Tales from the Hood

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tales from the Hood

Theatrical release poster.
Directed by Rusty Cundieff
Produced by Darin Scott
Written by Rusty Cundieff &
Darin Scott
Starring Clarence Williams III
De'Aundre Bonds
Lamont Bentley
Samuel Monroe Jr.
Wings Hauser
Tom Wright
Anthony Griffith
Rusty Cundieff
David Alan Grier
Paula Jai Parker
Corbin Bernsen
Rosalind Cash
Lamont Bentley
Music by Christopher Young
Cinematography Anthony B. Richmond
Editing by Charles Bornstein
Distributed by Savoy Pictures
Release date(s) May 24, 1995 (USA)
Running time 98 min
Country United States
Language English
Budget $6,000,000 (estimated)
Gross revenue $11,797,927 (USA)
IMDb profile

Tales from the Hood is a 1995 horror film. It was directed by Rusty Cundieff and presents four short African American-themed horror stories, presented within the frame story of three drug dealers buying some "found" drugs from an eccentric and story-prone funeral director.

Contents

[edit] Plot

 This section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling.
You can assist by editing it now. A how-to guide is available. (November 2007)

[edit] Framing segment

The film begins with a trio of drug dealers in South Central Los Angeles named Stack (Joe Torry), Ball (De'aundre Bonds), and Bulldog (Samuel Monroe, Jr.) arriving in a van at a mortuary called "Simms Funeral Home". They knock on the door and a funeral director named Mr. Simms surprises them out of nowhere. They ask him about the drugs he told them about earlier. Before giving them the drugs, Mr. Simms tells the dealers four scary tales involving Blaxploitation.

[edit] Rogue Cop Revelation

During his first night on the job, young black police officer Clarence Smith (Anthony Griffith) is taken by Newton (Michael Massee) his new partner to the scene of what initially appears to be the routine traffic stop of a well dressed black man. When Clarence runs the man's plates, he learns that the man is in fact Martin Moorehouse (Tom Wright), a city councilman and Jesse Jackson-type black rights activist who has recently been on a crusade against police corruption. Clarence watches in horror as police officers Billy (Duane Whitaker), Strom (Wings Hauser), and Newton proceed to brutally beat Moorehouse with their nightsticks and vandalize his car. When Clarence insists they take Moorehouse to a hospital, two of the officers agree; instead of taking him to a hospital, though, they drive his car out to the docks, where Strom shoots the battered Moorehouse up with heroin, plant baggies of heroin in his trunk, and then push the car into the water. Moorehouse is found dead with the heroin in his trunk and drugs in his system, and he is posthumously labeled a hypocrite. One year has passed as Clarance learns of Moorehouse's controversial death. As a result Clarance quits the police force and becomes a drunk because of the guilt. When taking a walk down in his neighborhood, Clarance views a mural of Moorehouse and has a vision of Moorehouse crucified, begging him to "bring them to me!" Clarence convinces the three police officers involved in Moorehouse's death to meet him at Moorehouse's grave. Once there, the officers begin to insult Moorehouse, culminating with one of the men urinating on Moorehouse's grave. As Billy urinates, Moorehouse returns to life as a zombie, reaching up from the ground and dragging the officer beneath the ground by his genitals. Martin then rises up from his grave; the remaining two police officers flee. A lengthy chase sequence ensues which culminates with Moorehouse decapitating Strom and tricking Newton into shooting the gas tank of his patrol car blowing it up with Moorehouse on top of the car. Moorehouse then chases Newton into an alley with homeless people and drug users. Moorehouse then throws a number of used needles into the cop's body and he melts into the mural on the wall, on a cross.

After the men who killed him are dead, Moorehouse attacks Clarence and blames him for not helping him when he was being beaten. “Where were you when I needed you, brother?” were Moorehouse's final chilling words as the encounter drives Clarence insane, and Clarence ends up in a mental institution, for which he is blamed for the murders of the three cops.

[edit] Boys Do Get Bruised

Walter (Brandon Hammond) is a quiet and sensitive boy who shows up to school one day with bruises on his arm. Walter's caring teacher Richard Garvy (Rusty Cundieff) notices the bruises and asks what happened; Walter claims that he was attacked by a monster. A few days later, he shows up at school with a broken arm and has to have it put in a cast, preventing him from going out to recess. While the other children play, Walter sits inside and draws; after making a drawing of one of the school bullies, Walter crumples it up, causing the bully's body to suffer spontaneous damage.

Later that night, Mr. Garvy visits Walter's home and asks Walter's mother Sissy (Paula Jai Parker) about the monster. Sissy responds by claiming that Walter's injuries are his own fault as a result of his own clumsiness. After Mr. Garvy leaves, Sissy threatens Walter, telling him not to reveal anything about the monster to anyone else. Later, Walter's stepfather, Carl (David Alan Grier) arrives home; the audience learns that Carl is the monster (In Walter's imagination, Carl is shown as a monster). Angry that Walter has told his teacher about him and called him a monster (a tattoo of the words monster can be seen on Carl's arm), Carl first terrorizes Walter and then whips his mother with a belt.

