The mission of The Department of Afro-American Research Arts and Culture to identify the global significance of the creative contributions pioneered by an international diaspora of Blackness
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Thursday, March 7, 2013

Tales from the Quadead Zone (1987)



















Starring:

Storyline
Actress Shirley Latanya Jones returns from the director's first film (Black Devil Doll from Hell) to be in front of Turner's camcorder, and reads two spooky tales to the ghost of her dead son, Bobby.

Food For?: A tale about hunger and it's effect on one poor family and one family member's soultion to this devastating problem! A tale you will never forget.

The Brothers: A tale of hatred and revenge of supernatural proportions. Two brothers, Fred and Ted Johnson, brothers whom have hated each other from birth. Fred dies of an apparent heart attack. Ted Steals his body from a funeral home to carry out a strange and bizarre deed that results in a chain of evens that Ted could not have foresee in this life or the next.

Unseen Vision: A tale about Bobby, a dead little boy whom keeps brining his mother strange books to read to him...books that can't be found in this world! 

Hell of the Living Dead (1980)




















Starring:
  • Margit Evelyn Newton
  • Franco Garofalo
  • Selan Karay
blackhorrormovies.com
I don't know much about Papua New Guinea (except that it's apparently crawling with zombies and cannibals), but I don't think that the racial makeup of the populace is quite as black as HOTLD implies. Here, it looks more like Africa or the Caribbean than the South Pacific. Italian schlock master Bruno Mattei cuts corners by splicing stock footage of annonymous tribesmen eating maggots and grainy Mutual of Omaha-style animal footage into his yarn about, well, the living dead and the inevitable Hell that accompanies them. It's standard early '80s Italian zombie fare with enough action and gore to keep your attention and enough cheesy dialogue and bad makeup to have a drunken good time -- particularly the scene where the white heroine "blends in" with the natives by taking off her shirt and painting her face and torso. There's actually some message about supporting third-world countries buried in HOTLD somewhere, although it spends most of the time exploiting them.

Breeders (1986)


















Starring:
  • Teresa Farley
  • Lance Lewman
  • Frances Raines
blackhorrormovies.com
This film stands out for two reasons: 1) It's directed by Tim Kincaid, who helmed the famously awful Robot Holocaust, which was parodied on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (He's since gone on to direct gay porn. Really.), and 2) It features a black female lead. For the purposes of this site, I'll focus on the latter. Theresa Farley stars as Dr. Gamble Pace, who notices a rash of rape victims coming into her hospital. Turns out an alien life form is using human virgins to reproduce. Looking at the cheap, bug-eyed extraterrestrial, it's clear that dinner and a movie won't cut it. It's all very tasteless stuff and is really an excuse to have a bunch of women in '80s hair run around naked. I can see why they'd be naked after the assaults, but for some reason, they're usually nude even beforehand; one even does an extended sans-clothes workout. Even more bewildering is why the vicitms end up in an alien jacuzzi full of a white creamy substance (I don't wanna know.) and why my DVD player isn't equipped with faster forward. Anyway, in the horror code of moralism, heroine Farley is the only woman not to get naked, so we're forced to focus on her -- ick -- dialogue. She's a pretty bad actress. Or, more accurately, she's a pretty, bad actress. And this is an ugly, bad movie -- although it's head and shoulders above Robot Holocaust.