, however, and returns from the dead to stick a pitchfork in Ted's guts.

Having finished these two dreadful tales from the Quadead Zone, the mother changes her eye-wear for an equally huge pair before answering the door to her estranged husband, who proceeds to knock her about for reading to their dead son. The woman fights back, eventually stabbing her angry spouse with a knife. Bleeding to death, the husband calls the police, who arrive to find his body in the kitchen. His wife is arrested, but allowed to visit the bathroom before being carted away, where she reminisces about her son Bobby (flashbacks featuring even bigger spectacles), before slashing her throat with a razor blade. Twenty-one hours later, her spirit is reunited with her son (via some truly awful special effects), and the storytelling continues.

Inept in almost every way imaginable, Tales From The Quadead Zone has to be of the worst examples of home-made horror that I have seen. However, in an attempt to find something nice to say about the film, I did find Bobby's whispering ghost voice rather eerie (although the real horror is definitely that hair and those glasses).

There are not words in the English language or any language to describe the pure unadulterated evil which exists in this movie.

Imagine a 1980s camcorder with no boom mic and edited with a Commodore 64. I'm not saying that as an insult. Seriously try to imagine that.

I have no idea how this home made monstrosity was committed to video and got a release.

The plot: An anthology of horror starring Shirley; a black trash housewife reading from a book the size of Webster's Dictionary to a ghost. Since we never see the ghost we just have to presume it's there.

The first story focuses on a redneck family so poor their evening ritual is literally fighting to the death over sandwiches around the dinner table. The losers starve.

The eldest son decides to "take it to the next level" by bringing his toy shotgun and murdering his family members to assure himself a sandwich.

So how does this story conclude? It doesn't! It just ends! The first story is also the best. No kidding. It gets worse from here on. Far far worse.

The second story, 'The Brothers' focuses on two black brothers. After the elder's funeral his grave is robbed by the younger brother whom takes him back home to curse him out for 20 minutes about how he stole his wife. That's right! 20 minutes of one man cursing at a dead body! His ultimate revenge is to dress his brother's corpse up like a clown. But this somehow brings his brother back to life! The undead brother strangles his brother while saying something in a computer distorted voice. This distortion sounds like Steven Hawking on super fast forward in 'Twin Peaks' Black Lodge. It's unclear if the audience is even supposed to understand what he's saying and the distortion is intended make his voice sound scary, (now we know what inspired Christopher Nolan to computer distort Christian Bale's voice as Batman) or if the distortion was merely intending to be a scary scream.

With the word "quad" in the title, we'd presume this horror anthology would have four stories but that's it. Shirley's all done reading. There are only two stories! Now Shirley's abusive husband comes home to bitch smack her with the big book. He's angry that she's been talking with the dead. Let's deal with this issue on Steve Wilkos. "I beat her for necromancy." We can only hope that next Mr. Shirley beats up John Edward.

But Shirley busts a cap (cap gun) in her abusive husband. When the police (no they don't have police costumes or fake badges, they're just two guys with toy guns saying they're the police) arrive to arrest Shirley, she slits her own throat while sitting on the toilet. If only she burned her husband alive in his bed, or shot him while eating ice cream, then she'd have nothing to fear from the police.

This is tear your eyes out bad! Aside from the truly horrible "screenplay" the photography is like Abraham Zapruder with helmet cam and the audio is almost completely unintelligible. This is as bad as I gets. And yes, I've seen all of Michael Bay's films. Bay and Chester Novell Turner are destined to be cellmates in hell.