Friday, March 29, 2024

Movie Reviews

Reviews of primarily American movies featuring actors and actresses of Black / African-American descent in the horror-movie, slasher, gore, supernatural and related spooky film genres.

Black Mamba horror movie poster
Compared to Night of the Cobra Woman, Black Mamba suffers the double whammy of being less serpent-centric and less booby-centric, making for the dullest movie I've seen featuring zombies, voodoo dolls, a hunchback, Satan, Manimal-like transmutations, bestiality, an exorcism and Death itself. The film opens with a hunchback doing...
The Bogus Witch Project movie
Ah, the year 2000. 'Twas a simpler time: pre-9/11, pre-dot-com bubble burst, pre-Dancing With the Stars. Back then, Britney Spears's vagina was still intact, Rosie O'Donnell was still the sexually ambiguous "Queen of Nice" and Blair Witch Project spoofs were still a viable form of artistic expression. Looking at...
Boys of the City movie poster
Boy, this ranks up there with Curse of the Voodoo in the "Most Likely to Be Boycotted by Al Sharpton" category. Lone black East Side Kid Scruno (Ernest "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison) is the butt of so many racial jokes, it's almost fascinating -- like a time capsule of how...
CrossBones horror movie poster
If you notice a rancid stench coming from your local video store, if it isn't the six-year-old Twizzlers rotting on the clearance rack, chances are it's CrossBones. This film manages the dubious achievement of being both dull and offensive at the same time. Black stereotypes abound, from the blood-thirsty...
Elliott Gould in Dead Men Don't Die movie poster
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...
The Devil's Daughter horror movie poster
The Devil's Daughter is an all-black melodramatic semi-remake of Ouanga with no devil and with daughters so bland the devil wouldn't want 'em anyway. The whispy-voiced Ida James stars as vapid heiress Sylvia Walton, who inherits a Jamaican plantation worked by "Jamaicans" without a hint of patois. Her half-sister...
Diamonds of Kilimandjaro movie poster
Really more of an adventure (although admittedly not very adventurous) tale than horror, Diamonds of Kilimandjaro is piss-poor in any genre. It's a Tarzan rip-off from Spanish sleaze-meister Jesus Franco, meaning it's an excuse for non-stop nudity, bad dubbing and little else. Katja Bienert is the ever-topless "white goddess"...
Dream Home horror movie
I give Dream Home credit for being a mostly African-American horror movie without revolving around a stereotypically "urban" storyline involving gangstas, or even a stereotypically "rural" storyline involving voodoo. I also give it credit for being only 70 minutes long. Beyond that, it's garbage. I suppose the cover art...
Frankenthug horror movie poster
First, the bad news: Frankenthug comes from the folks who brought you the unholy trio of Zombiez, Vampiyaz, and Bloodz vs. Wolvez. Now, the good news: There's no "Z" in the title! Actually, Frankenthug might be the best of this dubious bunch, in part because it actually makes an...
Voodoo Curse: The Giddeh horror movie
Maverick Entertainment strikes again. Another dull, uninspired effort from the company, which is starting to make Full Moon's '90s urban horror output look like Citizen Kane. Likable character actor Glenn Plummer -- of Speed, Saw II, The Day After Tomorrow and er, Showgirls fame -- wrote and directed The Giddeh,...