Tales from the Hood

Very bizarre - just the way I like things! Ridiculous amount of profanity, cool horror & the editing is spot on. Not bad for a crazy a$$ African American flick, I don't mind these type occasionally.

A tribute to movies like "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" and "Tales from the Crypt", "Tales from the Hood" presents some horror vignettes centering on life in the black ghetto. Some drug dealers go to a funeral home to pick up their stuff, only to have the eccentric owner (Clarence Williams III) tell them about the fates of some recent customers...with a twist at the end. At once a fun horror flick and also warning about getting mixed up with the wrong people, this is a cool one. A particular scene in the fourth vignette appears to be a tribute to "A Clockwork Orange". All in all, a real credit for director Rusty Cundieff and executive producer Spike Lee.

Featuring Tom Wright (the hitchhiker in "Creepshow 2"), David Alan Grier, Corbin Bernsen and Rosalind Cash (in her final role).

I watched "Tales from the Hood" back when it was initially released, and haven't seen it since. I seemed to remember that it wasn't really much of anything noteworthy. But I was given the chance to sit down and watch it again here as 2021 begins, so of course I did so.

And turns out that the 1995 horror anthology "Tales from the Hood" was actually a lot better than I remembered it to be. So revisiting it was definitely not a waste of time.

As anthologies go, the segments and stories are of various degree of entertainment value and worth, and so is also the case for "Tales from the Hood". I must admit that I really enjoyed the first segment the most, the one with the police officers. And the narrative story that tied the segments together was also rather interesting, well except for the ludicrous ending.

"Tales from the Hood" is more than just a collection of horror stories, because it deals with issues such as police brutality, racism, gang related crime, domestic violence, and so forth. And I must say that these issues were nicely tied into the different segments, which added a good amount of enjoyment to the segments, making it more than just average horror.

The special effects, practical effects and make-up in the segments were good, and were helping the stories along nicely.

There is a good amount of familiar actors on the cast list, and I will say that they did a good job in putting together the ensemble of performers for this anthology. And it should also be said that the performances put on were enjoyable.

All in all, "Tales from the Hood" is an enjoyable horror anthology, and my rating of it lands on well-deserved six out of ten stars.

Tales From the Hood, another horror anthology film dripping with EC comics-style ghoulishness, strings together four stories told by a wild-haired, macabre funeral director (Clarence Williams III) to a trio of gangbangers seeking their missing drug stash in a mortuary. Virtually all of the tales are familiar -- walking corpses and voodoo dolls are staples of the format -- but director Rusty Cundieff makes every effort to inject the proceedings with social morality. Child abuse, racism, and police brutality each get a pretty heavy-handed treatment, but the last story, involving a voluntary "behavior modification" technique for an unrepentant killer (ala A Clockwork Orange) explodes off the screen. In the film's most powerful sequence, Cundieff serves up a quickly cut montage of unsettling images culled from a number of state historical archives depicting vicious, stomach-churning lynchings meant to deter the rapacious young killer from wanting to harm any more people. It's potent stuff, and makes one wish the rest of the film had this kind of intensity.

Yes, it's flawed, and it's cheesy, and it's over-the-top. It's equal parts clever satire, straight-up homage, and occasionally even a parody. There are many horror, exploitation, and black humor elements sprinkled throughout the movie. I just can't understand why this movie isn't beloved by more people. Maybe it's because the cast is mostly black, and the stories revolve around inner city, black youth? Well, as a white guy from the suburbs, I absolutely loved this movie. It's flawed, of course, but when it works, it works better than most other movies of this type.

If you're not familiar with it, this is a horror anthology highly influenced by Tales from the Crypt, an old 50s horror comic book series that birthed several spin-off movies and an influential TV series. It also takes ample inspiration from the Twilight Zone, Tales from the Dark Side, and Creepshow franchises. If you're a fan of any of these, I'd have to highly recommend Tales from the Hood, especially if you're also into Blaxploitation, from which it also takes some inspiration.

In the time honored tradition of horror/exploitation movies everywhere, the guilty are punished with gory deaths and lessons are learned (frequently too late). Is it preachy, didactic social satire? Perhaps, at times. But it's also entertaining as hell. It has a great cast, some really cheesy, over-top-the-top acting, and was produced by Spike Lee. For me, that makes it almost required viewing.