BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

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.

alanmora Let me open up by setting the mood for this one. When "Criminally Insane" was first released in the theaters there was a large, industrial sized scale placed in the lobby of selected theaters where it was shown and any woman weighing over 250lbs was admitted to the film for free! This should help set the mood for this poorly filmed, inept but highly entertaining horror-cheapie. The saving grace of this film is the hysterical Priscilla Alden (the 250lbs actress who plays the role of Ethel Janowski). She plays the lead character so dead pan that you cannot help but be entertained by her as she fries a pound of bacon at a time, cooks a dozen eggs, or toasts an entire loaf of bread! Food is actually a character in this film and it is Ethel's worst enemy. She kills 6 people in between stuffing her face with a half-gallon of ice cream, an entire box of vanilla wafers, or a dozen sweet rolls and when she runs out of ideas about how to conceal the bodies...she eats them! Meanwhile she is also the rudest woman you will ever come across, concerned only with her next meal as she spouts anti-semitic statements about her doctor and calls the grocery boy (whom she had just murdered) a "smart-alec kid". So grab yourself a gallon of ice cream and enjoy this 70's horror gem!

CMRKeyboadist The 70's is truly a great era for cult cinema. With classics like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Last House on the Left", "I Drink Your Blood", "The Crazies", etc, it is no doubt that we have a gem of a movie called "Crazy Fat Ethel" or better known as "Criminally Insane". Although, far more low-budget than some of the other horror/slasher flicks coming out at the time (not by much, though) this was a whole lot of fun and is certainly not a waste of 1 hour (that's right, the movie is 1 hour and 1 minute long).The story starts with Fat Ethel being released from an insane asylum. Her kind Grandmother picks her up and takes her to her townhouse in the city. One night Ethel decides to go downstairs for a midnight snack and discovers that all of the food has been locked away. It turns out that Granny wants to put Ethel on a diet. Well, poor Granny gets sliced up with a butcher knife thus starting Fat Ethel's murderous rampage. She kills the grocery boy when she doesn't have enough money to pay him. She kills a friend of her Grandmother's who is just checking in. She even murders her sister and her slimy boyfriend.That is most of the movie. I won't give the ending away but there is a sequel, so you can imagine how this movie ends. For the most part, this movie was a great "B" slasher from 1975. It's funny to think that the term "Slasher" isn't really recognized until "Halloween" and "The Friday the 13th" movies came along. But no doubt, this is definitely a slasher. For most of the murder scenes Fat Ethel is slicing people up with either a butcher knife or a meat cleaver. And though it isn't very gory it makes up for it with all the excessive blood use.If you are looking for a campy, no-budget, 70's slasher check this one out. I am glad I did. 8/10