Audience Member
Yes, it's another Full Moon remix — did they invent the remix or did Bad Boy? — in which several of their African-American themed movies all come together, get cut down to one-third of their length and don't even get a wraparound or narrator to make sense of them all.
"Demonic Tunes" is The Horrible Dr. Bones, a movie in which the Urban Protectors discover that their music is being used to command an army of zombies by the titular Dr. Bones (Darrow Igus, The Fog). This was directed by Ted Nicolaou, who I would put on the good side of the Full Moon balance sheet thanks to movies like TerrorVision, Subspecies and Bad Channels.
"The Killing Kind" is better known as the 1999 Nicolaou film Ragdoll, which was also edited into another Full Moon remix movie called Devil Dolls, which has Doll Graveyard and Demonic Toys as the other segments. Man, a lot of companies have been talking about how they're into being green and all about recycling, but Full Moon is actually doing it. Actually, this movie comes from their Alchemy Entertainment/Big City Pictures sub-line, because if Full Moon is about something instead of redoing things, they're about sub-lines. Another of those would be Big City Records, a music label owned by Full Moon, which released the soundtrack, Ragdoll: Music Inspired By The Motion Picture. Diversification, people!
Finally, "Hidden Evil" is another Big City Pictures release, The Vault. Students and a teacher visit an abandoned school that was once a slave house and things go badly, as you can imagine when the supernatural gets involved. Director James Black has 144 acting roles on IMDB, but only made this one film. This one was developed for Band's Empire Pictures as far back as 1989.
The second story is pretty decent and I think I may actually go back and watch Ragdoll to see how good it is at its full length. As for the rest, I feel like seeing a limited version may have been best for my sanity.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I feel like if we took the cast and budget from Urban Evil and gave it to the writers of Street Tales of Terror we would have had an anthology that could have rivaled the greatness of Tales From the Hood. Instead, we just have two piles of crap.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
02/12/23
Full Review
Audience Member
As I've stated before, I love anthology films, because you always know the bad parts will be over soon and there's always the promise of something better coming up next. Over the years, I've come to notice the anthology film comes in three different varieties.
Some anthology films are written and planned as such, like "Asylum" and "Tales from the Grave 2: Happy Holidays". Others are created by packaging sperately-produced short films with host sections or other framing sequences, such as the "Goregoyles" films from producer Alexandre Michaud. Still others come about when producers re-edit films that were unfinished due to loss of funding or that they couldn't find distribution for and that are packaged together in an efffort to get some return on investment and/or get them to the public. The third kind consists of already-released films that are abbreivated through editing, retitled, and packaged together under a single main title.
An example of the third kind of anthology film is "Urban Evil: A Trilogy of Fear" from the Charles Band-helmed Different Worlds. It consists of three African-American themed horror flicks that Band had previously released under his well-known Full Moon label. "The Horrible Dr. Bones" (2000) is retitled "Demonic Tunes", "Ragdoll" (1999) becomes "The Killing Kind", and "The Vault" (2000) becomes 'Hidden Evil".
Out of the three movies that were condensed to make up "Urban Evil", only "The Horrible Dr. Bones" makes the transition with any sort of effectivenes. The other two feel like what they are--the butchered remains of longer movies, and It'll be obvious to even the most inattentive viewer that there's something missing in both of them. "The Killing One" comes off the worst of the two, with murder and mayhem happening off-screen and the viewers merely getting some tantalizing hints about what [i]might[/i] been included.
In "Demonic Tunes", the Urban Protectors, an up-and-coming rap band is chosen for stardom by super-DJ and "community organizer" Doctor Bones (Igus) to be the lead act on his new record label. Unfortunately for the band, and the world, Doctor Bones is a near-immortal voodoo sorcerer with grand plans for merging zombie-creation rituals with music and mass-media.
There are very few signs that this is a longer version of an abridged film which might hint that "The Horrible Doctor Bones" is not worth seeking out. I imagine that the full-length version is heavilly padded with bargain basement rap and pop performances--given that it's about a band and it takes place partially at a talent show and a concert--and that there is probably a subplot that was easily exciszed, because one might think that this film was always intended to be this length. (There's also the fact that Darrow Igus portrays the only interesting character in the entire movie. Although "Demonic Tunes" isn't all that good, Doctor Bones has enough flare as played by Igus that we can add him to the list of Cool Horror Movie Bad Guys.)
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[i]Jennia Watson and Russel Richardson star in "The Killing Kind", one of the tales in "Urban Evil: A Trilogy of Fear"[/i]
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Next up, we're treated to "The Killing Kind", where a young club owner (Richardson) uses voodoo magic to call forth an evil spirit to avenge an assault on his grandmother. You know things are going to end up badly when he offers the demon "anything he wants" to perform the task.
Unlike "Demonic Tunes", this film did not fare well during its transformation. Although it's got good acting and the plus of a very attractive leading lady in Jennia Watson and the Charles Band-trademark killer doll, watching the film is not a satisfying experience because time and again you have the sense that you left the room for a minute and came back to find that you'd missed something really cool. (We get to see two muders done by the doll, but references seem to imply there are at least two that we don't get to see. We also get to see Jennia Watson's bare back, but the sense is that we may have gotten to see a lot more if this had been a complete movie. That may not be the case, but the impression is there and that's all that's needed to lend an even more incomplete feeling that is projected by "The Killing Kind."
The best thing I can say about "The Killing Kind" is that it made me want to see "Ragdoll", the film that was butchered to create it. (Coincidentially, "Ragdoll" is one of the movies slated for review durring "31 Nights of Halloween" next month.)
Rounding out the trilogy promised by the sub-title, we have "Hidden Evil", a tale of a well-meaning inner-city teacher (Ted Lyde) takes a small group of high schoolers to an old school that is about to be torn down in the hopes of finding and saving historical artifacts perhaps dating as far back as when the school served as a transfer terminal for slaves being brought in from Africa. They end up releasing an angry spirit that's been trapped there for over 150 yeas.
Like "The Killing Kind", this film feels mained and butchered, as we lose all the scenes that build tension, we are obviously skipping huge chunks of the story--how did two of the characters get from the second floor to being lost in the basement?--and the characters make discoveries that they refer to but we never quite get to understand what those are. However, unlike with "The Killing Kind", what is here seems like a highlight reel and not a very good one at that. We probably ARE getting everything that's worth seeing in this film in the 25 or so minutes that's included, and it doesn't look like the rest is worth going out of your way for.
With one film that boiled down decently and two others that didn't, "Urban Evil: A Trilogy of Fear" is one anthology film you can safely ignore, even if you love the format like I do.
Urban Evil: A Trilogy of Fear
Starring: Darrow Igus, Larry Bates Sarah Scott Davis and Rhonda Claerbaut ("Demonic Tunes); Russell Richardson, Jennia Watson, Freda Payne and Bill Davis ("The Killing One" segment); and Shani Pride, Ted Lyde, Kyle Walker and Austin Priester ("Hidden Evil" segment)
Directors: Art Carnage ("Demonic Tunes", Ted Nicolaou ("The Killing Kind") and James Black ("Hidden Evil")
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
01/18/23
Full Review
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