{"id":2634,"date":"2024-08-21T15:52:24","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T15:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2634"},"modified":"2024-10-14T14:45:29","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T18:45:29","slug":"house-of-1000-corpses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/21\/house-of-1000-corpses\/","title":{"rendered":"House of 1000 Corpses"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"House of 1000 Corpses<\/strong> (2003)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong sadistic violence and gore, sexuality, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Rob Zombie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Rob Zombie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Scott Humphrey and Rob Zombie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Alex Poppas and Tom Richmond\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 11, 2003 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $12.6M (US)\/$16.8M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0In all my years as a guy who loves movies, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve come across a horror director as divisive as Rob Zombie. Depending on who you ask, he\u2019s 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<\/strong> (don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0House of 1000 Corpses<\/strong> 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 \u201902. 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I suppose it goes without saying that I saw House of 1000 Corpses<\/strong> opening weekend. Would Movie Guy have it any other way? Knowing what I knew about White Zombie at the time, I knew it wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s not going to pass muster and I don\u2019t mean that as a slight. I simply mean that Zombie is no Hitchcock, Carpenter or Craven. At the same time, it\u2019s viscerally brilliant. It\u2019s that rare instance where style over substance works to a movie\u2019s advantage.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 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\u2019re writing about offbeat roadside attractions. Their girlfriends, Mary (Jostyn, Milo) and Denise (Daniels, One Hour Photo), are along for the ride. They happen upon \u201cThe Museum of Monsters & Madmen\u201d, 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 \u201cMurder Ride\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0En 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\u2019s intentional, of course) and Baby invites them to her family\u2019s 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\u2019re all crazy. It isn\u2019t long before the guests become prisoners\/victims.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Meanwhile, Denise\u2019s 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\u2019s ultimately uncovered about the Firefly clan is beyond horrifying.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0Stylistically, Zombie pulls out all the stops with House of 1000 Corpses<\/strong>. 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 \u201cI Wanna Be Loved by You\u201d 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<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sadly, the gore remains within the confines of a hard R. As of this writing (October 2019), an unrated director\u2019s cut is not yet available. It\u2019s still pretty violent and bloody though. The opening scene of an attempted robbery at Spaulding\u2019s 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<\/strong>. Make no mistake, this movie is extremely violent and gory. People are shot, stabbed, slashed, dismembered and skinned. Still, I\u2019d love to see what Zombie was made to excise in order to avoid an NC-17.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Zombie literally assembled a dream cast for House of 1000 Corpses<\/strong>. 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\u2019s ideally unsuited to play children\u2019s 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\u2019s son in Pink Flamingos) to his character. A lot of people say Sheri Moon Zombie can\u2019t act and only got the role of Baby because she\u2019s the director\u2019s wife. While the latter part may be true, I think she\u2019s a better actress than most give her credit for. She\u2019ll never do Shakespeare nor is she this generation\u2019s 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\u2019ve forgotten about the actors playing the four protagonists, I haven\u2019t. They\u2019re fine in their roles but, as Zombie says about horror movies, \u201cwho cares about the teenagers\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I almost hate to say it for fear of losing credibility as a film reviewer but House of 1000 Corpses<\/strong> 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<\/strong> is a cool title even if it\u2019s somewhat inaccurate. I only counted 700 or so corpses. Just kidding, I didn\u2019t count. Either way, it\u2019s an awesome and unforgettable filmmaking debut for Zombie.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House of 1000 Corpses (2003)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong sadistic violence and gore, sexuality, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Rob Zombie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Rob Zombie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Scott Humphrey and Rob Zombie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Alex Poppas and Tom Richmond\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 11, 2003 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon Zombie, Karen Black, Chris Hardwick, Erin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scary-gory-wild-i-love-it"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/House-of-1000-Corpses-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2634"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3516,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions\/3516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}