House of 1000 Corpses (2003)

Rating: R

Run Time: 89 minutes

Director: Rob Zombie

Starring: Sid Haig, Karen Black, Bill Moseley

“…sure, his films aren’t always good, but they are made with a strong eye towards creating a very certain response in the viewer, and their sometimes severe failures as narratives should not take away from their very real success as momentarily terrifying collections of surrealistically violent tableaux.”  -  Tim Brayton, Antagony and Ecstasy 

Although I’m using Tim’s quote out of its original context, I think he aptly sums up the general critical response to Zombie’s movies well (for the whole piece, see his review of Zombie’s Halloween II).   

Much has been made of what a fan of horror cinema Rob Zombie is, and being an enthusiast myself, I can certainly appreciate a kindred soul (there are not, I think, too terribly many horror aficionados among us, even among those such as myself, whose present knowledge, after a lifetime's viewing, is still sketchy and incomplete).  House of 1000 Corpses is, I believe, an homage to a particular type of horror movie, hicksploitation cinema or, alternately, redneck or hillbilly horror.  I know much less about ‘70s exploitation cinema, however, than I do about horror in the general, outside of the two movies that consensus opinion views as having most influenced hicksploitation horror movies as a sub-genre in general and Zombie’s particular film here.  

Those movies are, of course, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre/TCM and the The Hills Have Eyes.  The two films, reviled by most upon their initial release, are now recognized classics within the horror genre.  A passing acknowledgement must be made to their spiritual progenitor, John Boorman's Deliverance.  Without that one, an exemplar of a different sort of sociological horror than the former two, they would perhaps not exist.

Nothing occurs in a vacuum, certainly, and I have often wondered if Wes Craven’s Hills is an homage to or at least an acknowledgement of Tobe Hooper’s TCM?  Which itself may well be a parody of Deliverance?  That would make 1000 Corpses a parody of an homage of a parody.  Or, the first three may simply be iterations of themes common to each of those movies.  There is a lengthier debate inherent in this line of thought, for we have not even considered Straw Dogs, The Last House on the Left, or Day of the Woman (and, man is that a title I much prefer to I Spit On Your Grave).  These are works with similar thematic concerns, be they more serious-minded or mere exploitation fare.  And we've not considered hillbilly horror shlockers like Motel Hell, Just Before Dawn, The Final Terror or Charles B. Pierce's The Tenants.   

Suffice it to say I don't have time or energy for that quite yet.  Moreover, this is my second edit of a review to a movie I watched months ago.  And I can assure those of you who have not watched House of 1000 Corpses already of this: it is not a movie that’s worth quite that kind of consideration.  It is a cartoonish parody, but I like it, nonetheless.  I don’t know what Rob Zombie might have intended.      

The movie opens with a weird-ass black & white TV add for Dr. Wolfenstein’s Creature Feature Show somewhat introducing the film in what I assume is a nod to program hosts of the past who presented monster flicks on TV; nice touch, Rob, in what I take as a nod to the horror fan as a child.  This segues into another B&W sequence introducing more weird-ass shit whose host is a demented clown calling himself Captain Spaulding, announcing his Monsters and Madmen Tour and advising us that his roadside shop also sells gasoline and fried chicken!  It is Texas, you know, in 1977.

Spaulding is a real guy (in a manner of speaking), which we learn when he and his cousin, wearing some big (and I do mean big), goofy clown head, gun down a couple of would-be hijackers whom it is clear Spaulding and yet another redneck using his store's shitter (Michael J. Pollard, man!) are not the least bit concerned with.  This happens as soon as the two retard bastards storm into Spaulding’s roadside shop of bizarre memorabilia and jenny hannivers.

The clown has just finished mopping the blood up from the late carnage when a pair of couples, the movie’s rather limited selection of expendable meat (although it takes rather a while for their meat to get expended), pulls into Captain Spaulding’s for gas.  He ends up selling them tickets to his haunted horror house ride.  Now, I don’t care what some other critics have said; I thought the ride showed some real ingenuity and a commendable knowledge of relatively obscure serial killer arcana.  Spaulding also feeds them some bullshit about the mythical Dr. Satan, who performed terrible experiments on the patients of the local (though long since closed) psychiatric hospital (there’s something about an attempt to build a master race, so maybe this is also a nod to Nazisploitation cinema, too).  And, hey, the tree he was hanged on is right down the street.

Well, the gang (Jerry, Mary, Bill, & Denise) are on their way there when they stop to pick up a hitchhiker (who, let me tell you, looks a hell of a lot better than Edwin Neal!).  She is “Baby” Firefly, of the Clan Firefly, and boy is she ever crazier than a shithouse rat.  As we will learn, however, she is by no means the craziest member of the family.  That would be Otis (Bill Mosely), whom we will meet with the rest of the Firefly family in just a little. That includes Karen Black in a way over-the-top performance as Mama Firefly, Dennis Fimple as Grampa Hugo,  Robert Allen Mukes as Rufus, or R.J., and Matthew McGrory as Leatherface, I mean Pluto, Tiny.

