Week 1 (June 21 – 27) – Welcome to HELL

The summer’s here, so get ready to broil!

As of late, director Ernest Dickerson has worked on numerous prestigious TV shows, including The Walking Dead, Dexter, The Man in the High Castle, and The Wire. But around here, he’s better known for his killer feature films like Juice and the undisputed EC Comics-style classic Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. He also cut his horror teeth directing episodes for the first two seasons of Tales from the Darkside, giving him a phenomenal eye for the macabre.

Before he jumped into the director’s chair, Dickerson was Spike Lee’s go-to cinematographer, lensing masterpieces like Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X. That explains why this movie features such an incredibly saturated, vibrant, gothic-in-the-hood aesthetic! Throw in hip-hop royalty Snoop Dogg as a vengeful spirit from a neighborhood’s past, and it looks like we have a movie!

Way back in 1979, Jimmy Bones (Snoop Dogg) was a smooth-talking numbers runner, but also a deeply respected and loved protector of his community who kept hard drugs off his streets. That all changes when he’s brutally betrayed by sleazy drug dealer Eddie Mack (played by Ricky Harris, whom hip-hop heads will recognize as many of the classic skit voices on Snoop’s early albums) and a crooked cop named Lupovich (Michael T. Weiss from The Pretender!).

They force Jimmy’s inner circle, including his friends Jeremiah (Clifton Powell) and Shotgun, as well as his gorgeous girl Pearl (the legendary queen of Blaxploitation herself, Pam Grier!), to become complicit in his gruesome murder. They stab him and bury his remains deep inside his own building. Soon after his demise, the neighborhood literally dies around the memory of Jimmy Bones, turning into a hotbed for crime and urban decay.

Fast forward to 2001: four enterprising teens, some of whom happen to be the literal children of the people who slaughtered Jimmy, buy up the old, dilapidated property to open a slamming underground hip-hop club. They accidentally disturb Jimmy’s resting place, and he’s soon back from the grave, bringing the literal fires of Hell with him as he systematically hunts down and takes the lives of each of the men who destroyed everything he once held dear.

The best parts of this movie are the surreal, gooey set pieces. We get everything from bleeding walls and flesh-eating maggots to the awesome practical effects of the talking heads of the people Bones has killed, fused right into the architecture of the building. And Grier is always dependable and incredibly fun here. She shines both in her ultra-stylish 1979 flashbacks and as the haunted, 2001 fortune-teller version of Pearl.

As long as you aren’t expecting high art and instead want a glossy, spooky love letter to 70s supernatural Blaxploitation cinema (heavily echoing classics like Blacula), then you’ll probably have a blast with this. Snoop’s exactly the kind of actor you’d expect him to be. He’s having pure, unadulterated fun making his own modern version of J.D.’s Revenge and romancing Pam Grier. We should all be so lucky.

You can watch this on Tubi.