Criminally Insane 2
Tags: murder

Plot synopsis:
Due to budget cuts, an institution releases the infamous Ethel Janowski, a morbidly obese woman whose obsession with food caused her to murder six people, into a halfway house operated by the elderly Hope Bartholomew. As soon as Ethel is admitted into the Bartholomew House, it becomes clear that she is still delusional, convinced that Hope is her dead grandmother, and that a fellow patient named Edgar Stanley is the detective who arrested her. As time passes, Ethel begins demanding more food, and starts refusing to take her medication.
One day, while Hope is out, an orderly feeds the residents dog food, and taunts Ethel by slowly eating a chocolate bar in front of her. Ethel snaps, and kills the orderly by hanging him with a cord, an act witnessed by Edgar. A lieutenant is called in to investigate the death, and leaves after questioning Ethel. Edgar tells Ethel that he will keep quiet about what she did, in exchange for her desserts. Ethel tries to poison Edgar, and when that fails, she resorts to stabbing him with four knives.
After another visit from the lieutenant, Hope catches Ethel eating a bag of pretzels, and tries to confiscate them, prompting Ethel to bash her head in. Ethel proceeds to murder the remaining resident (a man who believed he was an insect) and one of the institution doctors when he drops by to see why his calls to the halfway house have not been getting through. Ethel then dances with a dog and a knife in the house's backyard, and when the lieutenant returns, she answers door, and laughs crazily as she states, "Welcome to Bartholomew House. I'm Hope Bartholomew, and I hope you'll be very happy here!"

Review: Don't get me wrong, there's a soft spot in my heart for the original slice of movie cheese.
But along comes this sequel, shot entirely on camcorder with no music, no real edits, and no real point.
Crazy fat Ethel (now minus a few pounds) is released from the mental ward into a halfway house where she begins killing anyone who gets in the way of her eating.
The rest of the running time is padded with flashback footage from the original film.
So we'll get new scenes of Ethel taking a nap, the camcorder zooms in to her face, and we cut to old scenes from part one.
It's not a surprise that "Criminally Insane 2" makes the original look better because face it, belated and unnecessary sequels to cult classics often fail to deliver.
However, things go further than that: "Criminally Insane 2" actually manages to make the original look expensive!
To give you a rough idea about how much money and effort making this movie took: the opening credit sequence is just the "Criminally Insane" credits taped of a TV screen.
There wasn't even any money for actual film this time around either, so writer/director Nick Millard actually resorts to shooting the whole thing with a freaking camcorder.
Well, the whole thing...that's not entirely true, given that about half of the movie is stock footage from the first one (cleverly disguised as Ethel's dreams).
There's roughly 35 minutes worth of new stuff (presumably all filmed in one afternoon), and each second of it makes you want to burn something down.
Your "new" story only lasts half an hour, how the hell can it be so mind-numbingly boring?
It's truly unbelievable how much this movie drags, these boring, faceless characters take forever to die.
Seriously, the first Criminally insane was epic...almost a masterpiece of independent, sleazy film making.
The original storyline, the blood that makes me LMAO every time I see it, the grainy REAL film that was actually used to shoot it on!
Did you lose access to the camera that you shot Criminally Insane 1 on?
I understand your tight budget, but come on, did you really have to use the same camera that you filmed most of your family Christmases with?
If I wanted to see Criminally Insane 1 again, I'd watch Criminally Insane 1 again!--Which I actually did want to see again after sitting through just 10 minutes of this waste of my time sequel!
Thanks for disappointing 100% of the fans of Criminally Insane 1.
Nick Millard aka Nick Phillips should have left well-enough alone when he made "Criminally Insane" 10 years before the release of this god-awful waste of time and effort.
The fact that the original "Criminally Insane" was less than an hour in length should have clued him into the fact that he had probably milked this storyline for all he was going to get out of it...but instead he opts to use TONS of footage from the original in this one as well, even to the point of recycling the original opening credit sequence!
What little bit of original footage there was in this flick looks as if it were filmed with a rented hand-held camcorder!
During the cheap filmed in video beginning of Crazy Fat Ethel II, I wondered if it was the same film that was on the cover.
Ethel, a homicidal maniac with an eating disorder, is released into a halfway house because of hospital overcrowding.
Ethel is then teased by one of the halfway house employees with a chocolate bar after he hits on the cost cutting measure of feeding the residents dog food.
To make matters worse, half of the film consists of flashbacks to the first Ethel movie, Criminally Insane, which is little better.
"Criminally Insane 2" has to be one of the worst movies ever made and coming from me, that's saying a lot because I am not the type of person to say anything is the worst.
But trust me, this was just completely awful and running just 1 hour is 1 hour too long.The movie has a rather incoherent storyline, but who cares about story when all you want to see is a big fat woman running around killing people because she isn't being fed.
The new storyline could have been really funny with Ethel being sent to a halfway house and murdering everyone in there, but nothing happens until the last 20 minutes of the movie and at that point you are already falling asleep.The camera work in this movie is just atrocious.
To give an example of how bad it is, go into a New York Subway and try to understand what is being said over the loud speakers, that is what this movie sounds like.
Not that it matters what they are talking about anyway because the actors are about as dry as a dead piece of wood.Now I know that saying this is the worst movie out there is pretty harsh but words can't describe just how bad this movie is.
Due to budget cuts, Ethel Janowski (again played by Priscilla Alden) is released from a mental institution (even though she killed six people) and delivered to the Hope Bartholomew halfway house.
Once there, she immediately relapses into her criminally insane ways and kills anyone who gets between her and her food.HOLY MOLY!
