Categories
Film Reviews Horror

Tales From The Hood (1995)

This is a horror anthology, from….the…..hood. Yup, you know this is gonna be a Kent Classic!! If you are offended by the word n***a, this may not be the right blog for you today. Let’s face it, Snoop and Dre had more to do with my foul language than anything else. So there is this overarching story in between the 4 stories. Basically, these 3 young gentlemen are looking for some drugs, or “The shit” as they like to call it. They go to this mortuary and this creepy ass mortician tells the stories. These boys will be “knee deep in the shit”. On a side note, while editing this, Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio followed by What’s My Name by Snoop Dogg played back to back.  What a great time for music!

The first story is about some cops harassing this local black dude who is trying to make changes. Something to do with dirty cops, money or race may be involved. 3 of the cops are hard ass honkeys and a young rookie black cop. They harass this dude, Martin Morehouse, beat him, and drug him and make it look like a suicide. The black cop is anti this, and he quits his job. He leads the 3 cops back to the grave of the dead dude, dead dude gets his revenge from beyond the grave. It was fine for a starter story.

The second story picks up steam. David Alan Grier of In Living Color fame plays the role of this abusive father figure. This kid comes to school with bruises. The teacher is concerned about what is happening at home. The mom tries playing shit off like everything is fine. The kid draws pictures of the dad as this big green monster. Well after enough snooping, shit hits the fan, David Alan Grier flips out, whooping everybody’s ass. The kid can harm DAG with his drawings and then folding him in half and burning him. This is awesome because DAG is a fucking hoss and this may still be my favorite…..but the next one.

The third story is fucking awesome.  An old white dude running for office living in an old plantations house with a curse of sorts. This old black lady made puppets and these puppets are pissed off. The main puppet looks like a fucked up Will Smith and is the star of this obviously. The white guy is insistent that nothing is fucked, but the puppets and old lady get the better of him. Is this really scary? No, but it is hilarious and beyond inherently racist. I feel conflicted, but very entertained.

The final story has some fine mid 90’s aggressive gangsta rap. I miss that shit. Anyways, this could best be described as a modern-day A Clockwork Black.  The black dude has a large package, like Mark Henry huge. There’s also a white racist dude who talks shit. There are some cool costumes. All in all, I understand why this had to go on last based on how it relates to the overarching story, BUT still, it was only the second best story AT BEST,

Still, this is the one thing the 90’s was good at. They got overkilled by the big name horror franchises.  The people wanted change, and that gave us People Under The Stairs, Candyman, and Scream among others. This movie is amazing. I thoroughly enjoy it for it’s awesomeness as well as it’s outright blatant cheesiness and racism in attempting to convey a point about violence but with a tongue in cheek flair. As for a rating, I feel it is only fair to break it down as 2 points for each segment and then for overarching story. So first story 1.25pt, second story 2pt, third story 2pt, fourth story 1.25pt, the wraparound story is 1.25 because of how awesome the mortician guy is despite how ridiculous it ends. The grand total is 7.75 which seems high, is probably high, but that is what the score added up to. So deal with it.

All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of:

Please go find a copy and support the creators.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.