Tales From the Hood 2

MOVIE TITLE: Tales From the Hood 2

DIRECTORS: Rusty Cundieff and Darin Scott

YEAR: 2018

GENRE: Horror Anthology

RATING: R for violence, language, sexual content, and political themes

GRADE: Mixed

Master storyteller Mr. Simms is hired by rightwing prison CEO Dumass Beach to give secondhand experience to a police android named Robo Patriot. These stories are designed to help the robot identify threats to America and deal with them appropriately. Instead of giving Beach his confirmation bias, Simms tells stories about the pain racism and sexual harassment have caused throughout the years. Whether the lead characters in these stories are Tinder rapists, mammie doll collectors, wannabe thugs, or black republican politicians, they all will get what’s coming to them in the end. Beach doesn’t like these premises, but live with them he must.

Compared to the first Tales From the Hood movie, this sequel had more cheese than a stuffed crust Domino’s pizza. Whether you agree with the messages in this movie or not, every storytelling device these directors used was so obvious even to the most tone-deaf viewers. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what the prison CEO’s name Dumass Beach is supposed to be a play on words of. The poor acting skills of the white characters didn’t make me believe in the stories, especially the mammie doll collector in the first story. The Robo Patriot sounds like it was haphazardly thrown together at the last minute, not an ounce of creativity left. The CGI effects looked faker than a John Cena pro-wrestling punch. I could have eaten Wendy’s Baconator fries and gotten the same amount of cheese, but no, I had to sit through Tales From the Hood 2 because I thought it could measure up to its 1995 predecessor.

I can’t completely dump all over this movie, though. There is a reason it received a mixed grade from me instead of a failing one. The strong themes of racism are what saved it. Floyd, the museum curator in the first story, delivered his dialogue about the history of black culture in a convincing and educational way. Plus, I loved his evil side near the end (even though he was technically the good guy of the story). In the last story, a group of voodoo sacrifices have to convince a black republican to vote with his heart, not with his wallet. And don’t forget the third story about the Tinder rapists, which is a cautionary tale to end the romanticizing of “boys will be boys”.

Beach’s distasteful reactions to these stories should serve as a reminder of how abundant racism and sexism are in today’s culture. It’s a shame these stories had to be poorly acted by the white characters. The black characters did an excellent job, by the way. I’m not trying to be a “reverse racist” when I say that. I’m just calling it like I see it. The black actors most likely experienced overt racism during their lives, so they bring that into their acting gigs and it sounds more authentic. I was disappointed with Zoe’s performance, though. She sounded just as unconvincing as her white friends.

I can understand the hate this movie gets online, but it’s not as bad as I was anticipating it to be. It had its good moments along with its hokey ones. And yes, it didn’t live up to the bar the previous Tales Form the Hood movie set. I get that. Even Mr. Simms’s “Welcome to Hell!” line sounded forced, like the directors were trying to recapture that old glory of Clarence Williams’s version of Simms in the first movie. But like I said before, this movie gets a mixed reception from me, not a negative one. But would I want to watch it again? Maybe if I was a robot during an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Flash Fiction

In the same way that writing doorstoppers doesn’t necessarily mean that the author has a gigantic penis, writing flash fiction doesn’t necessarily mean the author has a small penis either. In fact, it just might be the other way around. If you don’t know what flash fiction is, here’s the deal. It’s just like any other story, but the general consensus is that it can be anywhere from 400 words to 1000. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s enough to get the inspirational dynamo going. No matter what word limit is imposed on the author, the whole point of flash fiction is that it’s extremely short. To be able to pop off a fully functional story in such a tight space takes a lot of talent. There are so many things you have to remember while writing a story and with flash fiction you have to work within a tight focus. The rule of “show, don’t tell” still applies, characters going through personal transformations by the story’s end still carries water, and the ending has to stay within the story’s universe (in other words, Deus Ex Machina is still a no-no). Doing all of this in 400 words or less should be worthy of publication. In fact, I’m hoping that somewhere in the bibliosphere (I know, it’s a made up word), someone has published an entire anthology of flash fiction stories. I can’t imagine any doorstopper material coming from such an anthology, but that’s only because flash fiction is a highly underappreciated form of art. The only forums I know of that ask for such submissions are literary magazines and DeviantART. I could be limited in my scope of where flash fiction is published and if I am, I’d be grateful if someone showed me where the remaining sources are. I know of one other source which has a great amount of appreciation: newspapers and internet articles. It’s basically flash nonfiction because each article is only supposed to be 400 words or less, with as little elaboration on minor details as possible. Every Wednesday I volunteer my time at the Kitsap Historical Society and so far I’ve submitted two flash nonfiction articles to their newsletter. I hope they get accepted, because that would be a huge feather in the cap of someone who wants to write for a living but has limited outlets for doing so. In a way, these blog entries are like flash nonfiction since they’re only one page long. I’m hoping that this blog gets enough views so that I can start earning revenue for advertising banners. Now that I think about it, maybe flash fiction isn’t as undervalued as I previously thought. Hey, we all have to start somewhere, right?

　

***COMEDIC QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“For a corporate sponsor, you get one of those companies that loves to smear its logo feces all over the landscape. Budweiser will jump at this shit in half a minute.”

-George Carlin-