I love horror anthologies, and somehow living under the assumption of this probably being quite cheap and comical, "Tales from the Hood" had been rotting on my watchlist for a long time. Lo' and behold, it low-key might be one of my favorite anthologies!
Directed and written by Rusty Cundieff, and produced by Spike Lee, "Tales from the Hood", is, naturally, set in the hood, and is all about the hood. Three drug dealers are after a promised score, in the funkiest of places, a funeral parlor. A creepy mortician "traps" them with four strange tales of horror. The first deals with a rookie cop encountering violence and corruption in the force, metaphor: police brutality; the second follows a family, where the father is unhinged, metaphor: domestic violence and child abuse; the third sees a nasty politician being tormented by dolls inhabited by the spirits of the past, metaphor: racism, and the fourth's a homage to "Clockwork Orange", and Is perhaps the most effective of segments, with a young man in prison, culminating in a sequence with an intense edit of real life photographs of cult killings etc. Of course, the wraparound segment with Clarence William's the III bug-eyed and excellently played purveyor of terror tales, has an ending twist of its own...
It's a rather fast-paced, effective, and violent horror anthology, that doesn't offer just bare primal kicks, but sends a message and comments on serious matters. And all of that is clothed in lively visuals and colorful performances. 7/10.
Directed and written by Rusty Cundieff, and produced by Spike Lee, "Tales from the Hood", is, naturally, set in the hood, and is all about the hood. Three drug dealers are after a promised score, in the funkiest of places, a funeral parlor. A creepy mortician "traps" them with four strange tales of horror. The first deals with a rookie cop encountering violence and corruption in the force, metaphor: police brutality; the second follows a family, where the father is unhinged, metaphor: domestic violence and child abuse; the third sees a nasty politician being tormented by dolls inhabited by the spirits of the past, metaphor: racism, and the fourth's a homage to "Clockwork Orange", and Is perhaps the most effective of segments, with a young man in prison, culminating in a sequence with an intense edit of real life photographs of cult killings etc. Of course, the wraparound segment with Clarence William's the III bug-eyed and excellently played purveyor of terror tales, has an ending twist of its own...
It's a rather fast-paced, effective, and violent horror anthology, that doesn't offer just bare primal kicks, but sends a message and comments on serious matters. And all of that is clothed in lively visuals and colorful performances. 7/10.