• Straight to Video
• Director: Deon Taylor
• Written by: Deon Taylor, Diana Erwin
• Running Time: 90 minutes
• Language: English
• MPAA Rating: R - Restricted
• Cast: Flavor Flav, Tony Todd, Chico Benymon, Ricky "Sticky Fingaz" Jones, Kel Mitchell, Ariele Senara, Tyrin Turner, Richard Moorhouse, Michael J. Pagan, Fredro Starr, James Ferris, Jordan Woolley, Sandra McCoy, Dante Brasco, Andrea Bogart

Enjoyable, if minor, anthology horror piece hosted by perennial ersatz celeb Flavor Flav - this is easily digestible fare for those not wanting to think too hard and looking for a couple of nice scares on a cold and windy night.

There are two stories on this dance card, connected by a very thin strand and a recurring, ever-present illusory theme. It begins right away with our host, Flavor Flav (1996's "New Jack City"), a man who long ago traded in his dignity in favour of a large over-sized necklace clock and habitual stints on whatever reality show trend was hot last week. Assessing from his brilliant, early career in the music group Public Enemy, alongside Chuck D, it’s confusing when you glance at what has become of this once promising artist. That is until you take into account the fact that Flavor Flav, the last few years, has earned a significant amount of currency playing what amounts to a modern day court jester. Adeptly, Flav has crafted out a caricature of his former self - a reality show jack-in-the-box, as it were, performing for a slack-jawed crowd that is only too happy to plop down hard earned money on Whoppers and Jerry Springer PPVs. His deception is not lost on me, as I believe that, beneath the façade, Flav is a shrewd businessman carefully and competently turning a silly shtick into a pot of gold… teeth. Such begins our journey, one that involves each character, on some level, indulging in some form of deception. Keeping up with the various filaments of deception, as the deceivers become the deceived and so on and so forth, such is part of the charm of this inconsequential horror outing.

Set design courtesy of Masterpiece Theater, Flav makes mincemeat of a grand piano before turning his attention to the camera – introducing what he purports to be the first time “two action-packed films were compressed into one”. Not so much, but I’m not going argue with him, mainly because, well, he’s got this really creepy eye thing going on (helped along by a creative lighting arrangement). Flav throws down a poor improvisational introductory bit, adding next to nothing than a broad box-cover synopsis (“the two films in one” thing), and adding zilch grounding for the events to come.  Like an old Pinto running on fumes, Flav’s banter does get us from point A to point B, and affixes a sort-of bookend to the whole of the piece.

The first movie “pressed into one” is called “Karma” and hard-boiled horror film geeks will recognize that it is nothing more than a re-working of the classic Don Dohler film “Blood Massacre”, only modernized and with a much more hipper trim. Deon Taylor has replaced Dohler’s four random hicks with a quartet of fresh, irreverent fashionably gangsterish gangsta’s headed up by hip hop artist, Kirk 'Sticky Fingaz' Jones, front man for the group Onyx. Jones’ Onyx band mate, Fredro Starr, also appears as one of Jones’ accomplices. When the story opens, the mean and surly Dice (Jones – star of “Karma, Confessions and Holi”, also produced in 2008), along with his equally mean and surly four-man crew, Muse ("Black Scorpion" star Michael J. Pagan), Twan ("Clockers" star Fredro Starr) and Dee ("Soldier Boyz" star Tyrin Turner) are in the process of staking out a bank in some small out-of-the-way Pennsylvania town. Noting that the place has no cameras or security guards, one of the guys has a really bad feeling about robbing this particular bank. Dice (against a badly matted green screen) just chalks it up to the false security that hicks in small towns generally afford themselves. Lots of the usual macho male posturing crap as the boys, donning skeletal-kerchiefs, charge the bank, guns drawn, and proceed to kill anyone who gets in their way. Mayhem ensues, putting a huge damper on their flawless getaway plan. In the aftermath, one of the thugs, the greenest of the lot, is shot in the stomach and is bleeding to death in the back of Dice’s stolen car. Cliché dictates that the boys would run into car problems, a minor detail in comparison to the real human drama playing out inside the vehicle.

