Tales from the Hood 2 – Yeti
Tales from the Hood 2 is an anthology that follows the devilishly entertaining Mr. Simms as he helps program what is pretty much the robot that went rogue and fucked that room full of executives up in Robocop. He’s supposed to tell this sentient robot a bunch of stories about criminal stuff so it knows who to let go, who to incarcerate, and who to just outright execute.
Let’s start off by talking about my favorite part of this movie: Mr. Simms. Sure it would’ve been super cool if Clarence Williams III would have came back as damn near the only link to the first movie but we got Keith David. You may know him from any number of things but I know him of the voice of Goliath from Gargoyles. Full disclosure, I didn’t realize it was him at first; I just knew that his voice was both familiar and awesome. When I finally found out it was him, I fucking lost it. I went back and watched a couple of scenes because hearing Simms yell, “Welcome to Hell, motherfucker!” and picturing Goliath choking the shit out of Xanatos was the highlight of my day. Keith David carried this fucking movie.
Simms and a quick shot of one of the slave dolls from the haunted plantation are the only real connection to the first movie. Simms does react hilariously to the word “shit” and in the end does the pretty much the same spiel as the end of the first but other than that this doesn’t feel much like a sequel. Not a second of this movie takes place in the “hood”. I guess the dudes behind this movie feel like adding some black people to a movie makes it “hood”. I think the lack of anything urban really disappointed a lot of people who went into this one wanting an urban horror comedy like the first.
Ok, that being said let’s get knee deep in the shit!
Good Golly – This one opens up with a white basic bitch and her black basic bitch friend. They go into what is basically a little museum of racist things and want to buy a golliwog doll. The curator of the museum explains to them the incredibly racist history of the dolls and tells them that’s why he refuses to sell them for any price. So they come back with Whitey McWhitechick’s brother who is the boyfriend of Starbucks Von Blackchick to steal the gollywog. You guessed it, things go wrong.
They end up breaking the case that the doll is in and it comes to life, whips the boyfriend to death, kills the friend, and impregnates Little Miss Basic with a littler of tiny golliwogs. There’s some decent gore, the golliwog is pretty much a mascot so that’s hilarious, but there’s some weird shit in this short.
First, while the Whitest White Girl to Ever White was arguing with the curator about the dolls not being racist the curator turns to her black friend and says, “your friend’s white is showing,” to which she replies, “I know! Isn’t she the best?” which makes the audience cringe and the curator go into a rant. Later, her boyfriend picks up a whip that, I assume, was at one time actually used on slaves and starts talking about using it on her so she grabs a whipping post to let him do it. I feel like the writer behind this short has something against interracial dating. It seems to me that she was to be so accepting of casual racism because she has a white boyfriend. She doesn’t even blink when Cassie the Caucasian drops a hard- R N bomb. This theme comes up again in The Sacrifice.
The Medium – Simms starts this one off by saying it’s more gangsta than the one before it. So I was like, “okay, we’re actually getting into a tale from the hood,” but I was wrong. It was some dudes beating a pimp in a garage full of super high end cars. They want him to tell them where he stashed five million dollars. They kill him on accident. Then they get a medium to summon him so they can threaten to kill his girlfriend if he doesn’t tell them, he possesses the medium, bitches about having a smaller dick (get it? because black dudes have huge dongs), kills everyone and continues living as a rich white TV psychic.
It was an entertaining short but it wasn’t much of anything special. Like the rest of the movie, the performances were pretty decent and the pacing was nice. The story was entertaining but it wasn’t anything to write home about.
Date Night – Chad Chaddington and his friend, Fratbro McBlackman match with a couple of chicks on Tinder so they head over to the girls’ place to hook up. Chad and Black Friend roll up to a little house in the middle of what looks like south side Chicago and.. just kidding, it’s a huge fucking mansion. They show up, have drinks, play some Cards against Humanity, and the girls are all over these guys; they’re definitely gonna get laid. So, the bros do the only logical thing and Cosby them both. After the roofies kick in, they carry the girls upstairs, strip them to bra and panties and then prepare to record themselves raping the drugged girls. There’s some super cringe-inducing dialog that sets these dudes up as serial date rapists. Then they realize that they can’t see the girls on camera, only their clothes. Because the girls are vampires! Chad and Token are killed but not before a video of the two girls explaining what they are and how the dudes are going to die plays.
Ok. They meet the girls on Tinder. The short opens with Brayden and Token video chatting with them. They’re on video for the big reveal. Somehow, though, they couldn’t be seen in the rape cam. Because logic? I guess? Whatever. This short sucks and it doesn’t fit with the rest of the movie; it should’ve been left on the cutting room floor.
The Sacrifice – This one is about a black man who has the audacity to have a child with a white woman and vote Republican. What’s worse, he is helping mayor Trump Analog run his campaign for governor! The evil bastard! His wife keeps seeing a ghost boy who threatens to take the baby away.
The ghost boy ends up being Emmett Till, the young black man who was lynched for “offending a white woman” and subsequently helped move the Civil Rights movement forward. Black Republican Man has to change his ways or all the people who died in the struggle for human rights will take back their sacrifices, thus turning the world into a segregated hell with “Klan Patrol” cops who haul off black folks and kill them for the simplest of offences.
As well done and interesting as this short was, I hated it. I’m not a conservative by any means but I believe that people should be able to think and vote as they see fit. The purpose of this short was to use the deaths of people like Emmett Till to guilt right-leaning blacks into falling in line with liberal ideals and vote Democrat. Till ends up conjuring all manner of ghosts, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to help fuel the guilt trip train. I think that using these people’s deaths as a way to shame those who don’t toe the line like the writer obviously thinks they should is just fucking disgusting. There’s also the whole “interracial couples are bad” subtext as well, so that’s always nice. I have no problem with political and moral messages in horror movies but this was fucking horrendous. This short stands as an example of lazy writing.
Robo Hell (The Wrapper) – Trump Analog Number Two owns private prisons and has devised a robot to keep America safe from criminals. He’s revealed to be racist, classist, sexist, sexual harasser, rape apologist, and just an all around fuckhead. After Simms tells the robot all the stories, what do you think happens? If you didn’t say the robot turns on the creator and kills him, you haven’t seen many movies. This was telegraphed from the beginning. The best parts about this story are the fact that his name is Dumas Beach and you get to hear Goliath yell, “Welcome to hell motherfucker!” The actual robot is just fucking bad. It shoots red white and blue lasers, which is lame as shit. It looks like Alpha Five from Power Rangers but taller and stupider.
All in all, would I recommend this movie? Meh. If you want to give it a watch, it’s on Netflix. I didn’t hate it. There were some good laughs, some pretty decent scenes, and Keith David as Simms is great. There’s no subtlety to it at all. It didn’t even need to be a sequel because it’s not really connected to the original. It’s a fairly enjoyable but completely forgettable anthology that could have, and by all means, should have been better.
