Finally, after almost two
years of limbo, Rob Zombie's "House of 1,000 Corpses"
found a distributor. First, Universal had signed on for
the film, but dropped it when they decided it was too vulgar and
too disgusting to release under good conscience. Then, MGM
signed on, but dropped shortly thereafter following a
confrontation with writer/director Zombie. So, Lions Gate
picked up the flick and it finally hit theatres. Was it
worth the wait? Well, that depends on what you were
expecting.
Hardcore Rob Zombie fans should be highly impressed. The
film tells the story of four friends (two chicks and a dude) who
are driving cross country, planning to write a novel about their
experiences. Their trip takes them to Captain Spaulding's,
a roadside freak show attraction. While stopped, they are
told about the legend of Dr. Satan, a psychotic doctor who once
performed insidious experiments on his mental patients.
Captain Spaulding even gives them directions to where Dr. Satan
was buried. Alas, a hitchhiker and a flat tire later, they
are in the clutches of the Firefly family, a clan of twisted,
macabre, and morbidly psychotic killers who proceed to abuse,
murder, and terrorize the four friends, killing them off in very
grotesque fashions.
Karen Black, the horror queen from the 1970's, stars as Mother
Firefly, the matriarch and leader of the group. Bill
Moseley co-stars as Otis, her deranged son, who has long,
Riff-Raff style hair and looks like the hitchhiker from
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". William Bassett
and Chad Bannon also stars as two police officers sent to
investigate some missing persons reports.
If
you are looking for a sensible plot -- don't. You will not
find one. In fact, this film goes from normal to night
vision and from color to black and white and switches quite
frequently to scenes that have nothing to do with the scene
before. Zombie evidently meant to do this, and he probably
thought it had form to it. And, in a weird, macabre way,
it does. About halfway through the film, Zombie turns it
up a notch, with the blood getting thicker and the gore getting
steadily worse and worse, until we finally realize why this film
was almost given an NC-17 rating (the DVD will be vomit
inducing, I can assure you).
The two things I disliked about the film were: (1) it
borrowed to heavily from "The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre". Zombie even flashes the house from the
film during the opening credits. I guess this film was
suppose to serve as kind of a tribute to the Tobe Hooper horror
classic, but it was sometimes guilty of a little too much
similarity, and (2) I was expecting more gore. Now, don't
get me wrong--there is plenty for everyone, but it had been
built up to be the goriest and bloodiest film ever. In
some ways, "Evil Dead" was worse. Now, I am sure
he had to edit a good deal of it out and wait for the DVD, but I
was just moderately disappointed in the lack thereof.
So, "House of 1,000 Corpses" may not be the horror
masterpiece it was built up to be, but it is still highly
entertaining for horror lovers, and especially for a true Rob
Zombie fan. It shows than Zombie definitely does have
style as a director, like when Chad Bannon is about to get
blasted in the head by a handgun and Zombie pans out and
prolongs the moment for half a minute. Very well done.
Maybe if it had been released during Halloween, it would have
received a warmer response.
