S. Torriano Berry, director of the early "urban horror" film The Embalmer and member of the Black Horror Movie Hall of Fame, had previously written and directed an African-American Twilight Zone of sorts in the mid-'80s, entitled The Black Beyond. While I don't think it was seen on TV...
The Quiroz Brothers have unleashed a string of mediocre-at-best horror cheapies over the past few years, but I'll give them credit for one thing: each one has been better than the last. Of course, when you start out with Hood of the Living Dead, there's little place to go...
As straight-to-video zombie films go, Death Valley is one of them. But more than that, it stands out for having two major black characters and an interesting racial subplot involving zombie cowboy Bloody Bill: "The only thing he hated more than Yankees," explains one of the teenaged fodder, "was...
I don't know if there's anyone who would describe anything Renny Harlin's ever done as "clever" -- except maybe "Clever how he tanked Geena Davis's career" -- but darnit if Deep Blue Sea doesn't display a glimmer of cleverness amidst its arm-gnawing mayhem. There's a nudge-and-wink awareness of the...
That Def By Temptation may be the best film in the Troma oeuvre (which studio president Lloyd Kaufman claims in the DVD intro) is perhaps a dubious distinction, but hey, everyone's got a cross to bear. Unlike most Troma works -- including one of the scant all-black selections from...
One of the better horror movies of the '90s, Demon Knight is helmed by a black director and features a black hero (and a woman at that) -- and yet it takes place in neither the ghetto nor voodoo-infested Louisiana, the Caribbean or Africa! But, you ask, where else...
One of the most energetic, entertaining and Hollywood-friendly films of the '70s/'80s Italian horror Renaissance, Demons is also one of the few to feature major black roles, in this case a pimp (Bobby Rhodes) and a hooker (the redundantly named Geretta Geretta). How refreshing! It's good to know that...
Five delinquent "teens" (Hollywood-speak for 30-something) are sentenced to renovate a brothel-turned-hospital in South Central LA that apparently used to host ritual sacrifices back in the day and is now a portal to the land of the dead frequented by demon ghosts of dead prostitutes. Ho-hum. These sub-par, poseur...
From Jesus Franco, sleazy horror icon and dubiously talented nutcase, the man who brought you Diamonds of Kilimandjaro (which used some of the same cast, including Aline Mess as a perpetually topless cannibal priestess), comes Devil Hunter, a film that manages to tap into race exploitation, sex exploitation, cannibal...
The Devil's Daughter is an all-black melodramatic semi-remake of Ouanga with no devil and with daughters so bland the devil wouldn't want 'em anyway. The whispy-voiced Ida James stars as vapid heiress Sylvia Walton, who inherits a Jamaican plantation worked by "Jamaicans" without a hint of patois. Her half-sister...
