It's only fitting that Pam Grier has a significant cameo in the new horror film Bones.

Grier was the queen of the black exploitation movies of the 1970s and Bones is a hip hop homage to those flicks.

Grier plays Pearl, a psychic who knows why and by whom the old crumbling mansion in their inner-city neighborhood is haunted.

Two decades earlier, it belonged to Jimmy Bones (Snoop Dogg), the gangland patron of the neighbourhood. He was the Robin Hood of his hood. After ensuring his own luxurious lifestyle, he gave back money he scammed to the needy.

Bones was a pusher, who only dealt in marijuana. When he refused to join forces with a rogue cop (Michael T. Weiss) and a couple of upstarts to traffic crack cocaine, the real baddies killed Bones and buried him in the basement of his home.

Bones hasn't been resting easy these 20 years. He has been waiting for the opportunity to exact revenge on everyone who masterminded and helped with his assassination.

His opportunity comes when Patrick Peet (Khalil Kain), his brother (Merwin Mondesir), sister (Katharine Isabelle) and best friend (Sean Amsing) decide to turn the derelict mansion into a rave club.

Pearl tries to warn them the house is really a portal to hell with Jimmy as the gatekeeper, but they don't listen.

Rapper Snoop Dogg gets top billing because he is a celebrity and he plays the title character, not because this is his film.

Bones is a cross between the haunted house movie and such nightmare ghoul franchises as Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and Friday the 13th.

Cinematographer-turned-director Ernest R. Dickerson dresses the film up with ample gore, some nasty gallows humour and sex.

Bones is more creepy than scary, but it definitely jangles the nerves with heads that talk after they've been decapitated, a wolf hound with glowing eyes and an infestation of maggots.

(This film is rated R)

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