Proving that they a couple of ruthless bastards, Dice and Dee have ruled that the injured party needs to be dispatched because, well, he’s slowing them down. After this unpleasant bit of tragedy has worked itself out, the boys spot a farmhouse through the woods and start making their way towards it. Their intention is to simply get in, use the phone, and then leave. No violence unless it’s absolutely necessary. The locals are a bunch of kindly inbred types who are only too happy to let the three black men inside to use the telephone. Alongside the unique merging of two cinematic stereotypes - the urban (typically ethnic) gangsta, homicidal maniac and the rural (typically white) redneck, cannibal, the stirring game of deception has begun between these two alien groups. The possibilities for something novel ultimately falls flat, as the story segues into the final, rushed stretch. We quickly understand why there were no cameras or security guards at the bank, as our friendly locals have some secrets of their own that they are intent on keeping. “Gangsta meat,” screeches one of the jovial rednecks in the final moments, giving us insight into the sinister plan awaiting the three tied down thugs. A surprisingly redemptive component factors into the piece, giving way to an interesting, if not confusing concluding moment.

Arriving like a tiny, annoying drizzle, “Storm”, the next mini-movie, features a bunch of hot thirty-something “teens” who find their night of sex, drugs and drinking interrupted by first; a storm that knocks out the phone and the power; second, a man (Tony Todd) dressed in a clown outfit with car troubles; third, a shifty-eyed cop ("Nightmare Man" star James Ferris) with a chip on his shoulder; and fourth, the conjured evil spectre of ‘Bloody Mary’ who likes to jump out of from the shadows and go ‘boo’ before slicing your throat. As ridiculous at this might sound, one at a time the teens break off from the group gathered in the living room, head upstairs and are subsequently killed by something lurking in the darkness. Candy Man? Nope. Anyways, someone downstairs hears the blood curdling scream and heads upstairs into the darkness to be the next victim… and rinse and repeat.

At the same time, downstairs, the cop, the clown and the remaining teens, maneuver their way through a deceptive, noir-inspired labyrinth of confounding plots twists, one of which links itself to the first story and subsequently plays hot potato with the ‘who’s the cop, who’s the criminal’ premise to the point that it becomes utterly absurd. The recurring game of deception arrives worn, beaten, and left thrashing on the floor. Even the out-of-place appearance of our supernatural pale-faced, black-eyed apparition (yawn) in the final moments, does little to energize the suddenly run aground affair.

Tony Todd (2004's "Murder-Set-Pieces") has carved out a place for himself as one of the great cult film icons, and here he’s nothing short of superb. With his clown make-up running down like wet paint and a big red bulbous nose dominating a better part of his face, it’s Todd’s eyes that work to convey a man with dark intentions that is until the entire dynamic of the situation has been revealed and those sinister eyes suddenly register reassurance and comfort. I loved this aspect of the story.

Flav comes back to close out the show, regurgitating much of the drivel that took us into the film and closing out with the promise of more to come. I’m doubtful of Flav’s push but considering that I wasn’t unhappy with this film and found it to be somewhat goofy, innocuous fun in keeping with “Creepshow”, “Tales from the Darkside”, “NightThirst” and, yes, “Tales From the Hood”, I’ll be keeping my eyes out for “Nite Tales 2”. We’ll see.

Checking over the cast list for this film offered on the imdb.com I was quite surprised to see a whole slew of names attached to this project which, for whatever reason, did not make it into the film. Everyone from Gary Busey to Tommy "Tiny" Lister are credited but do not appear. Maybe they were shooting part two and somehow got the casts accidentally merged. Who knows?

CrankedonCinema writer and FilmSuck.net webmaster Stan Hart (apparently midway through his Avril Lavigne phase) is only too happy to get up in Candy Man Tony Todd's shit at a hotdog stand in Toronto. Tony was nice enough to pose for a pic. Special thanks to Sara, Stan's long suffering wife, for passing this photo along.