Foreverisacastironmess
Okay, so for a start I don't get all the strong dislike for this movie, I just fail to see how anyone who claims to be a fan of the original could seriously hate this, as it's basically more of the exact same thing. In fact, most of it is just shots of Crazy Fat Ethel remembering Crazy Fat Ethel! Quite unlike Silent Night Deadly Night 2, which drove me crazy, the numerous flashbacks didn't bother me that much, as it's still a sequel that offers a little more of this fun oddity of a character to love, although she is noticeably less heavy this time around.. And uh, newsflash: both movies stink higher than Ethel's stashed victims and truly are incredibly poor exercises in slasher film-making that even fans of such grungy so-bad-it's-good fare would probably have a difficult time with. But for me, it's exactly the *extreme* lousiness that actually renders them fairly entertaining and worth a lot of laughs. They both fail to be unintentionally bad so hard that they somehow wrap around themselves till they come to unintentionally bad all over again, like a singularity - a sort of Chinese finger-trap for the brain! I can see how some can hate this though, it is insulting to everything really, even chocolate pudding! Just watch it for the novelty value alone and you'll do fine. So, in this one the plot is that because the mental asylum where Ethel has been incarcerated ever since her killing spree in the first picture has run out of money, they decide that they can no longer keep this clearly deranged murderer, and that there's simply no other solution than to send her to live at grandma's house! And in this instance 'grandma' is the dear old Mrs.Hope Bartholomew, who takes wayward souls into her boarding house for the mentally disturbed, and who has the most darling motto I've ever heard: "We must never lose Hope!" There's a couple of interesting rag-tag inmates like a guy who thinks he's a spider, and a mustachioed wife-killer who likes to have awkward staring contests with Ethel, and who signs his death warrant when he dares to blackmail her into giving him all her deserts in exchange for him turning a blind eye to her brutal deeds! And there's also a mean orderly who's a dead ringer for a young Tim Burton who winds up getting hanged after he insults Ethel's honour in the worst possible way by slowly, almost ~sensually~ eating a candy bar right in front of her! I didn't care about what happened to that guy because he deliberately teased the inmates, which was just plain cruel. All of Ethel the Hutt's kills are once again filmed in the same awesomely tacky and cheap manner of close-up rapid jump-cuts that defy any sense of what the hell's happening, and oh man.. It does work for the absurd tone of the film, but they really monumentally screwed-up there. It's almost as if they were going for a Psycho thing with the violence being implied rather than seen, and pulling away at the last second - only there's still tons of crazy gore that's right there! It just cracked me up how it sounded very much like angry sex whenever she'd be butchering somebody! And why am I more grossed-out by the opening spectacle of this woman eating than anything else in the movie? Two of my favourite bits are when Ethel chases the poor Dr guy around a couch which is a really dumb but hysterical moment, and the part where she goes into the backyard to celebrate her newfound freedom by twirling about in the sunshine in an almost surreal fashion like a demented ballerina, looking up at the sky, free as a bird, like a little insane dancing angel! Like with the original it's mercifully short, you get in you get out, and it sure had me laughing a lot, so I considered the time well spent. Bravo! Bravo movie! This is a fantastic, fantastic, FANTASTIC film, a total edge-of-your-seat thriller that I think would even do Hitchcock proud, the acting is phenomenal for the most part, there are one or two bad eggs who are a little nrrraagh, but they're only minor characters, so let's just thank god that it doesn't manage to hurt the magnificent story. The cinematography, visuals, storytelling.. All in all, we got a pretty phenomenal picture here. I enormously recommend that you see it because you'll be positively rapt the whole time. Buy it, watch it, love it, cos you will..love it, if you buy it and watch it. Silly scary or sick, either way is good. All praise be to the Ethel!!!!
