Tales from the Hood (1995) KILL COUNT

Welcome to the death

count

where we

count

the victims of all our favorite horror movies. I'm James Agenese and today we're watching Tales from the Hood released in

1995

. Tales is an anthology film, which means it's a collection of different short stories. Instead of a single feature-length narrative, the only other anthology film I've covered about body counts is trick-or-treating back in 2017, but while that film featured intertwined stories that took place in the same location, Tales from the Hood presents his shorts that individually use an overarching frame narrative, it's the old CE comic-style framing device conventionally used in anthology films, including the horror genre's best-known example, Neighbor

hood

Horror Tales, It was co-written and directed by Rusty Cundiff, a filmmaker who continued directing 25 episodes of the Chappelle show.

It was Cundiff's idea. He proposed to his co-writer Darren Scott to make a horror film that also had a message and when Rusty first said that we should do this on social issues, I thought: what entertainment? it's a horror thing and the more I thought about it I realized he was right and that's what made the project special for all these years, tails uses the horror genre to explore the issues black people face in America and Although the film is not super gory and does not have any sexual assault, it does depict uncomfortable topics such as police brutality, gang shootings and domestic violence, so be warned about all that.

The best thing about short stories is that it is able to explore these heavy themes with a tone that keeps the film fun. Nowhere is this more evident than in Zamy's performance of Clarence Williams III, who I've been quoting for two decades thanks to his Half Baked turn as Samson Simpson. I am Cuban, yes, Cuban B, as the funeral director, Mr. Sims Williams guides us. a bunch of serious stories s

kill

fully directed by cundiff that are never too preachy or too harsh because, despite its messages, the neighbor

hood

stories are still, first and foremost, a horror movie with some legitimately scary moments and memorably hilarious lines with five different stories.

I'm going to have a lot of

kill

s to count, so let's get to work. The movie starts with an armored skeleton and he's smoking. A trio of gang members named Bulldog Ball and Stack approach a funeral home in South Central Los Angeles, their pick-up location. a lot of drugs they're getting now the sooner we get that shit, the sooner we talk about this motherfucker, well, get in there then and stop standing there talking about refried beans, why the fuck are you going to fry some beans, man, for Why not just fry that? shit right the first time and get up the saloon is owned by a guy named sims who really knows how to make an entrance by banging your head i've been waiting for you guys the drugs these guys are picking up were found by sims in an alley and he just wants to get rid of them They're not exactly familiar with the narcotics business or its terminology now where's the shit shit shit shit damn?

I love it when Clarence Williams says that shit even when he has cigarette flakes in his teeth. Don't worry, you'll get the shit done with the best of us, man I know from business experience, before the Sims get a hold of that dookie, but how about they check out this ball of a corpse? They ask what happened to the dead young man named Clarence and his question. kicks off our short story format in Rogue Cop Reveal, we see that Clarence was a young rookie police officer who one day responded to a call in a quiet neighborhood with his partner Newton and they discover that two other officers have detained a guy for uh Let's see Here, oh yes, the broken taillight needs to be fixed.

You know the man being harassed is Martin Morehouse, a city council member who has been taking down corrupt cops for selling drugs, which doesn't win him many fans in the police force, although his harassment isn't enough to defuse this. . activist I have nothing against good cops what I said I have nothing against good cops but I will see low life scum like you run out of the apartment a fight breaks out and like I said content warning because it's hard to see. while Morehouse is beaten by officers Billy and Strom, who is played by Wings Hauser and whose name evokes Dram Thurman, the racist and Dixiecrat veteran senator from South Carolina, Newton, Clarence's partner, is also not a gentleman and also participates in brutality, all while Billy Holliday disturbs and strange fruit. plays on the soundtrack Clarence stops the beating, but Newton escorts him out and tells him that he has no right to interfere in matters like this.

Those idiots are police officers. Who the fuck are you the judge? Although they promised Clarence that they would take Morehouse to a hospital. billy and strom take him to the dock where they put him in their front seat and fill him with heroin because they want to ruin his reputation and end his life a little cocaine here a little gravity there and martin morehouse is killed in a murder set up so that It seems like a drug-induced accident. A year later, an unemployed Clarence is feeding his guilt with alcohol, but that doesn't stop him from having hallucinations of the martyr Martin Morehouse.

