House of 1000 Corpses (2003) Lionsgate/Horror RT: 88 minutes Rated R (strong sadistic violence and gore, sexuality, language) Director: Rob Zombie Screenplay: Rob Zombie Music: Scott Humphrey and Rob Zombie Cinematography: Alex Poppas and Tom Richmond Release date: April 11, 2003 (US) Cast: Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon Zombie, Karen Black, Chris Hardwick, Erin Daniels, Jennifer Jostyn, Rainn Wilson, Walton Goggins, Tom Towles, Matthew McGrory, Robert Allen Mukes, Dennis Fimple, Harrison Young, William H. Bassett, Irwin Keyes, Michael J. Pollard, Chad Bannon, David Reynolds, Joe Dobbs III, Walter Phelan, Jake McKinnon. Box Office: $12.6M (US)/$16.8M (World)
Rating: *** ½
In all my years as a guy who loves movies, I don’t think I’ve come across a horror director as divisive as Rob Zombie. Depending on who you ask, he’s either a genius or a hack. His movies are either insane masterpieces or sickening garbage. The one thing we can all agree on is that the former lead singer of the heavy metal band White Zombie loves the horror genre. It shows in every crazy frame of his debut feature House of 1000 Corpses (don’t you LOVE that title?), a gory, twisted fright flick with the same nasty vibe that defines 70s horror movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes.
House of 1000 Corpses had a hell of a time getting released. It was supposed to come out in 2000, but Universal refused to release it due to their fears of an NC-17, the rating it surely would have earned due to gory content and its overall tone. Zombie bought the rights back from the studio and made a deal with MGM to release it in ’02. They too backed out after Zombie made some disparaging remarks about the studio. It finally caught the attention of Lionsgate who insisted on cuts and edits in order to secure the more box office-friendly R rating.
I suppose it goes without saying that I saw House of 1000 Corpses opening weekend. Would Movie Guy have it any other way? Knowing what I knew about White Zombie at the time, I knew it wasn’t going to be your typical, run-of-the-mill horror movie and I was right. It was like taking a wild ride through a carnival funhouse while stoned. It was, in the vernacular of my teen years, f***ed up. While I dug it, I understood why critics hated it. If you approach it with a critical mindset, it’s not going to pass muster and I don’t mean that as a slight. I simply mean that Zombie is no Hitchcock, Carpenter or Craven. At the same time, it’s viscerally brilliant. It’s that rare instance where style over substance works to a movie’s advantage.
The plot, such as it is, centers on four young people taking a road trip through Texas circa Halloween 1977. Bill (Wilson, The Office) and Jerry (Singled Out host Hardwick) are gathering data for a book they’re writing about offbeat roadside attractions. Their girlfriends, Mary (Jostyn, Milo) and Denise (Daniels, One Hour Photo), are along for the ride. They happen upon “The Museum of Monsters & Madmen”, a cheesy freak show owned and operated by Captain Spaulding (Haig, Galaxy of Terror), a foul-mouthed old man in clown make-up. It includes a “Murder Ride” during which Spaulding regales them with the local legend of Dr. Satan, a psycho who performed weird experiments on patients at a nearby psychiatric hospital. The guys want to see the place where he was killed so Spaulding draws them a map and sends them on their way.
En route to the killing site, they pick up an attractive hitchhiker named Baby (Sheri Moon, the real life Mrs. Zombie) who claims to know exactly where they want to go. Moments later, they get a blown tire (it’s intentional, of course) and Baby invites them to her family’s house nearby to wait while her brother fixes their car. The foursome meets the rest of the family- brother Otis Driftwood (Moseley, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), deformed giant brother Tiny (McGrory, Big Fish), Grandpa Hugo (Fimple, Creature from Black Lake) and Mother Firefly (Black, Airport 1975). Yep, they’re all crazy. It isn’t long before the guests become prisoners/victims.
Meanwhile, Denise’s father Don (Young, Saving Private Ryan) reports his daughter and her friends as missing. He joins local cops Deputies George Wydell (Towles, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) and Steve Naish (Goggins, The Hateful Eight) in their investigation. What’s ultimately uncovered about the Firefly clan is beyond horrifying.
Stylistically, Zombie pulls out all the stops with House of 1000 Corpses. One area in which it differs from the usual scary movie is its visual aesthetic. He takes a cue from Brian De Palma with his use of split-screen in a few scenes, most notably when Baby sings “I Wanna Be Loved by You” like Betty Boop for her guests. The unpredictability of the editing augments the nightmarish tone of the movie. At times, Zombie cuts to old black-and-white footage depicting real-life violence or home movie-like clips of members of the Firefly clan talking about torturing and killing people. These pauses in the action create within the viewer an uneasy feeling that stays with them throughout. In addition, Zombie sprinkles references to older horror movies like The Wolf Man and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. In one scene, a couple of characters are shown watching an episode of The Munsters. House of 1000 Corpses has a dark, gritty look that sometimes borders on psychedelic. Zombie tops it off with a metal soundtrack that puts the viewer further on edge.
Sadly, the gore remains within the confines of a hard R. As of this writing (October 2019), an unrated director’s cut is not yet available. It’s still pretty violent and bloody though. The opening scene of an attempted robbery at Spaulding’s gas station/take-out fried chicken joint (that houses his museum) ends very badly for the would-be robbers. This is the scene that establishes the insane tone of House of 1000 Corpses. Make no mistake, this movie is extremely violent and gory. People are shot, stabbed, slashed, dismembered and skinned. Still, I’d love to see what Zombie was made to excise in order to avoid an NC-17.
Zombie literally assembled a dream cast for House of 1000 Corpses. Haig turns in a deliciously OTT performance as Captain Spaulding. As a clown, he makes Pennywise seem absolutely benign. Between his liberal use of the f-word and creepy mannerisms, he’s ideally unsuited to play children’s birthday parties unless the family name is Manson, Gacy or Gein. Moseley, best known as Chop Top from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, is great as Otis. He brings a bit of Crackers Johnson (Divine’s son in Pink Flamingos) to his character. A lot of people say Sheri Moon Zombie can’t act and only got the role of Baby because she’s the director’s wife. While the latter part may be true, I think she’s a better actress than most give her credit for. She’ll never do Shakespeare nor is she this generation’s Meryl Streep. She does, however, possess a special quality that makes her ideally suited for the types of movies her husband makes. Black camps it up nicely as Mother Firefly. The supporting cast which also includes Irwin Keyes (The Exterminator) and Michael J. Pollard (Sleepaway Camp III) adds to the fun. In case you think I’ve forgotten about the actors playing the four protagonists, I haven’t. They’re fine in their roles but, as Zombie says about horror movies, “who cares about the teenagers”.
I almost hate to say it for fear of losing credibility as a film reviewer but House of 1000 Corpses is something of a demented, depraved masterpiece. It wallows in violence, torture and psychopathic behavior, but not in the same way as The Human Centipede trilogy does. Zombie does it in a manner that comes off as tongue-in-cheek and respectful of its genre. It can be seen as a tribute to the drive-in/grindhouse horror flicks of the 70s, the kind which every 12YO boy dreamed of seeing someday when the parental R-rated movie block was no longer in effect. It even has a cool-sounding title. I mean, come on, House of 1000 Corpses is a cool title even if it’s somewhat inaccurate. I only counted 700 or so corpses. Just kidding, I didn’t count. Either way, it’s an awesome and unforgettable filmmaking debut for Zombie.
