The "trilogy of terror" has been a horror movie staple ever since Vincent Price made a name for himself in the 1960's starring in all those Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe short stories. Now, 40 years later, director Stacy Title is attempting to carry on that tradition with "Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror," as dimwitted and cheapjack a B-movie travesty as we've come across in quite some time.
Acting as a sort of gangsta' rap version of Elvira, Snoop Dogg serves as the host of the show, introducing us to the three stories, then providing a sermonizing moral as wrap-up when each of them is finished. The first episode, entitled "Crossed Out," tells of a young woman given the power to supernaturally exterminate all the graffiti artists in her neighborhood simply by spray-painting a giant red x through their work. The second entry, "The Scumlord," is a parodic tale of a group of grizzled Vietnam vets who turn the tables on their racist landlord. The third, "Rapsody Askew," is a confused account of a rap star forced to face divine judgment for the error-filled life he's led.
Despite the movie's title, there isn't a single suspenseful moment in any of the segments, which, when taken together, feel like a trio of under-conceived and under-nourished rejects from the old "Twilight Zone" series. As the two "name" players in the cast, Billy Dee Williams and Jason Alexander are literally the only things separating "Hood of Horror" from your average amateur movie shot in someone's backyard on 8-millimeter. Even the gore is remarkably over-the-top and cartoon-like in nature, the kind of thing one would expect from a group of precocious high school students in their first experience with a camera.
As uninteresting as it is uninspired, "Hood of Horror" gives anthology films a bad name.
Acting as a sort of gangsta' rap version of Elvira, Snoop Dogg serves as the host of the show, introducing us to the three stories, then providing a sermonizing moral as wrap-up when each of them is finished. The first episode, entitled "Crossed Out," tells of a young woman given the power to supernaturally exterminate all the graffiti artists in her neighborhood simply by spray-painting a giant red x through their work. The second entry, "The Scumlord," is a parodic tale of a group of grizzled Vietnam vets who turn the tables on their racist landlord. The third, "Rapsody Askew," is a confused account of a rap star forced to face divine judgment for the error-filled life he's led.
Despite the movie's title, there isn't a single suspenseful moment in any of the segments, which, when taken together, feel like a trio of under-conceived and under-nourished rejects from the old "Twilight Zone" series. As the two "name" players in the cast, Billy Dee Williams and Jason Alexander are literally the only things separating "Hood of Horror" from your average amateur movie shot in someone's backyard on 8-millimeter. Even the gore is remarkably over-the-top and cartoon-like in nature, the kind of thing one would expect from a group of precocious high school students in their first experience with a camera.
As uninteresting as it is uninspired, "Hood of Horror" gives anthology films a bad name.