The People Under the Stairs: Part 1 of an urban horror twofer. Wes Craven seems like one of the least qualified people when it comes to making any kind of movie about black hardships, but he actually does a decent job of working those elements into a kinder, gentler version of his earlier films. Indeed, Momma and Daddy here wouldn't feel too out of place with the clans of both Krug and Jupiter, though with the "pitched to the rafters three states over" performances we get from both Everett McGill and Wendy Robie, perhaps a little too ambitious for the simpler methods that those two were known to employ. The film does get surprisingly nasty in the way that Craven was known for before mainstream success, and it does help make it all the more palpable when the main protagonists are both kids going through hell and back and back into hell again throughout the story, but it's also zany in a way that wouldn't be out of place in something like Home Alone, complete with ridiculously elaborate traps and human bodies that take on fatal amounts of punishment with only a few bloodstains to show for it (in one case, a dog-mauled arm straight up heals itself between scenes!). The strange tone does make the horror elements weaker than they should be, but at the same time, the film is rather confident in embracing the strange elements and does well by its heroes, with both Brandon Adams and A.J. Langer being solid in their parts and bringing a much-needed sense of grounding that keeps the threat level surprisingly high in the face of state-of-the-art DIY home security and, well, people under the stairs. Speaking of, this film never really seems to know what to do with them, other than adding to a list of crimes that was already miles long for both Momma and Daddy, which seems like a waste, but thankfully, not much mind is paid to them to burden you to their presence, aside from the amusing thought of what actually happens to them in the ending. Craven does a good job staging the attacks and suspense throughout, so that's more than enough to recommend this film, but I was pleasantly surprised at just how weird it gets, even if it does hurt the efforts at making a social commentary or being particularly scary. Not bad at all, but this is actually one film where a remake would be really interesting to see if it could embrace the darker elements more to give it the bite it could have had.
Tales from the Hood: Part 2 of an urban horror twofer. Best of all, it's anthology time, which is like a bunch of reviews for the price of one!
Welcome to My Mortuary: In the rarest of incidences for anthology films, this is the one where the wraparounds are the best part, thanks entirely to the demented performance from Clarence Williams III as Mr. Simms. Clearly taking a page out of the Jack Palance playbook of "Every Word is Your Favorite Word," Williams is having so much fun with his overly dramatic line readings and bug-eyed facial expressions that he is having fun for everyone else and still has energy left over. That the wraparounds get their own title should clue you in to its importance to the overall structure, though it's not an uncommon sight for horror anthologies to go down this route. The weak performances from the gang-bangers that Simms is hosting at his funeral home bring this one down a tad, but as soon as Williams is bellowing lines like "the doo-doo," they're quickly a distant memory.
Rogue Cop Revelation: Rodney King gone horrifically more wrong, but is justice about to be meted out by the undead? This one sets a lot of the tone and pace for the stories to follow, which is to say that they frequently deal with a lot of real life issues and atrocities, while also needing to carry out the expected elements of anthology shorts. Police brutality is hardly light material, but the story here seems very confused on how to play that element properly, giving it too much of a pulp treatment that only grazes on the social commentary. It also doesn't help that the short tries to throw in one more twist in the works that doesn't play at all, leading to a curiously unsatisfying story, despite the gruesome special effects and, if we're being honest, seeing a bunch of murdering racists get theirs.
Boys Do Get Bruised: A little boy confides to his teacher that the bruises he's getting are the work of a real monster, but how can he defeat it when no one believes him? Here, domestic abuse is at the heart of this story, and boy oh boy, does it feel very tasteless at times with the genre conventions being applied to scenes of very brutal violence against women and children, especially when the story's one paranormal element feels entirely shoehorned in just to give the film a more palatable flavor. It doesn't work, and this veers too much into straight-up uncomfortable territory, with the director utterly failing to handle such disparate elements and having little to show for it beyond a 180 for David Alan Grier as an actor. How no one realized how deeply fucked up this one turned out is a complete mystery to me.
KKK Comeuppance: Live footage of a member of the GOP on the election trail, with an ending that most people would hope happens to them! OK, so it's not quite that, but this one does feel rather relevant in this day and age with a nakedly racist candidate for elected office barely avoiding blurting out what he really wants to say, and shows no qualms with letting it all out in private. It's a shame for that in the old plantation house that he resides in hides the souls of over a hundred dead slaves that were since transferred into little dolls, and all too ready for their chance for revenge. Not a whole lot new here in terms of the raw content (possessed dolls are hardly new territory for anthologies), but it's a competent telling of a well-worn tale that does get a bit more bite (har har) with its political commentary that, in 2017, stings harder than it did back in 1995. Credit should go to Corbin Bernsen for pulling it off, too, especially when his ridiculous hairpiece isn't all that crazy anymore.
Hard-Core Convert: A killer barely survives a shooting, but what's waiting for him in rehabilitation may make him wish he hadn't. This one is also dealing with very dark subject matter, but unlike the second major story, it seems to handle it better by virtue of being thoroughly provocative the whole way through. It has the balls to draw a link between our protagonist's actions and those of a white supremacist, as at the end of the day, as the latter argues, a dead black is a dead black, regardless of who's responsible for it. The story also houses a rather shocking scene, the rehabilitation itself, which is a rapidly edited montage that shifts from staged gang violence of a most graphic variety (this movie definitely earned its R-rating) with images of real-life lynchings and racially-motivated murders against blacks, further drawing the link that the endless cycle of violence is simply giving the other side just what they want. It's an interesting perspective, but it's not explored at in any great length due to this being part of a larger anthology, and the director here decides that this is the story that required the most elaborate sets and costuming, making the rehabilitation center look like something that came out of a music video, right down the latex-clad nurses. It's bizarrely over-directed throughout, perhaps due to the knowledge that this was the last of the stories for the movie to tell and needed to go out with a bang, but I don't think it helps serve whatever points that it's trying to make at all and serves only to distract.
Overall: Like most anthologies, uneven. It seems like the social commentary throughout was a bad idea to try and wed to the normal Tales from the Crypt-inspired stories of supernatural comeuppance, and in at least one instance, is so bleak and distressing that no amount of gussying up can save it from being too unsavory a subject to even attempt to make lighter. It does provide a lot of gory fun from time to time, and the more established actors do at least fine work, but as mentioned earlier, it's virtually unthinkable that the wraparounds are the best the movie has to offer. Not that there's anything wrong with that when Clarence Williams III gives it all and then some, but that's not these things are expected to work at all. Given his name featured as a exec producer, I would have loved to have seen Spike Lee give his take on the material, as I suspect he'd be able to solve the issues of maintaining tone as well as the integrity of the material, but as it is, it's a noble effort that falters in some rather uncontested ways that are very, very hard to ignore.