Tales from the Hood is a 1995 American black horror comedy anthology film directed by Rusty Cundieff (who also wrote the film with Darin Scott) and starring Corbin Bernsen, Rosalind Cash, Rusty Cundieff, David Alan Grier, Anthony Griffith, Wings Hauser, Paula Jai Parker, Joe Torry, and Clarence Williams III.
The film presents four short urban-themed horror stories based on problems that affect the African-American community: police corruption, domestic abuse, racism, and gang violence.
He asks the dealers to help him get the drugs, and as the four make their way through the building, relates stories about some of the dead bodies in the funeral home.
The first casket contains the body of Clarence Smith, a man who was rumored to have heard voices of the dead calling his name.
Smith watches in horror as Hauser and his fellow police officers Billy Crumfield and Strom Richmond brutally beat Moorehouse with their nightsticks and vandalize his car.
As Hauser and Richmond prepare to kill Smith, a zombified Moorehouse bursts from the grave to drag Crumfield beneath the ground by his genitals.
Terrified, Hauser exits his vehicle and shoots its gas tank, though the ensuing explosion doesn't rid him of Moorehouse.
Walter Johnson is a quiet and sensitive boy who transfers to a new school one day with bruises around his cheek and eye.
With Carl's attention elsewhere, Walter grabs a drawing he made of the monster, and begins to fold and crumple it.
Back in Simms' Funeral Home, Carl's burnt and mangled corpse is revealed to be inside the coffin.
For his next story, Mr. Simms shows them the doll, mentioning that he originally found it in a home in the Southern United States.
Duke Metger is an obnoxious and highly racist Southern senator and a one-time member of the Ku Klux Klan who is currently running for governor.
Jewish and African-American groups have teamed up to protest against Metger for being a racist, a former Klansman, and for setting up his office at an old slave plantation previously owned by his ancestor, Nathan Wilkes.
One individual, Eli, tells the reporter that the plantation is haunted by dolls animated by the souls of Wilkes's previously tortured slaves, warning the news crews and everyone else at the scene that it is not a myth.
Metger explains how Wilkes, upon hearing that his slaves would be freed at the end of the Civil War, flew into a murderous rage and massacred all of them.
In the midst of his latest racist rant, Metger realizes more doll images in the painting have faded to white.
Miss Cobbs then disappears from the painting and manifests herself in the room, holding the first doll in her arms, satisfied at the carnage taking place before them.
The dealers have grown impatient and ready for the drugs, not wanting to listen to any more of Mr. Simms's strange stories.
In retaliation, Lil' Deke's associates shoot at Crazy K. Before they can finish him off, the police arrive at the scene and gun down the attackers.
Crazy K, badly injured but still alive, is arrested and sent to prison, serving a life sentence without parole.
She then tells him that she has been hired by the government to administer a rehabilitation process on Crazy K, in hopes that he will change his ways.
He is then loaded onto a gyroscopic modulator, forced to visualize images involving KKK members and actual photographs of lynching victims, interspersed with grisly, stylized footage of gang violence and his own actions.
Dr. Cushing expounds on the fact that Crazy K killed many innocent black people without remorse or second thought.
For the next part of the trial, Crazy K is put into a sensory deprivation chamber, where he is confronted by the souls of the people he has killed, intentionally or otherwise, including his friends and an innocent little girl.
Despite hinting at his own personal abuse in his childhood, Crazy K refuses to accept any responsibility for his crimes, and Dr. Cushing tearfully warns him that he won't get another chance for forgiveness.
The drug dealers scream in horror at this sight as the walls of the funeral home shatter to reveal an inferno that consumes them.
According to Cundieff, the idea for "Tales from the Hood" came from a one-act play he performed a few times in L.A. called "The Black Horror Show: Blackanthropy.
"[2] Shortly after the play wrapped, Cundieff said Darin Scott suggested they collaborate on a horror movie.
[2] The "Tales from the Hood" story, "Boys Do Get Bruised," is loosely based on an incident from Cundieff's childhood.
Cundieff said he went home and told his dad, who was a detective in the juvenile division of the Pittsburgh police: "He said, 'I can't mess with those whites.'