Criminally Insane 2

Criminally Insane 2 (1987)

BOMB (out of 4)

Incredibly horror film that ranks as one of the worst ever made. Like many "sequels" of the 80s, this here takes about forty-minutes worth of footage from the first film and adds 20-minutes worth of new footage, which was all shot on a camcorder. Even the opening and closing credits were lifted from the first film!!!

Criminally Insane (1975)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

The title pretty much sums up this incredibly bizarre, politically incorrect exploitation film that fans should really eat up. 300 pound plus Ethyl gets out of an insane asylum but she's outraged that people want her to go on a diet so she starts killing anyone who gets between her and food. Running just over 60-minutes this film is technically pretty bad but the outrageous subject matter makes for a very fun movie in the same vein of a John Waters film. There's plenty of violence and fake blood to make you giggle, although the "joke" of an obese person killing gets old after the thirty-minute mark.

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!

During the cheap filmed in video beginning of Crazy Fat Ethel II, I wondered if it was the same film that was on the cover. Unfortunately, it was. The story itself is mindlessly simple. Ethel, a homicidal maniac with an eating disorder, is released into a halfway house because of hospital overcrowding. She is by far the most sane resident watching while one man puts dead flies into another's soup. Ethel is then teased by one of the halfway house employees with a chocolate bar after he hits on the cost cutting measure of feeding the residents dog food. Ethel retaliates by strangling him with a wire noose on the stairs and then....well, you get the idea. If this all sounds like fun, it isn't. This film was poorly made with cheap effects and even worse acting. The characters are so wooden when delivering their lines that they should be standing out in front of a cigar store. To make matters worse, half of the film consists of flashbacks to the first Ethel movie, Criminally Insane, which is little better. A VERY poor effort.

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.

truly, this film amazes. how did this get made? who forked over the 2.50 for the video cassette to go in the camcorder? imagine a film made by your inbred relatives, the ones that find an evening at kentucky fried chicken to be the height of cuisine. then, make sure they're on drain-o when the camera light is on. scenes extend into the horizon. a man eats a candy bar for what seems to be hours. ethel experiences flashbacks to a higher-budgeted film. the film does, however, achieve a surreal, bbc science-fiction edge by intercutting between film and video. crazy fat ethel II is blessed, however, with one of those immediately fascinating titles. forgiveness comes easy to crazy fat ethel II. priscilla alden delivers a performance that is equal parts ham and thorazine-induced coma. the music for the "film" is fascinating...at first, i found it remarkable that nick phillips had managed to create such unique, throbbing gristle-esque vistas of sound...then i realized it's simply the ten-dollar mic trying desperately to capture every nuance of alden's vocal performance. when she bleats, "give me those pretzels, granny!" the film takes a colossal lunge toward greatness. in fact, i keep muttering it to myself, even though there's nary a pretzel or a grandmother in the house. one could extrapolate a fascinating political subtext in this film, as budget cuts in reagan's america force an obese, psychotic woman to kill again and again. can we see ethel janowski as our own bloated, selfish american ego? what? oh, you're right. it really is a piece of crap...but, mark my words, dub in it swedish, sell it as an art film about "the ugly american"...and you'd have a box-office bonanza.