Nick Millard (under his pseudonym Nick Phillips) decided to return to the world of Crazy Fat Ethel over ten years later and with a budget that probably covered the cost of a blank tape and a video camera rental for the weekend.
And Millard tries to pull a SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 2 by padding half the running time with footage from the first film (which looks like it was taken off a worn VHS copy).
Alden is again good as Ethel but the film is so inept that you start to feel sorry for her for starring in this garbage.
Here we have no music, weaker effects (if that is at all possible), shaky camera work, horrible audio and editing that looks like it was done with two VCRs hooked up.
The first movie is pretty good.
This one is pretty bad.Recycles a lot of footage (including the opening credits and end title) from Criminally Insane.
The new footage, shot on video, really sticks out as poorly done.
Scenes lack proper lighting, the sound is sometimes nearly inaudible, there's even video glitches like the picture rolling and so on.Like all bad sequels, it basically just repeats the story of the first one.
Ethel kills everybody who shares her living space, often for reasons having to do with them getting in the way of food she wants.At least it is only an extra on the DVD for the first one, which also includes the same director's film Satan's Black Wedding.
Too bad it doesn't include the Death Nurse movies though..
ethel experiences flashbacks to a higher-budgeted film.
crazy fat ethel II is blessed, however, with one of those immediately fascinating titles.
forgiveness comes easy to crazy fat ethel II.
the music for the "film" is fascinating...at first, i found it remarkable that nick phillips had managed to create such unique, throbbing gristle-esque vistas of sound...then i realized it's simply the ten-dollar mic trying desperately to capture every nuance of alden's vocal performance.
one could extrapolate a fascinating political subtext in this film, as budget cuts in reagan's america force an obese, psychotic woman to kill again and again.
I was warned, and still, I paid money for this, after reading all the reviews, after knowing the original is "so bad it's good", and that part 2 does not fit into that category at all, still, even then, I couldn't resist.
Part one was Hilarious, it had so much politically incorrectness, and other Crazy, Fat Entertainment, and this one, there just couldn't possibly be a worse sequel on God's green earth, not Basket Case 2, hell, not even Troll 2.
This is truly the worst sequel in history and that's really saying something considering the groundbreaking, bottom of the barrel qualities of the original.
Criminally Insane part 2 was just a completely different brand of bad.
Shot on Video, zero score, zero entertainment value, 1/3 consists of flashbacks of the original, and on top of all that, crazy, fat Ethel has lost a portion of her girth.
Criminally Insane 2 (1987) BOMB (out of 4) Incredibly horror film that ranks as one of the worst ever made.
Like many "sequels" of the 80s, this here takes about forty-minutes worth of footage from the first film and adds 20-minutes worth of new footage, which was all shot on a camcorder.
Even the opening and closing credits were lifted from the first film!!!Criminally Insane (1975) ** 1/2 (out of 4) The title pretty much sums up this incredibly bizarre, politically incorrect exploitation film that fans should really eat up.
300 pound plus Ethyl gets out of an insane asylum but she's outraged that people want her to go on a diet so she starts killing anyone who gets between her and food.
Running just over 60-minutes this film is technically pretty bad but the outrageous subject matter makes for a very fun movie in the same vein of a John Waters film.
Over half of this 'movie' is footage from the original "Criminally Insane".
At the very least, I was able to see the highlights from that rare exploitation classic, since for some reality-defying reason my video store only has "Criminally Insane II" (as it had it, "Crazy Fat Ethel II").
But the rest of this movie is some of the absolute worst home-video acting and backyard filmmaking you'll ever see.
Why is it my video store has this and not the original?
Why does stuff like this actually end up in video stores?
Why - AAUUGGHH - Why, God, why?Unless you enjoy seeing annoying fruits eating an entire candy bar in an excruciatingly slow scene, or said fruit getting hung from the stair railing in an even slower scene, or a character getting stabbed sideways (don't ask) multiple times in the back, or brain cell-murdering monologues about giving poisoned tea to one's wife and then complaining that all the talk has made one's own tea go cold, or the mentally-retarded eating fly soup, or just simply want to see Crazy Fat Ethel dancing with a bloody knife in a garden: Don't watch this movie.
Repeat: Do NOT watch this movie.
If at all possible, do not walk past a shelf in a video store that has a copy of this movie setting on it.
Nick, you're criminally insane.
Criminally Insane was one of Nick's first horror films after he retired from his porno flicks I have not seen yet.
Pretty good effort, original story, fake blood but looks realistic and loads of suspense.
not so much.This film is just the first criminally insane except it's mixed in with new footage that looks like something you can use for your home videos or school projects.
Can't get enough of criminally insane?
And 12 years later, Nick Phillips thought a sequel of Criminally insane will be successful.
And he was wrong.First, why do Z grade movies have a million alternative titles?
In the opening credits it is called Criminally Insane 2, wile everyone (exept for IMDb) called this movie Crazy fat Ethel II.
You see again that there is no spoiler warning for this review, because this movie has the same plot (I use the word loosely) of the first movie: A obese woman kills everyone who is standing between her and the fridge, but this time it is much more ridiculous.
Speaking of the first movie, The 60 minute running time of this movie contains over 40% of stock footage of the 1975 film.
The line between the old film reel and the cheap 1980s VHR camera is as clear as day.Don't waist your time watching this, it's the same as watching the first movie two times.
If you are really curios about this film, watch the review by the Cinema Snob (even he didn't want to waist time with this movie).In the words of the Cinema Snob: I radder be f***ed by Mr Greenfield, than watching this peace of sh***t again..
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.
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.
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.
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.
If anything, it helps to provide a visual confirmation of the superiority of film over video.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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!
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..
And why am I more grossed-out by the opening spectacle of this woman eating than anything else in the movie?
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.
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.