Shirley L. Jones (our hero from Black Devil Doll) reads from a book to her dead son Bobby… we know he’s a ghost because of the floating cup and mom’s loving chatter. He also whispers sweet nothings as a breeze blows in mommy’s face. Bobby provides the titular book for his mother to read to him. The first story involves a large poor family sitting around the dinner table in a cramped room, chatting away until father rings a bell and everyone shuts the fuck up. The family is eight-strong but the table is set with only four bologna sandwiches. Instead of splitting what they can, the group races to grab the sandwiches when papa rings the bell again. Suddenly, the date July 16 pops up the screen. The dinner situation happens again and the stinkiest-lookin’ of the family grabs a gun and takes out some family members. This is greeted with lethargy as now there’s enough food for all. A cameo from a plastic Kool-Aid pitcher that my family had growing up is the standout. July 17, the stinky man growls while papa prays and then we’re shown text about the deaths or current living situation of the family members. Wow. What a yarn! Bobby seems to have enjoyed it, if his nonsensical whispers are any indication. The next story is about two brothers. One of them dies and the other breaks into the funeral home after hours to steal the body. The living brother drinks champagne out of a mug that’s fashioned to look like a breast… it’s his favorite glass. With tit glass in hand, Fred pisses and moans at the corpse of his brother about how shitty he was while he was alive. He even admits he had planned on poisoning him before he up and had a heart attack days before he could commence with his poisoning. Now, he plans on not letting his sibling rest in peace so he paints him and dresses him like a clown for his basement burial… sure, it may sound like a dumb idea but it seems to make Fred happy. He laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs while he goes about digging a hole in his basement. Welp, the clownified corpse wakes up, sporting an indecipherable distorted voice that sounds a lot like an RFK jr robot and a goal to take out his living brother. A basement showdown ends in pitchfork violence. Shirley L. Jones lets her ghost child know she needs to change her glasses because they’re giving her a headache but before she can start up another story, her boyfriend arrives. She warns Bobby to be quiet so Daryl doesn’t get upset. Well, Daryl gets upset anyways when he finds the book his lady was reading from. He’s had enough and starts beating her but she fights back and the scuffle travels from the carpeted living room to the kitchen where Daryl gets stabbed and takes forever to fucking die. Bobby even gets bored and leaves for the comfort of a bedroom. The police arrive and mom sits on the toilet while she daydreams about playing with her son while he was still walking this earth before cutting her own throat. The police probably shouldn’t have let her go to the bathroom but they are dressed like uncles at a Sunday barbecue so maybe their heads just weren’t in it. The ghosts of mom and son reunite and all is well. We’re promised Tales from the Quadead Zone will return and, sadly, I am still waiting. The dream of sanity floats just outside the viewers grasp as Chicago’s very own Chester N Turner follows up the lunatic Black Devil Doll from Hell with an anthology populating the same camcorder gutter. An opening title track sung by the offspring of a banshee and a cat in heat along with the lost soul of Buster Poindexter if he had taken a throat punch from Brian Cage rambles over hand drawn illustrations of horror. This grips us by the collar and drags us through the looking glass into the dimension of backyard opus Turner calls home. It may look like Chicago’s forgotten areas but it’s not, it’s a dreamscape where other dreams go to get treated for schizophrenia. Boring, fascinating, an abyss of imagination and zero-budget sincerity… it’s all of these things and I wouldn’t change it for all the world. Lovingly dedicated to Chester N Turner Sr, I know he was proud.
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