Tales from the Hood 2

Rusty Cundieff and Darin Scott’s follow-up to their 1995 horror anthology offers four more creepy vignettes with a strong helping of social commentary, along with a wraparound linking story. The premise is that a ruthless entrepreneur has developed a line of robots that will detect criminals before they actually commit crimes and then make arrests to fill his for-profit prisons, and he hires a famous black storyteller (Keith David) to tell tales that will give the robots the information they need to identify evildoers. His first story, "Good Golly," is about a doll in a "Museum of Negrosity" that comes to life and finds a gruesome way to replicate. "The Medium" centers on a murdered pimp who takes possession of a TV psychic and uses him as an instrument of revenge. "Date Night," the shortest entry, focuses on a couple of small-time crooks whose intended victims—a pair of beautiful vampires—turn the tables on the men, and the fourth and most ambitious entry, "The Sacrifice," resurrects a host of iconic figures, including Emmett Till and Martin Luther King, Jr., to persuade a submissive black politician to turn against his racist controllers. The storyteller returns at the close to use his employer’s own robots against him. Like its predecessor, Tales from the Hood 2 is cheaply made with cheesy effects, but it also exudes a certain zany exuberance that is infectious. A strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)