Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

lemon_magic "Criminally Insane" is one those movies so uncompromisingly itself that watching it becomes almost an "arthouse" movie experience. The dreariness and awfulness never let up, even for an instant, and the cheapness of the production ends up working in the movie's favor and increasing the impact. I have to rate it a "2", because, let's face it, "Criminally Insane" is TERRIBLE. Compared to this movie, John Waters made Disney comedies (because as awful as his film families were, the members seemed to care about and love each other) and Herschel Gordon Lewis was making Cole Porter musicals. But I will admit - watching this for the first time is a memorable experience.

Foreverisacastironmess I swear this is one of those bad horror movies that hates you right back.. What can one say about this mouldy old curio left in the sun too long that hasn't already been said? Well if you go for weird soft core porn hippie atmospherics despite most of the cast being quite sexually unappealing and in fact ugly as sin, as well as unintentional comedy mostly derived from the wooden actors and their hilariously awkward and clunky dialogue, then this one is most assuredly for you! For just over an hour it feels like a ~really~ long and stretched-out period of time. It looks like a public access television movie, action-wise it's extremely limp stuff with many scenes going nowhere, the pacing is slower than a crawling snail, it gets very dull and dry a whole lot, and I don't think I've ever seen a film with a bigger assortment of lame and/or annoying characters in my life, every conversation is absurdly blah and long-winded and the whole thing is pure trash, but that's what made me laugh the most, I actually enjoyed it as an early proto-slasher oddity, and it worked for me. It chugs along like a broken down old barge, but it knows where it's going and it gets ya there in the bitter end! There's a considerable frustration factor but there's a balance between the enjoyably bad and awful, and for me this was mostly tacky fun than anything else. It's annoying but it's the kind of annoying that compels you to keep watching just to see how it ends. I mean yeah it's a beyond cheap crap-fest but damn it, like Ethel herself there's a certain blunt as drywall charm there and it carries itself very well! Definitely one to chuck on the so-bad-it's-good pile! It's frightfully humble, it ain't Freddy or Jason, it's just Ethel, she lives to eat, she's insane and if you get between her and food you're dead, simple as, and the character was no deeper than that! I really liked that gal, purely because she was so very unlikeable. Her stony expression and rude manner just made me smile, reminded me of a gargoyle! Her method of murder was to chop at the people but then politely stop at the last second just before reaching their heads and then lightly tap with a muffled thud sound. And the whole act is shot in one badly-edited motion that made me bust out laughing every time. And the resulting blood sure looked suspiciously like red paint, but there was a lot of it and it was vibrant and kinda glorious, so I wasn't complaining. The campy gore is probably what Hitchcock would have called a "Mcguffin", something a story doesn't really need but nevertheless simply can't do without. Anyone unwary enough to allow such a lumbering tank of a woman to get the better of them surely deserved to croak! I found the sordid spectacle of her and of the movie to be very amusing and enjoyable. Most of the time I was baffled by the bizarre feel, but throughout it all the stern, strangely lovable gloomy presence of Ethel was there to ease the pain! And although it was no surprise to me as I had earlier reached the conclusion that the picture would get to that point sooner or later, the abrupt quick-shot way it ends gives it an extra preposterous kick that actually caps things off really well and it ended with another great laugh for me. If you ask me this isn't anything remotely special and isn't good or well made enough for it to qualify as a horror classic, but for a terrible quality effort that's cut-down to size, "Crazy Fat Ethel" gives a fair amount of fun to ensure it becomes a surreal slasher nightmare that just about does the trick! She's really fat.

Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) See, Ethel isn't actually insane. She just wants to eat, sit around the house by herself and be left alone for some seconds on dessert. Maybe thirds. Hell she'll clean off the whole sponge cake, the can of icing, maybe some ice cream too on the side. If one thing, she's not shy about her craving for food, and how she lets it consume her. She doesn't eat the food so much as the food kind of uses her as a conduit. Ethel is merely a walking process by which it gets eaten. I will always refer to this movie by it's most famous re-title: FAT CRAZY ETHEL. Try it on a double bill with FAT GUY GOES NUTZOID and remember the cheeze dip. FAT CRAZY ETHEL was one of two startling horror features made by porno/exploitation veteran Nick Millard in an ill-fated attempt to go straight in the mid 1970s: Check out SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING for something a bit more conventional, though not much more. His work might not have grabbed hold of the imagination of mainstream viewers, but fans of ultra-low budget indie regional horror will find a fascinatingly claustrophobic and morbidly obese little horror thriller here. The film mostly takes place within the creepy, tacky interior of Ethel's aunt's house, where she has returned from a couple months of helpful shock therapy to wean her from her insatiable cravings for food. It didn't work but Ethel can live with it so long as the grocery bill is paid. This in a neighborhood where groceries are delivered right to your door: Bacon, chops, cereal, eggs, plenty of ice cream & raw cookie dough.The fun in this movie is twofold: First, watching Ethel slowly and in an almost Hitchcockian manner find herself pretty much needing to murder people to keep the flow of fatty, caloric foodstuffs coming -- and to silence any harping voices in the peanut gallery urging moderation. One of the things I like about how Ethel's character is drawn has to do with how profoundly unhip, square and uninvolved in the world she is. The deaths don't mean anything to her personally other than the need to hide the remains, which does become a problem after a while. But if it wasn't for her uncontrollable gluttony she could fit right at any social circle dedicated to the bitter & withdrawn. Like a Tool concert or maybe the MPAA. The other pleasure in the film is a guilty one, which is making fun of fat people. They are one of the last socially acceptable prejudices to have, since fat people are by nature absurd, greedy and unattractive pariahs now that one legged Eskimos with AIDS are off limits too. I'm playing devil's advocate with this one: Prejudice of any kind is a bad thing, especially when you get to know the target of your hatred as a person. The catch is that this movie doesn't really let you, keeping the viewer at arm's length observing her behavior and being welcomed to criticize or even outright laugh at her for being so disgusting. Watch her plow through a box of Nilla Wafers or scrape some extra eggs onto her plate to see what I mean. Since the film regards her as a freak and regards what she is doing with clinically detached disdain (killing people is worse than overeating, at least in my book) it's OK to regard her the same way. As a walking stomach.Ridiculing someone for who they are is always more fun and safer in numbers, so ETHEL is actually quite a little crowd-pleaser and has a little cult following due to its short life as a Drive In curiosity or home rental oddity. It's hard to forget a movie like FAT CRAZY ETHEL, which once you get down to brass tacks is an exploitation film that is exploiting the obese & insane. Ethel is as sane as you or I, she just finds herself propelled down this path of antisocial behavior by her lust for food. The inevitability of it all is the payoff in a way, and while it may not be titillating to most to watch Ethel's life spiral out of control, the movie's utterly banal, humdrum and everyday look has a certain charm to it that fans of non-Hollywood "regional horror" will get a kick out of. And again the claustrophobia is hard to ignore, especially with a 350 pound woman occupying what little elbow room there is. That such a big woman is confined to such a teeny, tacky, unenjoyable house is half of what's scary about it: Imagine being stuck in there with her. Ick! So it's behavioral horror where a person is defined by their behavior -- This is how 350 pound food addicts behave in the movies, taken to surreal heights of exaggeration that plays on our own paranoias. We all know the 300 pound shut in dysfunctional idiot up the block, we all suspect that something odd is going on behind closed doors that keeps them from sweating it off just via respiration, and here is an example of what they could be doing. It's almost a perfect little urban nightmare, and over quickly enough to allow viewers to also watch the comparatively awful & unredeemable FAT CRAZY ETHEL 2. If nothing else, that will help you appreciate what a taught little exercise in urban paranoia this is. It's ultra low budget and everyday reality production values may turn off viewers who rely on pyrotechnics or flying squirrels to enjoy a horror show, but give her a try especially in the company of friends and beer and snacks. Ethel gets her own bag.6/10

varlakill The only thing thats INSANE is how much I love this movie. There's something about boring low-budget horror that makes me feel peaceful and "at home". Its the way I feel about Friedel's "California Axe Massacre". I get a similar vibe from this movie. Ethel (Priscilla Alden) character is so stagnant and unfeeling (no over-acting here). I find it so entertaining to watch wig out within the first 10 minutes, slaughtering family members just because she's got a craving for Nilla Wafers. I can totally see why tons of people would hate this movie. Even though its only an hour long, I could see someone with a short attention span having a particularly big problem with this. But anyone who's awesome will dig it whole-heartedly. (Especially when the detective says "Oh My God" at the end) I do believe thats my favorite part.