His parents bring them to me. Clarence agrees to do just that. He summons his three former classmates. work to the cemetery on the anniversary of Morehouse's death. I like how Cundiff and Scott wrote the three evil cops here, giving them individual shades of malice, from ringleader to weak-willed follower to someone who brotherly defends heinous actions on the force. The personalities that exist are everything from cowards to heroes and idiots it's just that everything that exists in the normal world exists in a police force clarence takes them to morehouse's grave, which quickly contaminates them by urinating everywhere man that's not a good way to get strong, that's great, oh, nevermind, Officer Billy thinks it's cool.

Hilarious line from Dwayne Whitaker, who is probably best known as Maynard the pawn shop guy in pulp fiction, but who has also been in a few zombie heist movies where he was the guy. halloween two who were stabbed in a field and an occult specialist in rejects from the devil and three from hell strom orders billy to join him to urinate and since these guys are the type to follow orders, the mustachioed officer He approaches to comply just as Strom and Newton go to execute the punt, Billy is grabbed by a zombie ham who smashes his head against the tombstone and drags him underground, the grave then opens and Billy is shown to be dead.

He has a big hole in his chest because a zombie ripped out his heart. Martin Morehouse and Boy's Zombie Man Production filmed this scene in a real cemetery, which is crazy considering special effects supervisor Kenneth Hall had to dig a fake grave there and fire an underground air cannon for these. effects, bullets do not change phase. the undead man, so the other officers flee and after Morehouse throws an undead knight graveyard zombie at them, they walk away from the graveyard. The only problem for the cops is that they can't seem to convince this guy how far back, not too far back.

Not at all, dude, after a few more Manhattan-style teleports, Jason gets the cops to crash, allowing him to murder Officer Strom by pulling him through the roof of the car and decapitating him. I could use a few more spurts of blood on that headless body, but at least. We get a nice fake head done by k b effects that Morehouse holds like a predator. Newton aims a fake gun that appears defective and fires a few shots that blow up his service vehicle along with the zombie. Morehouse seems to work at first, but apparently not. Even this tremendous fire can knock Zed down because he appears behind Newton in an alley and lifts him up until he is in the air.

Newton rips off part of Morehouse's chest, exposing a small chemistry lab inside his cool torso and then the zombie council member uses some supernatural forces to send a bunch of hypodermic needles into Newton's body, pinning him against the wall where the mural is. of Morehouse and after one last needle is sent straight to the back of his mouth, Newton dies in spectacular fashion, as if melting into the wall and then turning into graffiti meant to warn people to treat each other better. yeah welcome to my world the zombie bitch morehouse isn't done yet, he's still angry at clarence for not preventing his death in the first place so he attacks him in a way.

That leaves him locked up in a psychiatric ward and blamed for the other cop's death. It may seem harsh, but Cundiff says it's to show how people's actions and inactions have consequences, in a way it gets to when you decide to do the right thing, to Sometimes the right side emerges it's too late with that story over, we go back to the funeral home and although the three gangsters would like to get the shit and leave, Mr. Sims keeps talking and talking about dead bodies, he finds an interest outside of work. I suggest playing drums in Sims, the next story is that kids get hurt.

Young Walter Johnson, played by Space Jam's baby Michael Jordan, has a problem, a monster problem, and I don't mean monsters, this monster is much scarier, getting a load of his creepy claws. To his problems, Walter has just started attending a new school where a jerk kid named Tyrone fights with him at school, but the black boy he has doesn't come from his classmates. The bruise is noticed by a school nurse played by Takiyah Kristal Kima, known for living. color, she catches the attention of Walter's teacher, Richard Garvey, another character with a symbolic name played by the film's director, Rusty Condem Cundiff, began his career as an actor in films such as School Day written and directed by Spike Lee, who serves as executive producer on Taos. under the hood, which basically means he helped make it through funding and influence.

Walter tells Mr. Garvey that his injury came from the monster at home. It came after my father died. The boy draws pictures of the monster which he believes will act as a voodoo weapon. If he destroys the image, he will destroy the monster, I will burn him. He also drew a picture of Tyrone and you know what it seems like the Crayola magic works because all of a sudden Tyrone is on his way to the hospital with his two. Broken arms and legs The boy must have had weak bones Yes, weak bones I guess he couldn't harness his strength anymore Mr.

