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Tales From The Hood (1995)

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Overall Rating 54%
Overall Rating
Ranked #4,710
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Connections: Tales From The Hood

Four short, moralistic horror vignettes (a la EC Comics) that deal with mostly black characters. The framing story introduces three youths out to pick up a drug shipment at a funeral parlor from the strange director, Mr. Simms. As the three punks wind their way through the parlor, Mr. Simms tells them the last stories of some of his more interesting clients. --IMDb
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Review by Nirrad
Added: May 2, 2008
I have always enjoyed horror anthologies ever since I was a kid. Movies like Creepshow, Trilogy of Terror and Campfire Tales have been amongst my favourite horror movies for some time now. Thanks to TMN (The Movie Network) I was able to view so many horror movies as a child when we were subscribed to view the network. Unfortunately over time, we got rid of the service due to lack of usage and ever since then, I have missed the opportunity to view a great portion of good horror movies. But thanks to a few companies, a lot of these movies are now making their way to DVD for a nice cheap price.

One movie that I nearly forgot about was Tales from the Hood. I taped this bad boy off of TMN when it was released, and I remember loving the movie. Fast forward 13 years and I stumbled across the DVD at a local HMV for great price of $4.00 even. I was pretty stoked the have the opportunity to view this movie again. But is it as good as I remembered?

Tales from the Hood is simply a movie made by black people for black people. But that doesn’t mean that we Caucasians cannot enjoy the movie either. There are basically 5 segments to this film. There are 4 separate tales, and there is the main story in which the tales are told.

The movie opens with three men standing outside of a funeral home where they are to pick up “The Shit.” They are a little on edge because the house is run down, and is located in a creepy neighborhood. As they proceed towards the home, they are startled by the owner Mr. Simms (Clarence Williams III) who gives off quite an eerie vibe. As Mr. Simms begins to take them to the location of “The Shit,” he stops at certain coffins where he begins to tell his tales explaining the dead body.

Rogue Cop Revelation
This is your basic revenge story, but a good one at that. It is about three white crooked cops who pull over Martin Moorehouse (Tom Wright) a respected man in the community by both black and white races. He is like a new age Martin Luther King Jr. hence the name Martin. The three cops proceed to beat Martin senseless while a forth black officer Clarence (Anthony Griffith) is distracted and unaware of the situation because he is busy running a license plate check on Martin’s car. Two of the police officers decide to dump Martins body in the lake and plant drugs in his car in order to ruin his reputation after his death. A year has passed since the incident, and Clarence has quit the force. But every night he is constantly having nightmares of that night, and starts hearing voices in his head to “Bring them to Martin.” Clarence eventually brings the three cops to Martin’s grave on the anniversary of his death, where Martin rises to get his revenge on the three crooked cops.

I thought this tale was a solid entry to the movie. There are a few hilarious scenes, whether unintentional or not, they were still hilarious. There isn’t too much gore, but what they have is nice to look at. My only problem with this one is the dumb ending. I just don’t understand it. When you watch it, you will know what I’m talking about, unless it had some sort of meaning, but I sure couldn’t think of anything. 7.5/10

Boys Do Get Bruised
This one is probably my favourite of all the stories. Little Walter (Brandon Hammond) is having problems sleeping at night because a monster keeps coming into his room and beating him until he is bruised. When he is constantly arriving to school with different bruises, his teacher Richard (Rusty Cundieff) starts to get the impression that Walter’s father is the one who is giving him bruises. When Richard asks Walter is his father is beating him, Walter replies that his father is in fact dead. Richard really wants to know who is doing this to him, but when he asks, Walter just tells him it was the monster. Walter believes that if you draw the monster and destroy the drawing, it will rid of the monster, so he begins drawing the monster on pieces of paper. Richard is not convinced that it’s some imaginative creature doing this to poor Walter, so Richard take a trip to his home. He questions Walter’s mother, but she appears to be harmless. But after a few minutes in the house, Richard becomes face to face with the monster.