Mr. Garvy arrives to check back on Walter and finds Carl abusing Walter and Sissy. Carl and Mr. Garvy fight, giving Walter the opportunity to grab a drawing he made of the monster and begin to crumple it. As he does, the Carl becomes mangled and helpless. Sissy completely immobilizes Carl by stomping on the wadded up paper, then kills him by burning it.

[edit] KKK Comeuppance

The third story is titled "KKK Comeuppance". Mr. Simms shows a doll- instead of a corpse- to Ball, Stack, and Bulldog. Ball believes the "dead motherfucker got killed with the dolls". Mr. Simms answers yes, but explains it wasn't just "any ordinary doll".

The story begins with Duke Metger (Corbin Bernsen). Duke is an obnoxious and racist Southern senator [who was also a former member of the KKK]. He is in his office tearing up hate notes from townspeople. He sees protesters outside the office. Jewish and African-American groups teamed up together to protest against Duke for being a racist and a has-been KKK member. In fact, one individual tells the reporter about the dolls that are animated by souls of tortured slaves. He warns them that it is not a rumor, a myth, or a joke.

Meanwhile, Duke notices a large picture of voodoo dolls and Miss Cobbs a witch with his assistant, who is black. Duke is racist towards black people (especially) and says racial slurs to his assistant. Duke also refers to the dolls as "Nigger dolls", provoking one of them, whose image fades to white in the drawing. The assistant notices while Duke is leaving for the election. The doll is seen under the floorboard as the assistant leaves.

Outside, the same individual warns Duke of the dolls. Duke laughs it off as the individual keeps yelling that the dolls don't want him there and they worked in preparation to attack anyone who gets the mansion (that Duke now has) who is a White Supremacist and that they will kill Duke. In the limo, Duke notices the doll and orders the driver (who is another black person and despises Duke as well as the assistant) to pull over so Duke can throw the doll out the window and leave it lying on the street. Duke has done another obscene action, which makes the spirit very angry and vengeful.

Later that night, Duke wins the election and resides his new home. He comes in contact with the doll he threw out on the street and has a fight with it. When Duke throws a vase at the doll at first, the doll disappears and attacks Duke out of nowhere. The doll is cannibalistic and tries to eat Duke starting from the neck. Duke is injured, but he manages to stop the doll by beating it with the flag).

Duke takes the doll outside to his porch and ties it to a dart board. He blasts at the doll with his shotgun and goes back in peace. The doll attacks again and chases Duke into his office. Duke manages to lock the doll outside and tries to figure out a way to help himself. He sees that the painting of the dolls has all the doll images faded to white. He is terrified and turns around to see an army of dolls. Duke covers himself in the American Flag as the dolls began to converge and devour him. Miss Cobbs then disappears from the painting and is in the room with the first doll in her arms. The story ends.

[edit] Hard-Core Convert

The fourth story is called "Hard-Core Convert." The dealers are getting impatient and want the drugs they were told about now because they don't have all night to listen to Mr. Simms' strange stories. Bulldog is skeptical about Simms having said that everything he says is real. Ball notices a corpse in another room and says they really have to see it. When Simms asks them if they knew the guy, Bulldog says it was just someone they saw around. Mr. Simms explains the final moments of Crazy K.

The story begins with Crazy K (Lamont Bentley) driving down the streets of L.A. in his Mustang. K is a violent gang-member and homicidal psychopath who has killed many people with no mercy. When he comes to a stoplight, he notices the car of an enemy he's been trying to kill for a long time. He parks in a South Central neighborhood and shoots the enemy when three other men attack from a house nearby. The men shoot down K and are later shot by a policeman who arrives at the siege. K is badly injured but he survives. K is arrested and brought to prison where he meets an inmate who he finds is a homicidal white supremist who raves about killing a lot of black people and the end of days for blacks which upsets Crazy K. This causes Crazy K to punch him in the face.Then the man asks Crazy K "How many niggers have you killed?" silencing Crazy K because he in fact is guilty of killing members of his own kind.

Eventually, a woman named Dr. Cushing (Rosalind Cash) arrives at the prison and transfers K to another place which is hidden deep underground. K is put through the process of torture to learn that everything he did was wrong (a la A Clockwork Orange). Cushing tries to make him a new man. His head (with K printed on the front) is shaved off and he is "clean" if he regrets all his violent actions on other people. He is put through a slideshow of images involving the KKK and slaves along with a montage showing all those he has killed. Cushing asks if he doesn't like the image of black people dying. She even reveals his real name to be Jerome when she asks if it was what he's been doing for a long time. She even asks "How many brothers have you slayed?!"

