Tales From the Hood (1995)

Revenge/horror motif played out again and again and again, but this time with racial implications. Three drug-dealing thugs look for a stash in a funeral parlor and get the grand tour from Mr. Simms, the truly creepy mortician. As they pass the open caskets, Simms relates gruesome stories about the occupants' deaths to the increasingly restless young men. Each one of them falls to the vengeance of the supernatural theme, and it gets truly old. Nothing original is introduced, except that most of the stories take place in an urban setting. Produced by Spike Lee in an attempt to prove that bad horror doesn't discriminate, either. --Keith Simanton Amazon.com

GREAT MOVIE

LOVED IT! WATCHED IT 20 BILLION TIMES AND WANT TO BUY IT FOR MY OWN PERSONAL COLLECTION:) April 4, 2008

Not a die hard Spike Lee fan, but...

I rented this when it first came out at 15 years old. My mom and I got thru the first two stories and due to the language and freaky violence, we turned it off. What's ironic, is from the case, I thought it was a comedy, boy! Was I ever wrong!
In the past several years, I've watched it a few more times, I still don't `enjoy' it per se, but it's interesting how the stories play an homage to real life, every day problems.
It's very creepy, but well done, until several years ago, I wasn't a big fan of story collections in a movie format, this, Stephen King, R.L.Stine's Nightmare Room and Tales from the Crypt, helped me reconcile with that. October 14, 2007

Just a movie

Old movie seen in high school and wanted to see it again and was cheaper then renting it. September 28, 2007

Welcome to hell !!

In an experience more frightening than their worst nightmares, three friends tour a funeral home with a creepy mortician (Clarence Williams III) in this Spike Lee-produced horror anthology. Along the way, they hear a story about each of the corpses. From cops turned bad to a child with uncanny powers, a bigoted politician tormented by voodoo dolls and a drug dealer who undergoes sensory rehab, all of the spooky tales have racial implications.

As always, there's controversy when it comes to a Spike Lee production. Personally, I understand that when I fire up "a Spike Lee joint" (no pun intended - that's the logo on his films) - I know what I'm in for. A well made, well acted, sometimes imaginative film with some pretty heavy racially biased overtones. That's pretty much it. Such is the case with this movie. It has everything you would expect from a "Tales From the Crypt" parody set in the "hood". The production values are tight and the acting is of a higher standard than Tales from the Crypt (the one with Stephen King).

I was glad to see Clarence (Mod Squad) Williams III working again (he was excellent) and I enjoyed the menacingly dramatic change of pace characterization from David Allen Grier. There were some creepy moments and some humorous ones - what else would you want from this type of movie. So if you're not inclined to whine about heavy-handed prejudiced moralizing and can accept a decent horror flick at face value - this one was worth it.It has its underlying themes of racism, child abuse and gang related murders mixed together with horror style story telling. There should've been a sequel! July 25, 2007

another solid anthology film

The anthology horror film is a rare thing these days, and in the 1990s there were a few that came out. This was one of them. I wish I saw it in the theater but when you see this kind of horror film, it isn't common for a movie of this kind to really stand out like this one did.

Tales from the Hood, is not only a good movie overall and frightening in its overall wrap around story but the segements were just as scary. The basis for the film were about three gangbangers looking for their drugs, and they took out a rival gang member who eventually becomes one of the stories in the film.

Edgar Allan Poe if he was alive would be proud of this film in some ways, because the story that the dead or dying gang member was in was about consequences of his actions. They put him in a dark room and he was forced to see the ghosts of all the people he killed. The eeriest part of that segment had to be where they had a little kid walk in covered in blood. Frightening.

It is a film like this I could imagine author Joseph Armstead drawing some of his inspirations, especially from that particular segment. That segment is titled HARDCORE CONVERT. There were three other segments too in there. Voodoo, Slavery, Torment, and Crooked cops created the landscape of horror in this one.

Horror as a genre these days did lose its social concious, mainly the focus of the genre was about trying to get a little tail -- which was the focus more on the 1980s horror seeing how much skin they could show. This follows the tradition of the films Black Sabbath, the House that Dripped Blood (little known fact this is Robert Bloch's baby,) Creepshow and Creepshow 2, and Tales from the Darkside: The Movie. If these segments were extremely chilling on film, I would loved to see how they turned out on paper.

Kudos to George Arthur Cundieff for writing and directing this one, especially since he's more noted for doing things like House Party 2 or the Chappell show. Not many people would remember him for this film, but those of us who also write horror -- this film was actually my homework for wanting to do anthology books and stories.

For as funny some say this movie is, for as how funny it was it had a cerebral aspect to it too. That was why I remembered Hardcore Convert so much because that was the most serious of the segments.
February 22, 2007

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