Garvey visits Walter's house that night and encounters the legs of Walter's mother, Sissy, played by Paula j parker, whom I've known since Friday and like Trudy, very proud, tells Garvey that Walter's bruises are just a result of his clumsiness and then approaches the teacher because she loves a man in a nice big suit from the 90, when Garvey mentions that the monster gets angry and yells at Walter for all his monster talk. until he stops them by the sound of the monster coming home. I love how this scene was filmed from Walter's perspective. He really puts you in his shoes when he sees his mother's boyfriend, Carl, come home and ask Garvey what he's doing there.

Carl was played by Detroit's own David Alan Greer, who earned his bachelor's degree from U of M Go Blue and his master's degree from Yale, after a theater career that earned him a Tony nomination, he turned to screen work and was cast , look at that, a vivid color, so it was largely. known as a comedic actor when he was chosen to play this monster of a character who is already preparing to hit Walter some more. I'll talk to him, yes, something tells me that the only language Carl knows is violence. Carl has Sissy take Garvey to the door and then Walter. watches his hope for salvation prepare to leave the monster returns to his room angry for having drawn his picture domestic abuse alert because Carl gets physical with walter and sissy whom he hits with his hand and a belt the abuse is heard by garvey who runs Returning to the house and being driven by Sissy, Carl diverts his attention from Walter to the teacher and another long fight ensues that occasionally draws Bubble Yum's blood.

It doesn't end until Walter, hoping to stop Carl from using a frying pan on his mother, breaks his arm with the drawing, then tears the bastard's entire body apart with a series of creases and a powerful final wrinkle. I love the effects of this sequence performed by crazy george screaming, which makes a lot of sense if you remember his surreal rubbery nightmares from movies like silent night deadly night 5 and of course society the voodoo attack leaves carl looking like a little monster left behind exposed to the light this shit ain't over yet bitch it really is buddy a stop for the sissy to silence carl and to cover up this peculiar cause of death walter sets the paper on fireLeaving Carl's corpse nothing more than a burned bastard, yeah, mister walter killed the monster, you know, i've heard of drug dealers who keep their buyers around by talking too much, but this is getting ridiculous, sims, alright shit. although I guess you better sit back and listen to where this doll came from, hit us with crazy hair kkk the comeuppance begins at a southern senator's plantation house, now he's running for governor, but he's also a former member of the clan, so some people Aren't fans of his professional Jesse Helm-style dog whistle campaign.

They were as relentless in finding me a job as they were in harassing me. Am I putting Duke Metger, whose Oak's name David Duke is played by Corbin Bernsen, aka Dr. Alan Finestone, aka Dr. Larry, on welfare? kane i didn't even recognize him with all that hair the protests are fueled by duke's recent purchase of this building called a dollhouse by an angry man named eli whose actor art evans was also in christine where he played the first guy killed because of the bad car the so-called doll's house has a bloody history after the civil war the confederate owner of the house decided to massacre his newly emancipated slaves instead of leaving them free 12 bodies hanging alone from that tree strange fruit in fact according to legend local The souls of the murdered slaves remained uneasy until a voodoo woman named Cobbs bought the place and put them into dolls.

Where they are, they remain in the house to this day and, although she has not seen them yet, they really are there . The Duke doesn't mind taking the risk and he's happy to turn this killing site into a campaign headquarters, I think it all adds to a certain southern charm. Corbin Bernsen is excellent at playing this despicable character who ends up saying a lot of really offensive things. I think as we move forward, I apologize to everyone before every take. Nice sentiment, but it seems like it wasn't necessary. I looked at Darren and Rusty and they were laughing behind the camera.

They loved working for Duke is an image consultant named Rody, played by Roger Gwenveer Smith, who was in a bunch of Spike Lee movies before this path was ready to help take down the racist. Moving away from Duke's rhetoric, no matter how unpleasant his work has been to Mrs. Cobbs, he practices interview questions with Duke and even makes a racist joke while playing the role of his boss. Well, the only ghosts I fear are the ones with God. That's a good one, bro, I like it, I think I'm going to use it, oh no, no, if you want to be chosen, you want during the drill, although roadie stumbles backwards down the stairs and dies when he smashes his head on the wall, duke. attends the funeral where a priest played by the director's father, John A Cundiff, gives a sermon and tells reporters that Rhodey's death was just an accident, it wasn't caused by haunted house problems, so he doesn't care. you are afraid of the ghost.

