There have been "race" pictures almost from the beginnings of the movie business. Films starring almost entirely black casts have been made by segregated Poverty Row studios (more often than not owned by Caucasians) for ghetto theaters. With the growing urban blight during the 1970s, this idea was revived with a wave of "blaxploitation" pictures made for urban grind houses which overlaid black actors and funky atmosphere over traditional B- movie plots. This trend even spread into horror features, with titles like Blacula, Blackenstein and Sugar Hill serving up blaxploitation versions of monster standards. And it didn't die with the closing of most urban theaters it just slowly eased into the video age, and continues with low budget direct-to-DVD releases like this one. Ed and Jose Quiroz's Hood of the Living Dead, adopts the recent popularity of horror movies for the hip-hop audience. Ricky (Carl Washington) is a young scientist in Oakland trying to keep his younger brother Jermaine (Brandon Daniels) out of trouble after the death of their parents. After Jermaine is shot by drug dealers in a drive-by, Ricky decides to use the experimental cell regenerating formula he's been working on in an attempt to save the teen's life. Apparently his efforts are for naught, and Jermaine's body is taken away. However, the body never makes it to the morgue Jermaine re-animates in the coroner's van as a flesh-hungry zombie. He kills the drivers, then goes after the gang that killed him, spreading the zombie infection wherever he goes. Having heard from Jermaine's friends Kevin (Derek Taylor II) and Marco (Raul Martinez) about the attack on the gangsters, Ricky feels that the only thing to do is to capture Jermaine and try to cover up the whole matter before he and his accomplice Scott (Chris Angelo) get arrested for the mayhem they've caused. However, they soon find that the contagion is spreading too fast for them to control it. By keeping things simple, the Quiroz team manages to produce an entertaining little horror feature without overextending themselves to the point where things start to look shoddy. Along the way, they also add in a few interesting bits of business. When first confronted with a zombie, Scott tells Ricky, "Shoot him in the head like in the movies!" an effective as any way to discover how to kill zombies. An extra twist is added when the first head shot doesn't kill the brain, adding to viewer unease. Another good point is that the soundtrack makes only limited use of sub-Eminem style rap, laying in standard "creepy" music throughout.

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[ii]