Tales from the Quadead Zone (1987)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Chester Novell Turner, the fiercely independent and idiosyncratic Do-It-Yourself cinematic auteur who previously blessed us with the immortal "Black Devil Doll from Hell," returns for his second (and alas final) feature with this exceptionally inept horror anthology clunker. A loopy mother (essayed with an appealing lack of subtlety by Shirley Jones) reads a couple of bizarre stories to the ghost of her dead son. First yarn, "Food For?" - Hunger takes a bitter toll on a dirt poor white trash family. This outing boasts a gloriously ridiculous massacre and one hell of an idiotically abrupt ending. Second anecdote, "The Brothers" -- Sibling rivalry takes a turn for the super twisted when bitter loser Ted (a lame lead performance by Chester's real-life brother Keefe L. Turner) steals the corpse of his recently deceased and much more successful brother Fred so he can get the last laugh by humiliating the dude by dressing him up in a clown outfit and burying him in the basement of his house. This extremely drawn-out tale offers the single most sorry and unscary clown in horror movie history (the bozo's electronically distorted voice renders everything he exclaims almost impossible to understand). The wrap-around segment reaches its own grim and tragic conclusion complete with a spectacularly sidesplitting sequence of clumsily staged domestic violence. Better still, hardcore aficionados of choice crappy celluloid swill will also relish Turner's slack (non)direction, the plodding pace, a monotonous synthesizer score, the ugly shot-on-video cinematography, some shoddy gore, the tin-eared dialogue, the chintzy (far from) special effects, the hopelessly lousy acting from a pitiful no-name cast, and the uproariously atrocious theme song that's sung and written by Chester and Keefe. An absolute cruddy hoot.

There are not words in the English language or any language to describe the pure unadulterated evil which exists in this movie.Imagine a 1980s camcorder with no boom mic and edited with a Commodore 64. I'm not saying that as an insult. Seriously try to imagine that.I have no idea how this home made monstrosity was committed to video and got a release.The plot: An anthology of horror starring Shirley; a black trash housewife reading from a book the size of Webster's Dictionary to a ghost. Since we never see the ghost we just have to presume it's there.The first story focuses on a redneck family so poor their evening ritual is literally fighting to the death over sandwiches around the dinner table. The losers starve.The eldest son decides to "take it to the next level" by bringing his toy shotgun and murdering his family members to assure himself a sandwich.So how does this story conclude? It doesn't! It just ends! The first story is also the best. No kidding. It gets worse from here on. Far far worse.The second story, 'The Brothers' focuses on two black brothers. After the elder's funeral his grave is robbed by the younger brother whom takes him back home to curse him out for 20 minutes about how he stole his wife. That's right! 20 minutes of one man cursing at a dead body! His ultimate revenge is to dress his brother's corpse up like a clown. But this somehow brings his brother back to life! The undead brother strangles his brother while saying something in a computer distorted voice. This distortion sounds like Steven Hawking on super fast forward in 'Twin Peaks' Black Lodge. It's unclear if the audience is even supposed to understand what he's saying and the distortion is intended make his voice sound scary, (now we know what inspired Christopher Nolan to computer distort Christian Bale's voice as Batman) or if the distortion was merely intending to be a scary scream.With the word "quad" in the title, we'd presume this horror anthology would have four stories but that's it. Shirley's all done reading. There are only two stories! Now Shirley's abusive husband comes home to bitch smack her with the big book. He's angry that she's been talking with the dead. Let's deal with this issue on Steve Wilkos. "I beat her for necromancy." We can only hope that next Mr. Shirley beats up John Edward.But Shirley busts a cap (cap gun) in her abusive husband. When the police (no they don't have police costumes or fake badges, they're just two guys with toy guns saying they're the police) arrive to arrest Shirley, she slits her own throat while sitting on the toilet. If only she burned her husband alive in his bed, or shot him while eating ice cream, then she'd have nothing to fear from the police.This is tear your eyes out bad! Aside from the truly horrible "screenplay" the photography is like Abraham Zapruder with helmet cam and the audio is almost completely unintelligible. This is as bad as I gets. And yes, I've seen all of Michael Bay's films. Bay and Chester Novell Turner are destined to be cellmates in hell.

"Tales from the Quadead Zone" is an ultra-cheap horror movie/oddity shot on video from Chester Novell Turner,the man behind "Black Devil Doll from Hell".Turner is an enigmatic man.He was born in 1950,made his first feature film "Black Devil Doll from Hell" in 1984 (possibly in the Philadelphia area),made "Quadead Zone" three years later and supposedly died in a car crash in 1996."Black Devil Doll" star Shirley Jones reads her deceased son Bobby creepy tales from the book called "Tales from the Quadead Zone".The first one involves mass murder in the family of rednecks and the second one involves ghostly clown.After bloody shooting spree fat redneck dies on a gas chair(?)."Tales from the Quadead Zone" is gorier than "Black Devil Doll from Hell",but no less amateurish.There is pretty gory stabbing and suicidal throat slashing.Unforgettable and absurd "Tales from the Quadead Zone" is a must-see for fans of Z-grade trash.6 out of 10.

After searching high and low I was finally able to procure a copy of this remarkable film. I have to say, it was worth the trouble. As bad movies go, this is the cream of the crop. Though not as wonderful as the splendidly terrible "Black Devil Doll From Hell", "Quadead" does manage to reach tremendous heights of amusement. Bad movie lovers everywhere should track down this film and marvel at its splendor.