This is yet another solid story in the anthology. This segment contains little to no gore however, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t good. The acting in this one is by far better than the acting in Rogue Cop Revelation, and is overall just a better story involving a real life situation. I especially love the ending to this one, if only eliminating your nemesis was this easy. 9/10

KKK Comeuppance
Probably my least favourite of the bunch, I just found it boring overall, and I was glad that it was over quickly. Duke Metger is a politician who is running for, I believe Mayor. I honestly don’t remember it saying, nor do I even care. He has angered a lot of the black community because he has chosen a house that was used to kill many slaves in the past to use during the election. His commercials may seem like he’s trying to help the black community, but in reality he’s as racist as it comes.

When the slaves were killed, their souls had nowhere to go but in dolls. The dolls were also controlled by an elderly black woman who was also killed in the past. So the dolls begin to come to life and attack Duke to end his existence.

I find it hilarious that Duke is unable to fight the dolls considering they’re made of wood, and about 20 times smaller than he is. But I’ve never been attacked by an evil doll, so maybe they are a handful. The overall acting in this story was pretty good, and there were quite a few funny scenes as well. Some parts were pretty enjoyable, but in the end I just didn’t really like it. I would have figured a movie about evil dolls would be a lot scarier than this. 5/10

Hard Core Convert
The final segment is far from a horror story, but it is also a great story to end on. It starts off with Crazy K (Lamont Bentley) driving his car around when he sees someone he knows drive by. He catches up to him and proceeds to shoot him in the chest killing him. At this time 3 people exit a house and begin to chase Crazy K as he tries to make it back to his car. But he gets shot in the back while trying. As the other 3 are about to finish Crazy K off, the cops show up, kill the 3 gunmen and take Crazy K to jail. He is sentenced to life in prison without parole. At this time a woman shows up (Rosalind Cash) and tells Crazy K that she is Dr. Cushing and is willing to get him back out onto the street as long as he follows her orders. He agrees and is taken to another location where many tests are about to take place. She pairs him with an overly racist individual who has a plan to build an army to rid of the black people, and keep the survivors as slaves. Crazy K is also locked in a room where you can’t see or hear anything. She does this to Crazy K so that he can have an outer body experience. She shows him how much of a scumbag he really is, and that there is essentially no difference in the killings of black slaves and the black and black crimes that take place today. Basically in the end, you are killing each other just like the white man did years ago, so he is no better. She shows him all of the people that he has killed to try and rehabilitate him, make him a better man and give him a second chance. All he has to do is accept Dr. Cushing’s words and ways.

I had a lot to say about this one, but I won’t go into detail. I really enjoyed the ending to this one, but you have to wonder what exactly happened. After some readings on messages boards, there are many different ideas on what exactly who Dr. Cushing is, and what is real and reality. Take it as you will, it’s still a great story. 9/10

After all the tales have been told, we are once again brought back to the funeral home where the movie comes to an end, but not without another twist ending. You may see it coming, or you may not, but a great ending never the less.

This movie is probably my favorite of all horror anthologies just barely beating out Creepshow 2. Do yourself a favor and rent this, or better yet, buy the DVD for $4.00. I’m sure it isn’t that hard to find.

8/10.
Tristan #1: Tristan - added June 11, 2008 at 5:59pm
If they were going for a horror, they failed. If they were going for a comedy, they failed. I'm not sure what this was meant to be, besides a colossal waste of time. Fuck Rusty Cuntface and everything he's ever made. 0/10
Nirrad #2: Nirrad - added June 11, 2008 at 5:59pm
Just admit you are a racist.
Tristan #3: Tristan - added June 11, 2008 at 6:14pm
Of course I am. Doesn't change how awful this movie was. Although it was awesome to see Ramrod throw a black man through a car window.
Chad #4: Chad - added September 10, 2008 at 1:19am
Good movie, I liked it. The "monster" story alone was worth it, and the Black Devil Doll references were neat.
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