K is put through the next stage, in which he is put in a prison cell. K is confronted by all the souls of his victims and must explain why he killed them. He has two chances to make up for it: he must succumb to the vengeance of those he's killed or to turn his addictive gang-life around. He keeps answering false statements until it eventually leads to a young and innocent little girl who had nothing to do with K. She was killed when K's bullet came through her wall and hit her on the chest. K doesn't accept responsibility for what he's done. His selfish and arrogant behavior makes him say that he doesn't care about others and doesn't want to be in the place anymore. The souls haunt him more and more as he mutters "I don't give a fuck!" until it goes back to when he was shot. It was just a dream and K died brutally (either it was actually a dream or it was his afterlife). The story ends with K's corpse lying abandoned on the street.

[edit] The Ending

When the last story ends, the drug dealers are revealed to be the murderers of Crazy K. They are mad and demand to know how Simms knows of what happened as they threaten to kill him. Simms leads them deep in the funeral home for them to see three closed caskets, all of which have their corpses inside. The dealers are terrified to know that they are dead, and at the will of Mr. Simms, their guns burn red forcing them to be dropped. Mr. Simms explains to them that after killing Crazy K, some of Crazy K's "Boys" killed them in retaliation. In a horrified state of panic the drug dealers desperately demand to know how this is possible. Simms, growing more eccentric by the second, tells them "This ain't no funeral home!" The three, to their horror, start to realize the gravity of the situation as Simms exclaims his infamous line: "Welcome to Hell, motherfuckers!" and transforms into Satan. The drug dealers are terrified at the sight of him, and the walls of the funeral home shatter to reveal the fiery reality of where they had been all along: Hell. The movie ends with the dealers burning in agony, along with others, as Satan laughs.

[edit] Trivia

  • The monster that the young boy draws repeatedly (resembling his stepfather, whose figure is never seen, but only by a shadow) is the exact silhouette of Simms/Satan at the end of the movie.
    • Clues: When the boy is being beaten every night (throughout the whole skit/story of Boys Do Get Bruised), they show us a shadow of the "monster".
  • The last story features the acclaimed song "Born II Die" by gangsta rapper Spice 1.
  • In the first trailer released in 1994, halfway through the video features an instrumental version of "Born II Die".
  • "Rogue Cop Revelation" features Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" in the background, a song about American racism.
  • The skeleton in the theatrical poster sports only sunglasses, whereas the one in the beginning has a bandanna, smokes a marijuana joint, and holds a gun.

[edit] Reaction

Strangely, the movie is arguable in terms of reviews and reception (both critically and commercially) and how poor or good results were. The movie holds a 26% rating on rottentomatoes.com, even though the movie was more commercially successful. The film had grossed $6,000,000 on its opening, and viewers generally responded positively. However, among critics, the movie was judged either good, average, or poor. It was praised for special effects, originality, and time length. Tales from the Hood was also criticized generally for the story plots (in which some critiques had remarked that they wouldn't know the continuity- e.g. the twist ending in the second tale made some people feel questionable of how Walter would handle the power he has just discovered).

The movie itself had several infamous and memorable scenes throughout. These scenes were known to be disturbing and shocking to audiences. The movie was notorious for the third tale, in which small dolls brutally attacked the politician. The twist ending was praised, as well. Viewers were unprepared for these upcoming events, with the grotesque depiction of Satan and the discovery of the deaths of Ball, Stack, and Bulldog (the three drug dealers). Although there are no particular scenes in the first tale that are widely known among audiences, some felt scared from the sight of Martin Moorhese's zombie figure. Crazy K was also a famous character for his brutal appearance of repeatedly killing people. Overall, the movie-if not a critically acclaimed piece- is favorable among fans. It is still popular today.

[edit] Tag-lines

  • "Chill... or be chilled"
  • "Your most terrifying nightmares and your most frightening realities are about to meet on the streets"


[edit] Soundtrack

1) Wu-Tang Clan- "Let Me At Them"

2) Scarface & Facemob- "Facemob"

3) Domino feat. Chill- "Tales From The Hood"

4) Spice 1- "Born II Die"

5) Ol' Dirty Bastard- "Ol' Dirty's Back"

6) NME and Grench the Mean 1- "I'm Talkin' To Myself"

7) Dawn Green and Mobb Deep- "The Hood Got Me Feelin' the Pain"

8) MC Eiht- "One Less Nigga"

9) Gravediggaz- "From The Dark Side"

10) Bokie Loc- "Death Represents My Hood"

11) The Click- "One Echo Hits Thru The Ghetto"

12) Killa and N.G.N.- "The Grave"

[edit] Rating

The movie is rated R for graphic brutal violence and strong language by the MPAA.

[edit] External links

Languages