Saturday, October 27, 2018

#25 + #26: Tales from the Hood 2, Tales of Halloween

We're in the home stretch!  Down to the wire!  Nearing the goalpost!  Heading in for a lay-up!  I think I've run out of sports euphemisms!  Yep.  I did.  Anyways, only a few more days left in the month of October!  October Horror Movie Review-A-Thon (aka OHMRAT) is almost over, and I'm 3 days behind!  Can I catch up in time, or will I FAIL to review 31 Horror movies in 31 days, for the first time EVER??  :-o

Tales from the Hood 2 (2018) is an anthology of horror stories, connected by a story about a black story-teller called in to help teach a police robot developed by a white industrialist to identify criminals and deal with them accordingly.  There's 4 stories within the 5th story, starring Keith David as the story teller, and honestly, he's the only one I recognized.  I'm not giving a summation of the plot for this movie, because there's 5 plots, and that's a lot of...  plotting.  Yeah.

Effects were okay, acting was decent, I guess my biggest issue with this movie was the writing.  There's a lot of racism in this movie, and the stories aren't exactly scary as much as they are racist.  It doesn't take much to scare me, but a giant cloth puppet really doesn't give me the heebie-jeebies, you know?  I can't really recommend this one at all, since there's nothing new here, and none of these stories even sticks out in my memory.  Catch it on Netflix if you want to see if there's any actors you guys recognize better than I do.  Props to Keith David for his over-the-top portrayal of Portifoy Simms, the story-teller.  I find it amazing that Mr. David's first role (and the first time I remember seeing him) was as Childs in The Thing (1982), and all the amazing roles I remember him from over the years.  That man deserves a goddamned Oscar.  Maybe not for this role.  I'm thinking more, lifetime achievement Oscar.  Over thirty-six years of acting under his belt, and he's still always fun to watch!

Tales of Halloween (2015) is another horror anthology, this time with ten tales only loosely interconnected by happening all in the same town, and they don't interconnect with each other at all (like in Trick 'r Treat).  Adrienne Barbeau (of The Fog fame, also another good horror flick to watch) is the radio DJ loosely introducing the tales and performing the background narrator role, though she's barely heard from during each of the ten-minute segments.  I can't say as I recall any of the other actors, but there were ten stories, so maybe I missed someone I should have recognized.  Again, not going into plot here, because that's a lot of PLOTTING!  PLOTting, geddit, geddit?  PLOTTING!  BWAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!

Okay.  You're staring at the screen and shaking your head.  I get it.  Moving on.  Tales of Halloween is nowhere near as good as Trick 'r Treat, and it never will be, but if you're looking for a lot of semi-Halloweenish tales that have nothing to do with each other crammed into ten-minute segments and stuffed into one movie, this is a fair bet.  If you want to watch it, it's also on Netflix, but I honestly can't recommend this one, either.  The only story I really remember was the one about the animated Jack-o-Lantern, and only because, funny, but come on, so expected.  You want a horror anthology, grab a cold beer and a slice of pumpkin pie, and go for the much-superior Trick 'r Treat (which, according to imdb.com, has a sequel coming out at some point in the future).

I know, that leaves me still one movie behind, and by tomorrow night, I'll be two movies behind.  Well, I guess I'm doing another double-feature tomorrow night, then!  Yeah!  I love double features, gives me an excuse to watch 4 hours of horror movies and then gab about it on the internet like I have a fucking clue what I am talking about!  :-D

That's all for tonight!  See you guys tomorrow night for another double movie review!  Enjoy those Halloween parties while there's still time!

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