Tales from the Hood (1995)

Director: Rusty Cundieff

Writers: Rusty Cundieff, Darin Scott

Composer: Christopher Young

Starring: Clarence Williams III, Joe Torry, De'aundre Bonds, Samuel Monroe Jr., Wings Hauser, Tom Wright, Anthony Griffith, David Alan Grier, Duane Whitaker, Corbin Bernsen, Rosiland Cash

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Where nightmares and reality meet on the street

Plot: A funeral director tells four strange tales of horror with an African American focus to three drug dealers he traps in his place of business.

 

My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again? Yes.

Of all of the horror anthologies I've seen that were made in the past forty years, this is one of the best.  I loved it!

There are four main stories with a fifth one being the framing wraparound tale which is called...

 Welcome to My Mortuary sees three gangbangers approach a mortuary (in a house) around Halloween for a drug deal.  Once inside, Mr. Simms (hilariously played by Williams III).  Before he gives them the drugs he starts spinning tales of horror (as you would).  This sets the four main stories in motion with a little bit of stuff inbetween with the guys reacting to Simms' yarns.

 

Rogue Cop Revelation has a couple of horrible, white, drug-dealing, crooked cops pulling over a black man for no reason but to send him a message for speaking out against said crooked cops.  They fuck him up hard and it's painful to watch.  Anyway, his dead body gets his revenge.  The only thing fun about this one is seeing these assholes get their comeuppance and boy do they get it.

 

Boys Do Get Bruised is a depressing tale of a small boy often coming to school bruised up.  He tells his teacher a monster does it and shows him the picture he drew of the giant, scary green creature.  Naturally, being a kid and talking all fantastical, the teacher finally is concerned enough to visit the boy's single mother at her home to get to the bottom of this.  She's rude about it and seems to be hiding something.  She's got a touch of a violent streak but it's not until her boyfriend comes over for dinner that you find out he's the monster and the child has manifested his abuse as coming from an actual monster.  This story is fucking great all the way through with a fantastic finish.  There's some great storytelling going on here.

KKK Comeuppance - Corbin Bernsen stars as Duke Metger, a former KKK leader who is running for office and is one racist mother fucker.  He lives in a Southern mansion where slaves were slaughtered in the 19th Century.  One racist thing after another and the ancestors of the dead (in the form of a doll) fuck Metger's shit up real good.  Bernen throws himself into the role and brings out the relentless asshole of the character.  It's a fun one.

Then there's Hard Core Convert where a gang member who, after a shootout with another gang when the police show up, finds him self severely wounded and taken to a hospital.  Some time later he's recooperated and Dr. Cushing (Rosalind Cash) tells him he will be released from prison hospital if he accepts to go into a behavior modification program, which he accepts.  Then it gets into A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) territory where the big takeaway is he's spent his life killing black people and that needs to stop.  That's the gist.  He sees horrifying actual vintage photographs of the KKK, lynchings and murders of black men, often times with smiling whites (including children) surrounding them, proud of their deed.  The images flash so quickly that you get the message, but after the movie, I went back to this part and slowed it down so I could see more clearly what was shown and it's some severely fucked up shit.  

 

But wait, the movie's not over yet.  We've still got the mortuary story to wrap up and that one was fun as hell.  The looks on their faces when they find out what's really going on are priceless.

These are, unfortunately, real life situations that far too many people regularly face which makes this even scarier than your typical monster movie anthologies.  Writer, director Cundieff did a marvelous job of going beyond what typically satisfies a horror anthology and brought to the screen something that is real world horrifying while still fulfilling the scary movie stuff we usually get, and each story satisfies each side of the fence equally well.   It digs deep and remains a fun, scary movie.  It's sad that all of these stories are just as relevant today, if not more so, as they were when the picture was made 25 years ago. 

I see that it took Cundieff and Scott 23 years to make a sequel in 2018 and another just last month!  The more you know.  I'm going to have to check those out.  And I almost forgot, Christopher Young's score is great!