The only ghosts I'm afraid of are you creepy reporters Good fuck save the friend Good fuck Save the one who looks very out of place Eli tells Duke that if he doesn't get out of the dollhouse he'll have more trouble, but Duke ignores the man and walks away. his limo, oh, sweet free doll, oh, I didn't forget any doll. Time in the limo, damn it, turns out that doll is actually responsible for the roadie's death. Duke notices the little guy in a great tripping position when he watches that tape. Wow, Zoomy Duke notices that the doll is missing from Ms Cobb's painting, which means that the slave's soul has blown out of the frame and is able to run into a POV store panting as if this were a puppeteer or some shitty duke finds the doll sitting on his ladder with a sinister smile and yells at the doll that he's not responsible for slavery and shouts that there are no reparations while throwing a vase, but I think the guy needs to control himself by throwing vases at dolls that aren't even there, he starts crushing the Hulk and attacks the painting with a flag that makes the reg pigs bleed everywhere the plantation doll comes back with a wonderful move, then jumps and bites Duke until the senator dominates his small, weak doll-like body.

Duke dispenses the dummy with a shotgun, but he may be in more trouble. than he thinks because that painting suddenly looks like a half-used sheet of stickers. Duke discovers that he has failed to stop the angry doll that was created by Charles and Edward Kyoto, also known as the Kyoto brothers, the wonderful guys who brought us the killer. Clowns from Outer Space created three or four versions of the doll in various moods and physical conditions and in many shots used simple rod puppets to move the limbs and head in other shots, although they had to use stop motion, a technique that always I love see.

In the movies there's something organic about the stop motion that I think makes it great at this point the painting has been completely emptied of its puppets, they're all here in the duke's office and ready to fight and they don't want your brandy so don't you do it. He doesn't even bother, he wraps himself in the flag, but since this isn't an election, he's not going to win that way. Duke was originally going to die by hanging with an American flag on the tree outside his office, but the studio said no. people want to see the puppets take them out and we said yes, give us the money to do it, so the kyotos and bernsen get a few extra days of work and Duke dies at the hands of a swarm of puppets that tear them apart with their teeth. death is so poetically just that mrs cobb shows up front row to the show put on by the director's mother christina condem, i bet she's very proud of her son right now, at the funeral home, the trio of gangsters are He's getting tired of stories. and he just wants the shit, oh the shit, after a final body, guys, the most relevant of all, you knew him, we didn't know him, he was just a black we saw in the hardcore convert is the story of violence gang that follows a crazy man and a violent guy. with spray on sideburns played by lamont bentley who was hakeem in mouisha but sadly died in a car accident in 2005 at the age of 31.

The crazy man approaches a guy he has problems with and kills him in the street by shooting him. A bunch of damn k's are really going to steal some screen time from Ricky Harris like that. An epic score by composer Christopher Young begins as Deke's associates emerge from a house and shoot crazy K to the ground as he lies dying in the street, taunting him. with modulated voices, shut up, crazy, you're crazy, you're fucking crazy. While they were talking shit, some apparently silent police approached and stood behind them. The police opened fire and shot the other gang members to the ground, preventing them from stopping the crazy. that is, after four years behind bars, two of them in the physical conditioning plan in solitary confinement.

Jerome, also known as Crazy K, is selected for a behavior modification test by Dr. Cushing, played by Rosalind Cash of Omega Man fame, in one of his last roles before cancer. He took his own life at the age of 56. Jerome drove to a creepy house on a hill where he was escorted through stone tunnels populated by backup devo dancers. They placed him in a narrow cell next to a guy so racist that he kissed a Hitler egg. The guy talks about a biblical race war and while his rhetoric is annoying, the guy points out that Jerome has already been doing his work for him.

Those guys you killed, what color were they? That's the thing with tails. Rusty Kundip and Darren Scott chose to not just bring light. to the external problems facing their community, but also to criticize black people who look down on each other, like when Rhodey was helping a racist politician get elected, we harbor some resentment toward those who hurt their own cushing tells the subject that if he adapts well to their program he will be released from prison, if not he will die behind bars and she doesn't care in any way because I think you scum, you are wrong so don't test me if you understand that they have left him in his underwear and they have chained him.

He looks a lot like a victim of the slave trade and then he's tied to a Frankensteinian slab where his head is shaved before this Clockwork Orange or actually maybe he's being tested for callas, oh never mind, I don't think that's part of any Covent evidence, at least I don't. I hope not, she places a metal visor over his eyes and with a few beeps and bams, Dr. Cushing begins her fair warning program. This is a super intense scene with a lot of racially sensitive images depicting historical violence such as a song called Born to Die by Spice One.

