THIS YEAR'S HALLOWEEN PICK

Comments by ZingerBug.com

We don't celebrate Halloween here  in Nigeria- no scary decorations outside our house and trick-or- treating yet some us mark the occasion in the little way we can. I for one do the same thing every year; read a scary book e.g Tales from Edgar Allan Poe, Ghost Stories and some of Stephen King's stuff- Skeleton Crew, Pet Sematary and The Shinning. And then the scary movies; I've gone through Hell Raiser, Interview With The Vampire, Evil Dead, Friday the 13th and last year was Child's Play. This year (and I hope I'll be able to sleep!) my selection is the scary and unappreciated 1995 Tales From The Hood. 

A cross between Night Gallery and Creepshow with some elements of Twilight Zone and Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction- it features a  mostly African American cast, written and directed by Rusty Cundieff with Spike Lee as executive producer. Apart from the supernatural undertones; each story in this anthology movie  deals with contemporary issues like child abuse, racism, corruption and trying to find redemption; grittier than any horror movie I've watched over the years and while it had good reviews from some; others gave it bad ones, which I don't understand- it's not like violence and strong language isn't present in other horror movies and when it first came out it  was called a 'black horror' movie, which disgusted me; this is a movie where the focus is more on African Americans and then it's just dismissed as a 'black horror movie'. It's not like there's been a lot of African Americans in the horror films of the past- lead characters that is. And so far the few horror film with a dominant African American cast include Blacula and Vampire In Brooklyn(and this one had some comic elements in it); instead to just embrace it , they just diss it.
I've always like anthologies so I chose this movie as my Halloween pick for this year. It's a shame it's now out of print in DVD, mine is an old, old copy but still clear in picture. Maybe next year, by God's Grace, my pick would be The Ring; I'm yet to see that. But seriously I do wish we celebrated it her, I would've dressed up as maybe Tina Turner or Little Eddie Beale or maybe even Lil' Kim!


Comments by ZingerBug.com