Rating: 4/5
Hooptober 5.0 | 31/32 | Bonus 1/2
Don’t worry — you’ll get the shit. You’ll be knee-deep in the shit.
Welcome to My Mortuary ***.5 Stack, Ball, and Bulldog arrive at Simms’ Funeral Home to pick up some drugs. Mr. Simms meets them and guides them through the funeral home, detailing how each person died.
Clarence Williams III is outrageous and has a lot of fun with the role. The twist at the end is amusing, but ties in with the last story (see notes below).
Rogue Cop Revelation ** Office Clarence Smith is on his first night on the job. He follows his white partner to what seems like a routine traffic stop. But two other white cops are there with Martin Ezekiel Moorehouse, a black rights and anti-police corruption activist.
Though Clarence tries to stop it, the cops beat Moorehouse to death and inject him with heroin to make it look like an OD. Strange Fruit by Billy Holiday plays over the scene.
One year later, Clarence is a drunk consumed with guilt. Moorehouse, in a vision, encourages Clarence to bring the white cops to Moorehouse’s grave for the anniversary. Clarence denounces the officers, and they plan to kill Clarence. Until Moorehouse rises from the grave, to exact revenge.
The movie comes out of the gate hard with this brutal story. The story inverts the horror shape by starting with the horror and shifting to catharsis.
Boys Do Get Bruised **.5 Walter Johnson transfers to a new school. His teacher, Richard Garvey, notices Walter’s bruises. He thinks they’re from a bully, but Walter claims they come from a monster. Walter draws the monster and explains that he can overcome it by destroying its image.
We learn later Walter’s mother, Sissy, knows about the monster and brings it out to punish Walter when she learns Walter has been talking about it at school.
What a star-studded story! Everyone is so good in this, especially David Alan Grier. The whole thing is unsettling, but that finale is top-notch.
KKK Comeuppance ** A racist senator and former KKK member named Duke Metger runs for governor. He sets up office on a plantation once owned by his slave-owning ancestors. The ancestor, at the end of the Civil War, massacred all of his slaves — the story: a hoodoo witch put slaves’ souls into dolls.
Duke finds dolls in the home and watches in horror as terrible things happen around him. His moment is drawing near.
This story takes the Trilogy of Terror story and reclaims it from its deeply racist origins. The claymation is fun too.
Hard-Core Convert *** Crazy K is a homicidal killer who uses his gang as an excuse to murder whomever he pleases. He gets in a shootout with his rival, Lil’ Deke. The police intervene. Crazy K is hurt but survives. He serves a life sentence.
Four years later, the prison puts him through an experimental trial that could set him free. To do so, however, Crazy K must equate the violence he showed to black people with the violence that white people have done to black people over the years.
I’m unsure how to feel about this one. People of all races have opinions and tirades regarding “black-on-black violence.”