Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

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. In fact, most of it is just shots of Crazy Fat Ethel remembering Crazy Fat Ethel! 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. But for me, it's exactly the *extreme* lousiness that actually renders them fairly entertaining and worth a lot of laughs. They both fail to be unintentionally bad so hard that they somehow wrap around themselves till they come to unintentionally bad all over again, like a singularity - a sort of Chinese finger-trap for the brain! I can see how some can hate this though, it is insulting to everything really, even chocolate pudding! Just watch it for the novelty value alone and you'll do fine. 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 in this instance 'grandma' is the dear old Mrs.Hope Bartholomew, who takes wayward souls into her boarding house for the mentally disturbed, and who has the most darling motto I've ever heard: "We must never lose Hope!" There's a couple of interesting rag-tag inmates like a guy who thinks he's a spider, and a mustachioed wife-killer who likes to have awkward staring contests with Ethel, and who signs his death warrant when he dares to blackmail her into giving him all her deserts in exchange for him turning a blind eye to her brutal deeds! 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! I didn't care about what happened to that guy because he deliberately teased the inmates, which was just plain cruel. 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.. It does work for the absurd tone of the film, but they really monumentally screwed-up there. It's almost as if they were going for a Psycho thing with the violence being implied rather than seen, and pulling away at the last second - only there's still tons of crazy gore that's right there! It just cracked me up how it sounded very much like angry sex whenever she'd be butchering somebody! And why am I more grossed-out by the opening spectacle of this woman eating than anything else in the movie? Two of my favourite bits are when Ethel chases the poor Dr guy around a couch which is a really dumb but hysterical moment, and the part where she goes into the backyard to celebrate her newfound freedom by twirling about in the sunshine in an almost surreal fashion like a demented ballerina, looking up at the sky, free as a bird, like a little insane dancing angel! 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. Bravo! Bravo movie! 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. The cinematography, visuals, storytelling.. All in all, we got a pretty phenomenal picture here. I enormously recommend that you see it because you'll be positively rapt the whole time. Buy it, watch it, love it, cos you will..love it, if you buy it and watch it. Silly scary or sick, either way is good. All praise be to the Ethel!!!!

The first movie was one of the worst Z grade movies I have ever seen, but it is ridiculously funny because of how bad it was. 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.

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! Part 1 only cost $30000 to make, but this one seems like it's literally made for nothing. 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. Yikes. 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. And even when Ethel finally kills them all, she does it in aggravatingly lame ways. This isn't just a lackluster sequel, this is nothing more than a scam. It's sad something like this can be so widely distributed, let's just pretend it never happened.

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! Does this movie suck! You know you are in trouble when the open credits start up and they are just the credits from the first film, apparently filmed off a TV screen. 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. Let's just say that Millard's unique style doesn't translate well to video. Seriously, I have made home movies with more production value than this. 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. I mean, at least the first film tried. 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. Avoid this at all costs!