Michael_Elliott Tales from the Quadead Zone (1987)* 1/2 (out of 4) A woman (Shirley Latanya Jones) is in her small house with the ghost of her dead son who wants to hear some stories. She sits him down in a chair and gets the book called Tales from the Quadead Zone and reads him two tales. The first story deals with a family of eight who only has enough food to feed four. The second story deals with a brother who steals the corpse of his much more successful and popular brother.Yes, those are the two stories, which might confuse you since the title says "quad" and you might be expected four films. No, you get two and then a wrap-around story dealing with the mother and her ghost child but you have to wonder why a fourth film wasn't added or the title changed. Either way, this here is from filmmaker Chester Novell Turner whose previous movie BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL is without question one of the zaniest and wickedly bad movies ever made. This one here is just as bad on many levels but at the same time there's no question that both films has a certain charm if you're a fan of bad movies.This thing here is certainly a mess because the first story dealing with the hungry family clocks in what seems like under ten minutes. The story is pretty much set up that the family is hungry and then it's over without any type of conclusion. A real head-scratcher of a sequence. The second story goes on and on and on with the brother constantly talking and laughing at the dead corpse. The first story should have been expanded and the second cut down for sure. Then there's the story with the mother and her dead son, which just drags out to get the running time to a total of 62 minutes! If you're unaware of Chester Novell Turner then you should know that his movies were recorded on a camcorder with unprofessional actors. The camera-work is pretty bad and even worse is that a lot of times the added on music score is so loud that you can't hear the dialogue being said. Apparently the budget of this was just $11,000 and it certainly shows. With that said, there's no question this is a "bad" movie but if you're into these types of films then it's actually fairly entertaining. It's certainly feels long even at just 62 minutes but bad cinema lovers should eat it up. The rest should just avoid.

Woodyanders 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.

Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki Chester Novell Turner returns from (or to?) Black Devil Doll territory with this anthology, which barely even qualifies as an anthology, as the framework apparently counts as one story, and there are only two stories presented.Shirley Jones returns as well to play a woman haunted by her dead son's invisible ghost. She reads him a pair of stories from a book, the first involves a hillbilly killing his family, off-screen, in order to eat their sandwiches at dinnertime. Or, at least she starts to tell him the story. Turner seemingly either ran out of money, or interest in it, because crummy intertitles abruptly finish the tale for her, and the audience, after a short run time.The second is about a guy who tries to bury his dead brother under his house. For some strange reason, he feels compelled to shout profanities at the dead body before dressing him as a clown and digging the grave. For some even stranger reason, being dressed as a clown somehow reanimates his brother's corpse, the two men battle it out in the cellar, while dead clown brother recites from cue cards lines of dialogue, which is then heavilly distorted to make it unintelligible.That is the extent of the stories read by this woman. The third tale is, one supposes, the story of her husband coming home and whacking her over the head with the book from Hell, before getting himself shot and killed by her.Slightly less annoying than Novell's earlier Black Devil Doll From Hell, and not quite as technically inept (we don't hear high pitched buzzing noises on the soundtrack this time around) Truthfully, the dead clown brother segment wasn't bad, in a zero-budget, late night cable television sort of way, but I doubt I could endure this a second time.The closing credits read: "Tales from the Quadead Zone will return", implying that a sequel might emerge, which, thankfully, never happened.

Takeshi666 Ah, the good old days of VHS, when just about any cinematic turd could find a distributor - why else do you think so many of the movies shown on MST3K were released on VHS *before* that show was even aired? Tho I guess they had some standards; a direct to video release like Tales From the Quadead Zone probably would have never even qualified. And certainly not for a cinematic release, as the whole thing was shot on video. And it shows.The second movie of Chester Novell Turner, who only made two films before forever disappearing into relative obscurity, shows that Chester Novell Turner is to writing what Chester Novell Turner is to directing. After a whole three minutes of lousy drawings and even lousier Casio keyboard music that makes up the movie's opening, we're introduced to the same ugly lady with the hideous hairdo that starred in the previous movie, The Black Devil Doll From Hell, who speaks to her crappy video effect of a dead son and reads him stories.Obviously this movie is supposed to be a horror anthology like Tales from the Crypt, what with the premise and all, but for one thing, this film never even begins to work as a horror film; despite the title of the movie, there's only THREE stories in the entire film - and the third isn't even from the stupid book she reads! I don't think I need to even get into the storyline to tell you how awful this film is. Let's just say that both stories are neither interesting or terrifying, the audio mix is so bad that the awful and unfitting Casio music drowns out the already inaudible dialog.This film really is best viewed with a group of friends while MST3K'ing the hell out of it.