Tales from the Hood (1995)

Tales From the Hood (1995) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Three hoods go to a funeral parlor where they plan on picking up some drugs from the funeral director (Clarence Williams III) but instead he wants to tell them about four bodies inside his building. The first deals with a black man who is murdered by three white cops. The second story deals with a young black boy who goes to a new school where his teacher notices bruises on him. The boy tells the teacher that he's being attacked by a monster. The third story has a former KKK member (Corbin Bernsen) running for Governor but an old myth about slaves and dolls comes back to haunt him. The fourth story deals with a gangster who goes to prison for murder but is offered the chance of freedom if he takes part in an experiment.TALES FROM THE HOOD, as the title clearly states, is a take-off on the Tales from the Crypt series but of course this one here deals with stories about black folks. For the most part this is like most anthology films out there and the fact is that each story has good and bad elements. As with most anthologies, this one here is hit and miss because it's just hard to make these types of films work as one since each story is something different and carries its own good and bad. For the most part though, TALES FROM THE HOOD is an interesting horror film and one that's worth watching.The best thing about the movie is its cast, which has some very good performances throughout. Williams is certainly having fun eating up scenery as the mysterious funeral director. Wings Hauser, David Alan Grier, Bernsen and many others turn in fine performances and they certainly help carry the material. The material itself isn't the strongest as each of the stories fail to reach a classic level. The first one is way too predictable but it's slightly entertaining. The second story has an interesting twist and features the best performances but I'm not sure it should be in a horror movie. The third film is mildly interesting but appears to be trying to be like the final story of TRILOGY OF TERROR. The fourth story is certainly the weakest as it just comes across as a wannabe version of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.As a horror film the movie isn't all that strong as there's certainly no scares and I'd argue that there's not enough blood or horror elements. What's interesting about the film is the fact that it has a lot of social messages and it's meant to tell black audiences something. It's rare that you get a horror film about black characters and it's even rarer for it to take a social stance. TALES FROM THE HOOD is certainly far from a classic but there are enough interesting moments to make it worth watching.

i watched this movie from start to finish with a few of my friends and i have to say that is a horrible movie. Before anyone says that i am racist i want you to know that i am not. This movie had very poor acting, the stories were very dull, and the ending was a direct rip-off of the ending of the classic Tales From the Crypt. I am sorry but the only thing i could do while i was watching this film was laugh, and not in a good way like with Blood Feast, i was laughing in a way that was saying that it was one of the worst films that i ever saw. I understand that the movie is trying to say some sort of message but come on it is just way to generic. If you want a good film that tells short stories I would recommend Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Creepshow (both 1 & 2), and Tales From the Darkside,and skip this.

As a white American, I view this movie a lot differently than its intended audience...lemme tell you why.The movie is basically a Tales From the Crypt like setting with a black cultured twist. It starts off with 3 homeboys checking out "the shyt" from a mortician (played brilliantly by Clarence Williams the 3rd who ironically was in an episode of Tales From the Crypt years earlier). The mortician then tells 4 tales centered around real life issues.Tale 1 is about 3 white cops who murder a black politician while a rookie black cop looks on. A year later the politician rises from the grave to extract revenge. Its your basic police brutality and one of the weaker stories because its not very realistic, which I thought this movie was supposed to be.Tale 2 is the second best in my opinion. A child on the first day of school is examined by his teacher to find bruises all over him, he claims the "monster" at home did it. This one centers around child abuse with the awesome moral that there are monsters in real life, just not in the form everyone thinks.Tale 3 is another weak one but Corbin Bernsen is the man, he absolutely rules so I refuse to hate it no matter how absurd it is. This one's about a former KKK member who's moving into a mansion that was once the sight of a brutal slave massacre back in the civil war days. Once he move in the ghosts of the pasts haunt him and his associate to drive home the fact that someone always pays for the sins of the past. I don't know whether it was a casting goof, but Corbin's associate was a black man so if he was a racist then why would he choose this guy as a partner? The whole dolls come to life idea is another cheesy idea (coming off about 5 Puppet Master and Child's Play movies) and if anyone else was playing the role, I would have hit the fast forward button.Tale 4 is my personal favorite...it involves a young black gangster who will kill everyone and anyone with no remorse or fear. After murdering some homeboy, the cops catch him and throw him in jail. This is where he meets a white supremacist who thanks him for "doing his job for him." which leads to one of the most sickest, eye opening montages in film history. Basically the moral is, what's the difference between white lynch mobs of the 19th and 20th century and gang bangers from today? Gang violence is murder any way you look at it, and it doesn't matter if the parties are black or white, people suffer and die just the same.The film is done incredibly well but it does portray the white race as the bad guys with all the characters being racist (3 cops, politician, prisoner in the cell), but I guess that's payback for all the black characters being petty thugs and thieves in the Dirty Harry series.The tales themselves offer morals that people in every day life deal with, whether it was cheesy or not. Child abuse, crooked cops, corrupt politicians and gang warfare are an unfortunate but very real situations that this movie shines the light on beautifully.I won't give away the ending but Clarence Williams is the man of the hour and the one with the power, too sweet to be sour.I guess the highlight for me was when Corbin Bernsen calls the media "spooky reporters" 7 out of 10

Tales from the Hood is a unique film...kind of a Black spin-off on "Twilight Zone" or "Night Gallery" TV shows.....the stories starkly displaying the horrors and injustices of Black life and those who inflict those horrors...from present inner city scenarios to past slave times. The writing is good,, the acting is OK...and the messages are clear. The drug and gang-shooting era were upon us to a great extent at the time of this release...and hopefully it helped some "bangers" come to their senses and realize what they were doing, and that it should cease. If it helped in that capacity, then not only was the project worthwhile, but also some lives were saved when it was demonstrated how lives were destroyed and what the after-world could hold for those reckless enough to dis-respect life instead of helping and allowing it to flourish. I do not care for films that use a lot of filthy language and the "N" word, but Tales from the Hood" is a MUST SEE.