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Street Tales Of Terror (2004)

DVD Cover (Maverick Entertainment)
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Overall Rating 33%
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Ranked #12,306
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Street Tales Of Terror is the story of three thugs: J Dog, Keith and Peaches who terrorize a homeless man who witnessed them commit murder. While pleading for his life, the homeless man tells the trio of three "true" tales of terror and revenge. "The Reckoning" is the first tale. It follows the story of Jessica, a little girl who is left to drown on dry land by her classmates after she is pushed into a swimming pool. On her birthday twenty years later, Jessica comes back to settle the score! "The Clinic" is the second tale. It's a tale about Jaleesa Daniels, a young lady who is bout to have an abortion. While waiting she has a series of visits that question her decision and her sanity. Are the dreams real or in her head? The last tale is "Graduation Night". This tale set in 1975 follows what happens when a college student is raped during a mid-term party. As the final graduation night party ends, a special guest shows up to make the party livelier- MORE DEADLY! --IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: June 15, 2005
In this urban-themed horror anthology, we find three drug dealing thugs who plan to murder their dealer. Exactly why three drug dealers have a dealer themselves is a bit beyond me, but then, I'm not very knowledgeable about the drug scene. Anywho, these three thugs - Keith (Timothy Eric), Peaches (Staci Harris), and J-Dog (Frank Corey Shields) - set up an arrangement with their dealer that consists of him meeting them at an abandoned building so that they can pay him the money they owe him. When he shows up, each of the three thugs pulls out a gun and puts a bullet into him. As they're robbing his corpse of valuables, they hear a noise behind them... and upon investigation, it turns out to be a homeless man (Wayne Dehart) who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The three are about to murder him as well, but he pleads for his life. The leader of these thugs asks why they should spare him and what could he have to offer, and although the man has no cash or valuables, he does have something else... stories. This gives us three stories told in a "Tales From The Crypt" fashion, and sets up the rest of the feature film.

Story #1 - "The Reckoning"
Our opening story revolves around Jessica (Tenia Yarbrough), a young girl who has just returned home from her cousin's funeral. As she's standing outside on her porch, three other young girls walk by - one is her friend, one is her enemy, and the other seems to be pretty neutral. Jessica talks to her friend for a bit, and finds out that the three are heading over to a pool to do a bit of swimming. Although she can't swim, Jessica decides to tag along anyway. The girl in the group that doesn't like her ends up pushing her into the pool, causing her lungs to fill up with water. The three girls manage to pull her out and find that she's still alive, so they take off and leave her laying there. What they don't know is that leaving her laying on the concrete with her lungs filled with water caused her to drown on dry land, which is apparently a pretty horrible way to go. Twenty years later, Jessica's ghost comes back to get some vengeance on these ladies that basically murdered her.

As is usually the case with these types of anthologies, the opening segment is by far the best. While the general storyline has been done to death, it turned out to be pretty entertaining in this case, and the actresses (both the young versions and the adult versions) performed their parts surprisingly well. Although I didn't catch her name, Jessica's mother puts out a great performance and surpasses the rest of her cast-mates, and makes the ending of this segment all the better as a result. The segment as a whole is pretty predictable, but it's still an entertaining twenty minutes.

Story #2 - "The Clinic"
Our second story of the evening features Jalissa Daniels (Nicole Ford), who is preparing to have an abortion. Although this is the second abortion she's had in seven years, she really doesn't feel too bad about it. However, she has a few visions while waiting for the doctor to show up that changes her mind about this issue.

Whereas the opening story wasn't very original but turned out to be surprisingly good, the second one was the exact opposite. The originality points are there as I really can't say that I've ever seen a movie or storyline similar to this one, but in no way does that make the content worthy of a recommendation. The performances are good and there's some neat visuals, but the message of the story would have been no less blunt had it consisted of the words "ABORTION IS MURDER" scrolling across the screen for twenty minutes. I'm always objective when watching material that contains a message that goes against my own personal beliefs, but I do prefer to have a bit of entertainment when watching said material. That entertainment part just isn't here.

Story #3 - "Graduation Night"
Set in the seventies, we find three couples who are celebrating their upcoming graduation by playing some cards and drinking a bit of alcohol. Typical college stuff, but it starts to get a bit out of hand when Big Willie, a football player, spikes the drink of his virgin girlfriend in order to finally get a little something out of her. He then proceeds to rape her while the other couples, who are doing some partying of their own, watch on and do nothing to stop him. Willie ends up impregnating this lady, and as a result of her pregnancy, she is expelled from college just days short of her graduation. Overcome with emotion, she returns to her dorm room and hangs herself. However, this doesn't stop her spirit from returning to the land of the living in order to get a bit of payback on those who have wronged her...

Much like the first story, this one is pretty good, although it's not very original. However, it's not quite as good as the first one due to playing out in an extremely slow fashion. The first one showed us the characters, dropped just enough back-story to set things up, started a storyline, and then proceeded to finish it. From start to finish, things were entertaining. Here, we see the characters... see the characters... see the characters... build up a bit of storyline... see the characters... see the characters... start the storyline... see the characters... I think you get the point. Had about ten minutes been chopped out of the story or had a bit more of an actual storyline been written in, this could have been quite the entertaining segment. The cast here does a good job, the storyline (when it's there) plays out nicely, and once again, there's some neat visuals to be seen... but in between the storyline progressions and nifty visuals, I was fighting to stay awake.

Overall, this is a decent offering for fans of anthology horrors. As I mentioned in my review of Zombiez, somebody is going to strike gold when they release some quality black-oriented horror films. While I don't think that this one will start any trends, I do believe that with a bit of a budget and some more experience, director J.D. Hawkins could be the man to pull it off and get these sort of movies over with the mainstream crowd. Although it's not perfect, this one is still worth a rental. 6/10.
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