Blairs Jerome is subject to flashes of gang violence interspersed with photos of clan rallies and lynchings. It's intentionally uncomfortable and lasts an excruciating two and a half minutes, becoming downright nauseating near the end, which is exactly what Cundiff and Scott wanted, but most importantly for us. On that story I was just commenting on black-on-black violence and the fact that you know it's been three or four hundred years of being oppressed and attacked, it's a good time to stop oppressing and attacking each other. Also, I'm not counting deaths. in this montage half of them are historical and the other half well, I'm not going to go frame by frame through this sequence, I have my limits right again, although the awkwardness is the point, Cushing yells at Jerome so much, does he? what's the matter?

I don't like seeing black people get killed, but isn't that what you've been doing your whole life? It's heavy shit to say the least, but it was important to Rusty Cundiff to include it. She called it an effective teaching moment. The gang members come. They come up to me and tell me that they reconsidered what they were doing because of Cushing's crazy episode and then they lower Jerome into a sensory deprivation chamber where he will be forced to confront his ego and subconscious with a different kind of warning this time because we have a bunch of bright flashing lights on for a while look away if you have to everyone in the middle strobe jerome sees individuals from his past who are dead because of him how come we talk for so long?

It's true, you killed my ass. However, I am not going to recount the hallucinations of these ghosts, since we never met them and did not see their actual deaths. The crazy man defends himself against the moral assessment of his actions even when the ghost of a girl says she was innocent. victim murdered in one of his vehicles. Oh, I don't think they have a name. You were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dr. Cushing appears and asks Jerome if he is ready to apologize for what he has done, but it sounds crazy. It's completely irredeemable I have one fucking responsibility in this world It's me and that's it You son of a bitch He tries to threaten his way out of this situation But his stubbornness is to no Because he's not actually in a sensory deprivation chamber He's still in the street coughing. blood from his gunshot wounds, his shooters are still standing over him and opening fire on nk's near-death experience and his last chance at redemption and that's how crazy k ended up in the funeral home actually, that's not all the story behind the death of crazy k. the three guys that killed him were actually bulldog ball and stack and they're tired of the dead body stories, let's get the shit, oh yeah pop doo-doo, let's get the shit, the sims take them down , turn on the lights. with one finger and says the shit is in these three coffins uh, I don't know, dude, a safe, the gangsters go look for the shit only to find out that the coffins contain their bodies.

Mr. Sims explains that all three are dead. were taken down by Crazy K's accomplices after they killed him, the music swells and becomes downright terrifying as Clarence Williams' unhinged performance pays off with the reveal of what's been going on all along. Yeah, hey, now, Fiona, welcome to hell, what ah, she had a bad time. The boys wet themselves and watch as Sims turns into Satan before their eyes using more prosthetic work done by screaming Crazy George. Devil Sims was meant to look cancerous, which I think works really well even if the four-hour makeup process was a pain in the ass for Clarence.

Williams I asked Clarence at the end he said uh Clarence how did you like him leaving? It wasn't worth it for this ending of Mr. Toad. It's absolutely crazy and legitimately disturbing how many people died in all these stories we were told. let's find out and get to shit, yeah the doodoo, the poop pop, yeah let's get to the shit, 13 people died in hood queues, not counting the deaths in that haunting montage or those ghosts in that light scene strobe, oh, and they all died. he was a guy with a 98 minute run time that left us with one death on averageevery 7.54 minutes.

I'll give the golden chainsaw for the coolest kill to Officer Newton who was killed by dirty needles might win the award on its own, but the effects as it becomes a mural. It's very fun to watch. The blunt machete because Les Mis Kill will go to Clarence since we don't even know how he died because of guilt and that's it. Tales from the Hood came out in

1995

and unfortunately went out of stock. as a silly parody, so it didn't get the recognition it deserves. I'll watch the disappointing sequel on Sunday, but until then I'm james agenese, this is the death count.

Thank you very much for viewing this week's death count. I want thanks to some sponsors like trevor batson brian libram majin moon man ian eldridge danielgrimwood92 christian exum and philip win oh and also logan arnold and his cool mom melissa it's october which means there's a lot of death coming thanks everyone be good people