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| House Of 1000 Corpses By Yodasnoog |
| Rob Zombies debut feature was highly anticipated from the majority of hardcore horror fanatics, myself included. Being a fan of his work with White Zombie and his solo work, I was interested to see how he would do when he moved over to movies (he had of course directed numerous music videos for White Zombie and other bands like Prong). With Rob himself being a fan of horror movies and having a fair amount of knowledge about the genre, I was hoping this would save the rather sorry state horror movies had gotten themselves into. After reading that this movie would be more along the lines of old-school grindhouse/exploitation movies like Last House On The Left and Texas Chainsaw Massacre it made me even more excited, I thought it was about time that the feeling of those movies was brought back. |
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| The movie kicks off at Captain Spaulding’s Museum of Monsters and Madmen, where Spaulding (Sid Haig) and his buddy Stucky are discussing various things including a local “retard” who got a Dr Zeuss doll stuck in his arse. Then two guys burst in and try to rob the place, which really pisses Spaulding off. After some witty retorts from Spaulding, he eventually blows both of their brains out. We then slam cut to black and the credits roll. Certainly a great opening scene. We then meet four 20-somethings who are on the road putting together a book on roadside attractions, and yes, they stumble upon Captain Spaulding’s place. After Spaulding scares the shit out of em a little, he invites them to take the “Murder Ride”, which is a ghost-train esque theme park ride, except with waxworks of famous serial killers and Spaulding as the host. Here they learn about Dr Satan, a local legend who used to perform experiments on patients at a mental hospital, he was hanged but the body was never found. |
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| One of the group wants to go and find the tree he was hung from, so unwillingly Spaulding gives him directions and they get on their way. The proverbial shit hits the metaphoric fan at this point, as they stumble upon the family from hell, led by Otis Driftwood (Bill ‘Choptop’ Mosley). The film is not all deadly serious though; there are some rather hilarious moments to be had, mainly when Spaulding is involved which I will get to later. There is also a great scene involving Tiny and one of the girls of the group that is so casual I just had to laugh. In parts, the film really manages to capture that mid-seventies gritty realism feeling that movies such as Chainsaw and Last House once captured. Mainly during scenes in which we cut to 16mm-esque footage of some horrific act taking place (usually at the hands of Otis, who scared the shit out of me i'm not ashamed to say it). |
| Zombie also gets high marks from me because of setting the movie in the 70’s (and on Halloween). The family is superbly cast, from the albino lunatic Otis, foul mouthed Grandpa (the late Dennis Fimple), Ma Firefly (Karen Black), Baby (Pulled off with brilliant psycho glee by Zombies wife Sherri Moon) and the giant Tiny (Matt McGrory). And lets not forget Sid Haig as Spaulding, my personal favourite character, he has a knack of going from creepy and scary as hell to side splittingly funny and many classic lines through out the movie including… “Why don’t you take ya mama home some chicken and I won’t have to put ma boot all up in ya ass!” And “The bigger the cushion the sweeter the pushin’” Followed by a great snorting laugh. House of 1000 Corpses took an extremely long time to get to cinemas due to original distributors Universal dropping out. The film sat in limbo for a while until the glorious Lions Gate stepped in and released it (the same people that got Kevin Smiths Dogma out there during the Miramax/Catholic crisis). Although Rob did have to do some trimming to the violence to get it down to an R rating, but a “directors cut” DVD should be out after he gets through filming the sequel, which I cannot wait for. |
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