Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Leofwine_draca CRIMINALLY INSANE is an outrageously cheap and cheerful slice of slash-and-dash from the exploitation-heavy decade of the 1970s. It's a film that's never going to win any awards for acting, script, or direction, but the sheer numbskulled simplicity of the storyline somehow makes sense and undoubtedly grindhouse fans will get a kick out of some of the gruesome antics put on screen. Put simply, the obese Ethel comes out of an asylum and goes home, where she grabs a cleaver and hacks up friends, family, and neighbours, in between eating. There's a lot of eating. There's no subtext here, nothing much apart from all the fake red paint blood, but I guess some may enjoy that anyway.

Foreverisacastironmess I swear this is one of those bad horror movies that hates you right back.. What can one say about this mouldy old curio left in the sun too long that hasn't already been said? Well if you go for weird soft core porn hippie atmospherics despite most of the cast being quite sexually unappealing and in fact ugly as sin, as well as unintentional comedy mostly derived from the wooden actors and their hilariously awkward and clunky dialogue, then this one is most assuredly for you! For just over an hour it feels like a ~really~ long and stretched-out period of time. It looks like a public access television movie, action-wise it's extremely limp stuff with many scenes going nowhere, the pacing is slower than a crawling snail, it gets very dull and dry a whole lot, and I don't think I've ever seen a film with a bigger assortment of lame and/or annoying characters in my life, every conversation is absurdly blah and long-winded and the whole thing is pure trash, but that's what made me laugh the most, I actually enjoyed it as an early proto-slasher oddity, and it worked for me. It chugs along like a broken down old barge, but it knows where it's going and it gets ya there in the bitter end! There's a considerable frustration factor but there's a balance between the enjoyably bad and awful, and for me this was mostly tacky fun than anything else. It's annoying but it's the kind of annoying that compels you to keep watching just to see how it ends. I mean yeah it's a beyond cheap crap-fest but damn it, like Ethel herself there's a certain blunt as drywall charm there and it carries itself very well! Definitely one to chuck on the so-bad-it's-good pile! It's frightfully humble, it ain't Freddy or Jason, it's just Ethel, she lives to eat, she's insane and if you get between her and food you're dead, simple as, and the character was no deeper than that! I really liked that gal, purely because she was so very unlikeable. Her stony expression and rude manner just made me smile, reminded me of a gargoyle! Her method of murder was to chop at the people but then politely stop at the last second just before reaching their heads and then lightly tap with a muffled thud sound. And the whole act is shot in one badly-edited motion that made me bust out laughing every time. And the resulting blood sure looked suspiciously like red paint, but there was a lot of it and it was vibrant and kinda glorious, so I wasn't complaining. The campy gore is probably what Hitchcock would have called a "Mcguffin", something a story doesn't really need but nevertheless simply can't do without. Anyone unwary enough to allow such a lumbering tank of a woman to get the better of them surely deserved to croak! I found the sordid spectacle of her and of the movie to be very amusing and enjoyable. Most of the time I was baffled by the bizarre feel, but throughout it all the stern, strangely lovable gloomy presence of Ethel was there to ease the pain! And although it was no surprise to me as I had earlier reached the conclusion that the picture would get to that point sooner or later, the abrupt quick-shot way it ends gives it an extra preposterous kick that actually caps things off really well and it ended with another great laugh for me. If you ask me this isn't anything remotely special and isn't good or well made enough for it to qualify as a horror classic, but for a terrible quality effort that's cut-down to size, "Crazy Fat Ethel" gives a fair amount of fun to ensure it becomes a surreal slasher nightmare that just about does the trick! She's really fat.

