Following the cascade of homicidal, food-motivated events in 1975's Criminally Insane, director Nick Millard and star Priscilla Alden revived the voraciously hungry mental patient Ethel Janowski twelve years later for the shot-on-video era. In fact, Millard was firmly embracing the SOV possibilities around that time, casting Alden in two quickie Death Nurse movies along with cheap action movies and one-offs like Cemetery Sisters. Also released as Crazy Fat Ethel II (most famously for its budget VHS presentation from Video Treasures), Criminally Insane 2 joins the peculiar ranks of films like Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 and Boogeyman II by padding out its running time with extensive recycled footage from the prior film, a cost-saving tactic that brings it up to feature length with as little fuss as possible. The result is a bizarre, trance-inducing experience that appalled and confused countless video renters back in the day and is still definitely for a very, very niche audience.

After major governmental cutbacks that force the release of patients, Ethel is discharged from the insane asylum where she's been stuck since the last film. Now she's been shuffled off to a halfway house owned by Hope (Frances Millard), and it soon becomes clear that Ethel hasn't gotten much better in the intervening years. She still won't let anything get between her and the food she craves, even if it means murder, and now she's under the delusion that Hope is her dead grandma. Every time Ethel lies down she dreams long flashbacks to the prior film, while the rest of her time is spent dealing with a blackmailing fellow resident (Eskinazi) and a nosy orderly.

Shot very cheaply with a camcorder and a highly limited number of cast members, this is obviously one for the SOV crowd who know what they're getting into. Obviously the big selling point is Alden still doing what she does best, demanding food and stabbing or bludgeoning the rest of the cast every time she snaps. There aren't any real surprises to be found here, so it's really just an excuse to see Ethel back to her old tricks spliced with recycled footage. For anyone who didn't see the first film before stumbling into this one, God help them.

First released on DVD in 2005 as a Shock-o-Rama edition with the first film and Millard's Satan's Black Wedding, Criminally Insane 2 graduated to Blu-ray in 2025 from Degausser looking... well, like it was shot on VHS and about as good as it could get. The DTS-HD MA English 2.0 mono audio is okay for what it is, with the optional English SDH subtitles coming in handy for a few mumbled line readings. Anyone who ever listens to the slasher podcast The Hysteria Continues probably knows what a "Nathan pick" is, and this film fits that bill perfectly. Therefore it's only appropriate that he essentially acts as the emcee here with the rest of the gang doing their best to cope with the madness unfolding before them while delivering plenty of welcome tidbits about the production and SOV slashers in general. The presumably vast numbers of Millard fanatics out there will get a lot more here starting with another one-hour SOV wonder shot around the same time, Doctor Bloodbath (56m59s), here bearing the on-screen title Butcher Knife. Eskinazi pops up again here as Gordon, an abortionist who rides around San Francisco killing off his patients for some reason when he isn't busy doing his job in the most baffling way imaginable. Meanwhile his wife is having an affair and gets pregnant, which sets the stage for... well, a completely confounding final ten minutes you won't believe or understand. Insanely padded and laced with a little stock footage from prior Millard films (including an Alden cameo), this one at least does deliver some blood eventually and has that same hypnotic, spacey vibe from his other work around this time. What it might be trying to say about abortion is anyone's guess, but at least it's still more coherent than Red Christmas. Again the quality is strictly VHS level as you'd expect. Also included are a couple of 1991 TV pilots shot very cheaply by Millard: Linebacker (23m28s), an urban crime drama about a onetime football player using his skills to fight crime around Chinatown, and Submarine (24m18s), basically Millard's stab at doing a Tom Clancy story for twenty bucks in two locations. It's truly something to behold.

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Reviewed on June 19, 2025