Quadead

 

TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE-1987-An African American woman (Shirley Jones from the same director's BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL) reads stories from the title book to her dead invisible ghost (?) son. In the first tale, “Food For ?”, a white hillbilly family has only enough food for four people and there are 8 of them. It's an "every man for himself" dive for food. Eventually a guy in overalls kills 3 of them. Later there's not enough food for 5 of them. 

In the second, “The Brothers”, 2 guys steal a corpse from funeral home for the dead guy's brother. He planned on killing his now dead bro because he stole the guy's wife and she killed herself after bro spend all their inheritance. He rants "What a terrible childhood I had". Since he couldn't enact the murder he dresses bro up in a clown costume and laughs a lot. Dead bro's spirit (?) enters the clowny body and kills living bro with a pitchfork. Just when mom is going to read another story dad Daryl comes by and beats her with the book. They have a kind of violent fight until she stabs him (this scene goes on for a while). 

TALES of course was the brainchild of producer/director/writer Chester N. Turner, once more working his camcorder magic, in this follow up to his previous insanity, the aforementioned BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL. 

TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE IS cheap and shoddy beyond belief but it's so crazy, it really has to be seen to be believed. For years it was believed do it all Turner was killed in a car accident but that was untrue. He is among the living and has threatened to make sequels to both his movies. This has not happened at the time of this writing as far as I know.

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Seeing Is Believing

BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL-1984-Some movies really have to be seen to be believed. When I tell people about this thing they usually look at me strangely (well, stranger than they usually look at me). That's why I don't tell anyone about this..um..movie anymore. Fortunately when I first saw it , I was with my friend Tony so I have a witness. 

This shot on video insanity is about a religious but sexually repressed woman (Shirley L. Jones) who after some endless conversations about religion, dating and sex visits a doll shop and buys a strange puppet (it looks like the popular Jerry Mahoney but with dark skin and dreadlocks) that the store keeper says can grant the owner's “heart felt wish”. She buys it, takes it home and puts it on the toilet bowl where she proceeds to strip and take a shower. The puppet comes to life and watches her. He (it?)attacks her (his first works are “how do you like that,bitch?”) and ties her to a bed (some scenes of his feet and hands are obviously a little kid). She yells “Untie me, you wooden headed bastard!”. He abuses and rapes her but she decides she likes it! 

Seeing a puppet having sex with a grown woman is pretty strange. It's not a quick scene. It goes on for a while! 

The next day the puppet is gone. She searches the house (“Mr. Wonderful, where are you?”) but he's nowhere to be found. She throws her bible away and seduces a street hustler who grunts and groans but she's just bored. Later she goes to Elmo's bar and picks up a guy. They have sex but once again she is unfulfilled. She gets the puppet back and pleads for sex but the dummy is unresponsive until she tries to destroy it. A toy rabbit playing cymbals is featured in the bonkers ending. 

 While I've seen many shot on video horror films. BDDFH takes the cake. It comes right off a hand held camcorder with very little editing. The stop and start button being the most commonly used device. There's a way too loud Casio like musical soundtrack that at times obscures the dialogue. It's offensive, embarrassing and hilarious. Especially when you take time to think that adults made and acted in it! The writer/director Chester N. Turner remains a mystery man. No one seems to know anything about him except he made one other “feature” called TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE (also with Jones). Rumors say he was killed in a car accident in the early '90's.

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