I just want to say that Clarence Williams III is incredible in Tales from the Hood (1995) as a "host" of the film anthology. He has the eyes bulging, the crazed look, the sweaty face, the bursting-at-the-seams psychosis; Williams III is epic. The tales involved can be a mixed bag, and how you react to each or all of them might depend on discomfort of the subject matter, intended to provoke response. Regarding African-American stories, dealing with subjects of race, life experience, turmoil, violence, and controversial topics regarding police brutality, political racism, gang violence, and domestic violence. This is a very confrontational horror anthology with the first tale focusing on white cops beating a black politician running an election on cleaning up the police department (of drug distribution), calling on an ex police officer (who is also black), succumbed to alcoholism a year later due to guilt, to bring those who killed him to his grave for a resurrected payback. The second tale has a terrifying David Alan Grier as a "monster", a stepfather abusing a boy and his mom. A teacher at the boy's school approaches his mother about the bruises and a series of drawings featuring a hideous creature he plans to destroy. The boy develops a power where those who hurt him, he depicts them in a drawing and once he damages that "portrait" on paper the person is also severely harmed. When the teacher meets with the mother, and eventually Grier, about the drawings of the monster, domestic terror is dished out with quite an extraordinary resolution. The third tale about Corbin Bernsen in a hair piece running for election and staying in a plantation with a very racist history results in the "slave dolls" of a deceased voodoo priestess going after him. This one has a particularly loathsome Bernsen, packing a shot gun, spewing ugly comments and getting plenty of "doll carnage" visited upon his racist ass. The fourth is perhaps the most polarizing as it focuses on a gangster shot by rivals after shooting one of their own in the back in a neighborhood, treated to an mind control experiments in "jail" by Rosalind Cash's scientist, hoping he learns the errors of his ways, realizing he will not change. In fact, he just emerges more defiant, resulting in the punishment deserved of a killer with no remorse even for driveby victims who were innocent (such as a little girl). The wraparound, where three drug dealers are looking to score from Williams III, is set at a funeral home...or so they are led to believe.
I watch this every few years for the first story with Tom Wright as the vengeance-seeking undead politician, Moorehouse, with Wings Hauser, Whitaker (one of the rapists in the basement of poor Ving Rhames in "Pulp Fiction"), and Massee ("The Crow" & "Lost Highway") as the dirty cops he terrorizes "from beyond the grave" and Williams III as the creepy "funeral home director" who avoids giving Torre, Bonds, and Monroe, Jr. the drugs they demand, regaling them with stories about the bodies in the coffins of his different parlors. Wright, in zombie form, holding the severed head of Hauser is probably the iconic shot of the film along with Williams III at the end. Grier beating on little Hammond, his mom (Jai Parker), and even the teacher (director Cundieff) is so hard to watch. Seeing Grier eventually a human pretzel once Hammond starts bending and wadding the picture is hilarious. The voodoo dolls tearing into Bernsen is just surreal as intended. And Bentley's "Crazy K" is vehemently unwilling to alter from any attempts Cash's team might offer to change his use of violence and intimidation to remain a feared gangster. But Williams III is always carrying that unhinged expression...he definitely got into the part. I just think Williams III is unforgettable. 3.5/5
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