JamesLisk
Criminally Insane 2Where the first Criminally Insane has developed into a sort-of cult horror classic, the second has garnered much attention for its inability to live up to its predecessor and its obvious lack of imagination.The original Criminally Insane was truly an exercise in uncompromised creepiness, due partially to the director, Steve Millard, who seemed concentrated on delving into areas that were sure to offend mass audiences. The subject matter, a woman cannibalizing members of her family, and the alternate title, Crazy Fat Ethel, are enough in themselves to offend substantial groups of people. However, the merging of religious imagery, there's a statue of Jesus drenched in a victim's blood, alongside images of a deranged woman chopping to pieces members of her family, were sure to push fellows so inclined, over the edge, at the same time, garnering hordes of fans who enjoy that sort of thing. Personally, I loved the first picture, and consider it one of the truly great slasher films of the seventies. Sadly, my reaction to the sequel is something else altogether.Priscilla Alden, a little older and a little grayer, is back as Ethel Janowski, still confined to the Nappa Mental Institute, and still reliving, in her dreams, the nightmare that is her past. Thirteen years later, Ethel Janowski, a dangerously obese young woman, murdered and cannibalized six members of her family before being caught and sentenced to a mental institute -- all of which is displayed in gory detail in the original film. Her descent into madness was strangely remedied by a deranged compulsion to eat. When part two commences, we realize that the years haven't been kind to poor Ethel. A heavy stream of sleep-inducing medication combined with extensive counseling, has done very little to cure her. Ethel seems unable, or unwilling, to grasp the sheer horrific magnitude of her past deeds, something that is completely lost on the Nappa doctors, who seem more concerned with the overcrowding problem at the institution. This, of course, sets up the next function of the story. Funding and capacity problems at the hospital force the trustees into making a radical decision about what to do with some of their patients. So, after some careful consideration, they decide to release some of their more non-violent patients to a moderately supervised halfway house. Deemed passive by at least one of the doctors, Ethel is quickly put on the list to be released. Big mistake.The elderly owner of the rehabilitation house, Hope Bartholomew (Lisa Farros), who lives by the credo "There's always hope" quickly detects that her newest guest might be more dangerous than the doctors had specified, and grows even more weary when Ethel starts referring to her as granny -- the family member who set off Ethel's murderous rampage some thirteen years earlier. Ethel's mental condition starts to deteriorate rapidly in her new surroundings, as she spends more time alone in her thoughts, re-living her past murders, and dwelling on ways to partake in more. Her equally bizarre house mates, a fellow 'reformed' serial killer who likes to boast about the various ways he dispatched his ex-wives, and another fellow, who chases and eats bugs, only help to accelerate her descent into total madness. Ad to the mix the fact that Ethel's being deprived of her food and not taking her medication, and it's just a matter of time before she goes on another hack and slash campaign. When it starts, it's almost worth the wait, as Ethel puts much more thought into her second murderous gyration. One of her house guests, the wife killer, is somehow able to read Ethel like a book, slowly discerning each of her various plots to murder him, including a plan to get him to drink tea laced with rat poison. Strangely, it is the exchanges between these two slightly clichéd killers that provides some of the more interesting moments in the film.The story of Ethel Janowski comes full-circle at the end of the film when she wanders outside into the backyard and begins dancing about in the sunlight. Clad in a raggedy dress and holding a bloody knife, Ethel skips about gleefully, basking in her own madness. The macabre outdoor dance, which feels almost like a symbolic reclaiming of virtue by the main character, brings to mind images of the first film, where the younger Ethel had dreamed of dancing about in the sunlight just before she was arrested. This time, her dream is fulfilled.Regarding the technical aspects of the film, it is a mess. The 1975 original was shot on film, while the sequel was shot on video. The two formats are merged together in the dream sequences, and it just doesn't work. If anything, it helps to provide a visual confirmation of the superiority of film over video. Also, the acting is stiff, even by Alden, who has made quite a career working alongside such Hollywood heavyweights as Hugh Grant and Nicholas Cage. Here she isn't given much room to play character-wise, which probably accounts for her uninspired, dreary performance. The other actors, which include mostly amateurs and at least one former porn star, are just as rigid in their roles. The writer-director, Steve Millard, who started out making hardcore porn films in the late sixties, would pretty much finish his career with Criminally Insane 2. He would make only one other film before retiring in 1988. It doesn't so much matter I guess, as it became abundantly obvious while watching this sequel, that he was no longer the spirited director he once was.The Millard family, Nick, Frances, S.S. and, of course, Steve, are essentially legends in the exploitation-movie universe and their films, including the Criminally Insane franchise, have become rare treasures sought after by everyone from die-hard collectors to b-movie archivists. I'm optimistic that someday we'll witness a resurgence of their films on DVD. Like Ms. Bartholomew was so fond of saying, there's always hope.
