TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE (1987) – BAD MOVIE

TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE (1987) – The second and – to date – final movie written and directed by Chester Novell Turner. The man’s films became so renowned for being legendarily bad that in 2014 a documentary about their making was released under the title Return to the Quadead Zone.

Once again, it’s time for Balladeer’s Blog’s standard warning for readers who are not into the more remote, violent and tasteless corners of the cinematic universe. Don’t go past the “Continue reading” mark.

Over a decade ago, I reviewed Turner’s first movie, Black Devil Doll from Hell (1984). That shot on video disaster is remembered as much for its low-budget, low-talent horrors as for its thoroughly bizarre sexual relationship between the animated, homicidal, dummy-sized doll and the leading lady.

That actress, Shirley L. Jones, is back in the starring role for Tales from the Quadead Zone AND crafted the hilariously inadequate special effects in the 62-minute mess. This time out, Jones portrays the mother of a slain child.

In a macabre nightly – well, day-for-nightly – ritual, Shirley reads bedtime stories to the ghost of her late son Bobby. Via visual effects so cheap and unconvincing that even the original Doctor Who series would have rejected them the ghost enters the living room and sits down in a chair near his mother.

The quasi-invisible Bobby’s quasi-invisible buttocks make impressions on the seat cushion in what turns out to be the technical high point of this flick. Shirley produces an amazingly thick book titled Tales from the Quadead Zone and reads a pair of twisted bedtime stories to her late child.

The first story lives up to the aimless, inane and idiotic levels of writing and directing that C.N. Turner established in Black Devil Doll from Hell. It features an absurdly stereotypical family of white hicks who cannot afford enough food to provide nourishment for the parents and numerous children … despite how overweight some of them are. 

The oldest brother hits upon an insane solution. He fetches his rifle and shoots to death some of the children. Quick cuts then show us that at the start of each successive meal the psycho blows away another family member to stretch out the available food.

And no, that doesn’t make sense because the first murder apparently made enough of a difference for their groceries to feed the entire family. Fewer mouths to feed should mean that additional deaths are not necessary for there to be enough food for everybody.

The murderous hillbilly doesn’t force cannibalism upon the family so that’s not the answer. Nor is it ever made clear how Big Brother prevents everyone from fleeing or overcoming him as the days and meals go by.

Turner doesn’t even care enough about his own story to provide a real conclusion. Onscreen text informs viewers that the only survivors of the family were put in the witness protection program. No, not an insane asylum, the witness protection program. The End. Now it’s back to the all-black cast. 

Up next Shirley reads her ghostly child a story about two brothers whose sibling rivalry has been lopsided all their lives. The one brother excels at everything while the other fails at everything. Brother Number One even stole the other’s wife.

This is established via expository dialogue so mangled that we viewers can barely understand any of it, but the inferior brother seemingly killed the other. Flushed with victory, the schlub stole his brother’s body from the funeral home and now uses makeup and props to make his brother’s corpse look like a clown. The body then comes to life and drags his killer down into death with him.     

And that’s it for the storybook tales. According to the documentary about C.N. Turner’s films Black Devil Doll from Hell started out as just one story intended for Tales from the Quadead Zone but evolved and expanded into Turner’s first feature release instead.

Showing even less creative ambition than he did talent, our auteur never bothered to come up with a replacement story for this follow-up flick. Nor did he bother changing the title, because “quadead” would imply four stories but without the hellish doll tale we are left with just three – the two I summarized above and the wraparound story with Shirley and her son’s ghost.

That wraparound segment ends with Shirley’s man coming home from work and being furious with her for reading from the supernatural book and/or for communicating with her dead son. Or thinking she can communicate with her dead son?

It’s possible her enraged spouse just thinks she’s nuts for believing she gets nightly visits from Bobby. The fuzzy dialogue doesn’t quite make that clear as the man severely beats Shirley with the enormous book.

Our heroine fights back and her man winds up dead. Police sirens are heard arriving and the typically cheap writer-director didn’t even spring for cop costumes because the two policemen are dressed very casually.

Shirley kills herself rather than be arrested, but we viewers are shown that this is actually a happy ending for her because it reunites her with little Bobby. The same sub-Doctor Who special effects from earlier establish this in clumsy fashion.

Thus ended the cinematic output of one Chester Novell Turner, often called the black Ed Wood but even Wood showed more passion for his work than Turner did. Sadly, neither of his movies are So Bad They’re Good, they’re just plain bad. The only real fun from watching them comes from marking them off your list of must-see film turkeys, bird-watcher style.    

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