Tromafreak Oh my God!! That was awesome!! I thought I had seen all the great ones. I'm not sure if I've ever seen a mess this bad, except maybe in Ray Steckler's Chooper, but wow, I mean wow!! Where have you been all my life? Criminally insane is about an enormous ogre named Ethel, Ethel has just been released from an asylum. Ethel is criminally insane, her grandma takes her in, only for Ethel to eat all her bacon, eggs & nilla wafers. If that wasn't enough, then the ungrateful Ethel kills poor grandma for attempting to set some eating restrictions for financial reasons. Ogres really do make crummy granddaughters. Now, this is Crazy fat Ethels house, one problem, no more food, so now Ethel orders some groceries, problem solved, I'm afraid not, bad movie fans, she's $75.50 short. Solution? Order the food anyway, kill the delivery boy, then inhale groceries as quick as ogrely possible. Now, problem solved :) Money for food will no longer be an issue, since Rosalie, Ethel's sister has offered to pay some rent after inviting herself to stay. In a shocking turn of events, as it would turn out, Rosalie is not an ogre, she is only a hooker, nonetheless, her face still makes me uncomfortable. Problem!! Ethel stuck grandma and delivery boy in grandma's room & their corpses are starting to stink up the whole house, Rosalie & her beau/pimp who also recently moved in are starting to notice. Solution? Kill them both, All they did was snort coke & make out anyway, not a very appealing thing to watch while inhaling yum yums. Now, problem solved :) Ethel has now, really gone off the deep end, the weird mini montage that includes Ethel chopping up a doll, makes that quite obvious. Unfortunately Ethel's problems are still piling up, not only is there some cop breathing down Ethel's neck about a missing delivery boy, but the stink from all the corpses are even getting to her now. Solution? Chop up the corpses, and throw them off a cliff--no, wait!! That's stupid. Why not just eat them? Genius!! Ethel now kills 2 birds with one stone by dining on her victims. Now, problem sol--oh, I forgot the cop :( I have read everyones reviews for part 2 and have a pretty good idea of what I'm in for, oh yeah, I still have every intention of buying it (soon), I mean how bad could it be, right?. I give Criminally insane zero stars, because you don't give movies like this stars, Criminally Insane is beyond the stars. Would you give stars to a horrible train wreck? No, you just stare, and be grateful it's only 61 minutes long.

EVOL666 I'll be the first to admit that CRIMINALLY INSANE (aka CRAZY FAT ETHEL) is not a great film by any stretch. I also have the feeling that this film will be a like-it-or-hate-it experience for most viewers. If you dig super-cheap zero budget H.G. Lewis-type films, then this one will probably amuse you. If not, then steer clear.Ethel is an ex-psychiatric patient who is released from the mental hospital and returns to the care of her grandmother. Ethel is also a big fat pig who eats everything in sight. When gradma locks up the cupboard, fattie freaks and stabs her up. She "hides" the body by locking it in grandma's bedroom. In her quest for nutritional satisfaction, Ethel also murders the local grocery delivery boy when he demands $80 for past grocery bills and Ethel can only find $4.50. Next we're introduced to Ethel's whore sister, Rosalie, who brings tricks to the house to earn some bread. Eventually both Rosalie and her boyfriend are dispatched when they begin to notice the strange smell emanating from grandma's room. As the bodies stack up, and Ethel's means of obtaining nourishment dwindle, a cop enters the picture when the disappearances cause suspicion - and we're treated to the inevitable cannibalistic conclusion...CRIMINALLY INSANE is not high art. It's barely even a coherent film. But honestly, there are so many (unintentional?) laugh-out-loud moments that I gotta say I really enjoyed it. The short, one-hour run-time didn't hurt things either. Some of the dialog is so ridiculous that you can't help but laugh - especially as Rosalie's boyfriend's excuse for beating her is because "you need a good beating every now and then - all women do, especially you", at which point they jump into a vigorous sex-session. Scenes like that just can't be denied. There's a pretty good outlay of the red-stuff, unfortunately it looks like melted red crayons and the kill-scenes are edited ridiculously. Again, if you dig super cheezy, super cheap camp/cult films, then you'll probably get a kick out of this one...8/10 (for the "fun" factor alone...)