The general area or township near where the tree is located has experienced a rash of disappearances lately (we learn this through both the Plot Specific News Network broadcasts and brief montages interspliced within the film).  This includes five cheerleaders who have vanished during their return trip from an out-of-town football game. Hmmm…  Meanwhile, we learn that Otis, home at the Firefly manse, is a local artist: in his unique way, he is very much a misunderstood genius, a thwarted performance artiste whose outré work is too avant garde for the petty bourgeois or those on whom he is creating his oevres (you see, he may also be the demented creator of those jenny hannivers in Spaulding’s shop; wait and see).  Man does Otis go on and on about it.  And the missing cheerleaders?  Well, they’re not missing anymore.  They’re playing up in Otis’s room…sort of.

The rest of the movie, including Zombie’s version of the TCM dinner scene, is essentially one long, flowing stream of scenes depicting psychological and physical torture… But those scenes are highly stylized, relieved of the tension otherwise required to render them as brutalizing to the viewer as to the film’s victims.  The Final Girl scene was tense (for me, at least) and the imagery introduced during it garish and horrific; it can stand beside Marilyn Burns’s desperate run in TCM without entirely paling in comparison.   

The first time I sat down to watch this movie several years ago, I could not get through it; I found it too disturbing.  It reminded me of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which I also could not finish the first time I tried.  Upon a second view, I found it is not at all like that movie; it is far more stylized as a surreal tableau than the other.  I, too, found it nowhere near as disturbing the second go-round, and I consequently enjoyed it a lot more.  There is not the tension or bloodless brutality of TCM, and it is not gritty like that movie or Henry.  But for all that I thought it was a pretty good flick, better than many of the reviews of it suggest.  It's not everyone’s cup of tea and I'm particularly selective as to whom I recommend it among my outwardly normal friends and acquaintances, however.

Here is the thing, really: I had never liked a Rob Zombie movie until The Lords of Salem, and there is a part of me that thinks perhaps my favorable opinion here is being informed by my enthusiasm for that movie (perhaps it is Zombie’s homage to Mario Bava’s Black Sunday/La Maschera del Demonio?).  On the other hand, there is another side of me that thinks I should re-evaluate this movie’s sequel, The Devil’s Rejects, and re-watch his Halloween.          

Random Thoughts/Interesting Tidbits

The movie seemed a hell of a lot longer than 89 minutes, particularly what seemed like the “director’s cut” Final Girl sequence; I’m on record as liking it, but it began to drag a bit, as harrowingly bizarre as it was. 

As far as exploitation fare goes, it’s got cartoon-like gore and gratuitous female nudity, two prerequisites.  It also has sets and accoutrements that suggest what it would be like if Tim Burton's production designer were to go insane, Sheri Moon in chaps and nothing else, and The Office’s Rainn Wilson.

I loved the opening track over the titles.  It seems he recorded it before the film was conceived.  I find that surprising because I DO NOT like White Zombie).

The realization of the Dr. Satan scene was great.  The set seems to have stepped right out of a Hieronymous Bosch painting, or worse. Those last ten minutes set there depict what an insane person’s nightmare vision of Hell itself might resemble, and it certainly looks like that’s where Zombie spent the majority of his budget.  It is a piece with the overall cartoon-colorful nightmare phantasmagorical imagery of the film.

In fact, there are really great set pieces and imagery throughout:  Captain Spaulding’s house of horrors reminded me of Funhouse and the short pieces on Ed Gein and Albert Fish demonstrated, as noted earlier, Zombie’s knowledge of far out serial killer lore (right down to the x-ray of Fish’s groin); the setup of the scene where the protagonists’ try to escape (after the Fireflys’ off, off, offf-Broadway stage show) looked like some crazy Candyland boardgame. 

On some level, God help me, I identified with the Fireflys, and that, my friend, is a frightening thought.  But here’s why: the four kids were pricks, even the girls; all of them were bitchy and the boyfriends were geekily elitist and condescending; all four conveyed a superior air that pissed me off.  Still, I do not suggest they earned their fates and their suffering is as revoltingly disturbing as it was unwarranted…or would be more so if the film weren’t so mannered.   Again, though, we have all seen worse displays of physical or psychological torture in other, more somber-minded films.  This kind is a little hard to take too terribly seriously.  And, unfortunately, Zombie, like so many other directors and writers today, chose to create characters whom we actively dislike.  This is a troubling transmogrification of the old slasher aesthetic of expendable "teenagers" who were merely shallow and superficially dickish, but who were generally not downright assholes as here.   

The title is great; it might have been borne of any era, but it certainly fits well in ‘70s exploitation cinema (as does the title of its sequel).  Caveat: there are quite a few corpses lying around in this movie, but there aren’t a thousand…

There is an execution scene that may be the most sadistic death in the movie (you’ll know which one I mean) that lasted for juuust too long, although I thought the camera’s perspective was a unique choice.

I have two more thoughts on that execution, though.  I read an interview with Zombie where he described the film's screening for a test audience where movie-goers cheered the death and Zombie thought, and I’m paraphrasing, hey, cool, they’re getting into it.  This was when Universal first passed on it soon after it was filmed in 2000.  Now:

1. I find it somewhat disturbing that people would cheer that death in any context, fictitious or otherwise.
2. Even so, I am surprised that Zombie would consider that to be the reaction he was looking for in that scene; mine was to sit there silently, tensed and waiting for the hammer to fall. 

I read another interview where the director rightly pointed out how roundly vilified HO1C was once received and yet now it is viewed favorably…he is right, I suppose, and I was one of those detractors.  He said the same of those who clamor for the reunion of White Zombie, yet hated the band initially…he is right, and I was one of those detractors, too…but I still don’t like White Zombie.    

The Horror Inkwell Rating: 5/10