The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, May 10-16
Tales from the Hood (1995)
Directed by Rusty Cundieff
In the mid 1990s, two waves in independent cinema were riding high: black cinema—partly prompted by this film’s executive producer Spike Lee—and anthology horror. Considering its studio Savoy Pictures dabbled in exploitation (anyone remember Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde?), Tales from the Hood seems like an opportunistic cash grab. Instead, it’s a stunning balance act of gallows humor and social horror that, especially in the wake of Jordan Peele’s rise, deserves a larger draw. Co-crafters Rusty Cundieff and Darin Scott take the EC Comics revenge trope and maneuver it against personal and systemic ills—police brutality, domestic violence, institutionalized racism, and the cannibalization of black communities. Cundieff and Scott find sick glee in the various comeuppances which, despite the film’s age, will resonate in a brutal present where cops fire upon vans full of kids and outspoken bigots run the political gears. A spotless cast materializes these American nightmares—Clarence Williams III is our scene-gnawing horror host, while David Allen Grier, Anthony Griffith, Rosalind Cash, and Corbin Bernsen astonish in their places as both products and perpetrators of unending cycles. Max Kyburz (May 12, 13, midnight at the Nitehawk)