Wow. Could this be any more offensive? It opens documentary-style with a voiceover (and a montage of booga-booga tribesmen and wild animals devouring each other) : "Africa: A country that for centuries was hidden from civilized man...Africa: where primitive people still practice evil religions which weave a dark...
An above-average direct-to-video urban slasher, Cutthroat Alley is basically Scream in the 'Hood. It borrows liberally from the Wes Craven flick, but what it lacks in originality it makes up for in direction, writing and production value (everything's relative here, folks). The story is a cohesive whodunit with no...
This little independent thriller has only one black actor, but he's the featured star -- sort of the cinematic version of Simi Valley electing a black mayor. Jeff Hollins plays Carl, a stereotypically burnt-out ex-cop who's called back for "one last case." He'd quit the homicide beat after accidentally...
Scarier than "Funky Town," funkier than O-Town, Dark Town is a neat little direct-to-video flick with an interesting premise. Vampires from Bosnia emigrate to the bloodiest place they can find after the genocide ends: Compton. Meanwhile, teen Compton-ite Rakeem (Del Wills) and his buddies decide one night to take...
Perhaps the best thing that can be said about The Dawn is that it resisted the urge to call itself The Blair Witch Projects. The story involves an "urban" (read: black) college professor (Omar Jermaine) bringing a group of black and Latino students to the woods to "experience the...
Much beloved by horror geeks everywhere, Dawn of the Dead is considered by many to be an untouchable Holy Grail of horror. Well, allow me to touch it a bit. I'm gonna touch it real good. Yeah, you like that, don't you? But I digress. While I give kudos...
Day of the Dead is generally considered the lesser (lessest?) of George Romero's "Dead trilogy" -- which technically is now up to six films -- and with good reason. While not a bad movie, its pace is about that of a Romero zombie. Until the last 15 minutes of the...
Led by a take-charge, opinionated black man, a ragtag group of survivors trapped in a building must work together to fend off a horde of flesh-eating zombies. Sound familiar? That's right, it's Day X! This overlooked little zombie independent does an admirable job of channeling the spirit of the...
Looking at the DVD cover, I was prepared to mock this film mercilessly, but it turns out that Dead Heist is the opposite of those direct-to-video dregs that spend three-quarters of their budget on snazzy cover art in order to suck you in and waste two hours of your...
I had assumed that the classic mammy stereotype died sometime between the cancellation of Beulah in the 1950s and the re-design of Aunt Jemima's waffle mix in the '80s, but lo and behold, turns out she was alive and well as late as 1991. I should've known that Elliott...
