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- Movie Review - House Of 1,000 Corpses (2003)
Movie Review - House Of 1,000 Corpses (2003)
- By Adrian Tallent
- Published 10/14/2009
- Horror Films and Thrillers
- Unrated
Adrian Tallent
A former student of Spartanburg Technical College and overall geek, I enjoy listening to music, reading books, playing video games, and watching movies. Sometimes I write about them.
View all articles by Adrian Tallent
Rob Zombie is living proof that art inspires itself. As a hardcore horror fan, he turned his interests into a lucrative music career spanning nearly three decades now, beginning as the lead vocalist in the band White Zombie and now writing solo albums that blend the macabre with danceable metal hooks. With a cult following behind White Zombie and several solo albums in the mainstream, not to mention successful tours under his belt, “Zombie” has turned his attention back to the very thing he first drew his inspiration from – the horror film. Using the money raised by his musical endeavors, he decided to make some of his own, of which “The House of 1,000 Corpses” is the first. Now, one who is familiar with Mr. Zombie’s music might think they would know what to expect from a Rob Zombie film, as his songs typically deal with similar themes even though they carry different subject matter. The sex, dread, and sleazy menace Zombie sings, writes, and draws about can all be found here, but given the credentials of the director, the film is rather disappointing, as it fails to live up to the expectations one would have of a genuine and clever horror fan making his own film.
You would think a man like Zombie would know the ins and outs of horror, but this film is decidedly devoid of anything truly scary. Instead, the film acts like a showcase of deeply disturbed deviant behavior, and violence perpetuated on the unassuming. Pair of young couples are on a cross-country trip, documenting bizarre roadside attractions for a book they are writing.
On the way home on Halloween eve, they stop for gas at a bizarre tourist trap owned by redneck clown Captain Spaulding. Billed as a “murder ride”, the attraction teaches the young couple about several infamous local murderers and their depraved acts, and the legend surrounding one of them, a Dr. Satan, intrigues them enough to go on a detour to look for landmarks Captain Spaulding mentioned in his tale. A series of events leads to their car breaking down and them falling in with the Firefly clan, who turn out to be a family of crazed psychotics.
That’s the plot, in a nutshell. If it seems tired or disjointed, that would be because it is. Rather than flowing into an escalating series of dreadful circumstances like you would expect of most horror films, “House” seems more like a collection of scenes and half-realized ideas that have been edited together to tell a story. Nothing that happens in the film seems particularly related to anything else. For example, Captain Spaulding and his spiel about Dr. Satan are both discarded by the plot in favor for the twisted depredations of the Firefly family. When Dr. Satan is re-introduced later on in the film, it feels like watching a scene from a completely different movie. Nothing much is ever really explained, so there is little in the film’s progressing plot that actually makes sense. The “horror” comes into play in the sense of exploitation and torture, and while these scenes are uncomfortable, disturbing, and gross, they don’t have all that much impact, as only the means are given any detail; never the ends. Also, the victim characters are all terribly unsympathetic because the acting from the villains all steals the show.
You would think a man like Zombie would know the ins and outs of horror, but this film is decidedly devoid of anything truly scary. Instead, the film acts like a showcase of deeply disturbed deviant behavior, and violence perpetuated on the unassuming. Pair of young couples are on a cross-country trip, documenting bizarre roadside attractions for a book they are writing.
That’s the plot, in a nutshell. If it seems tired or disjointed, that would be because it is. Rather than flowing into an escalating series of dreadful circumstances like you would expect of most horror films, “House” seems more like a collection of scenes and half-realized ideas that have been edited together to tell a story. Nothing that happens in the film seems particularly related to anything else. For example, Captain Spaulding and his spiel about Dr. Satan are both discarded by the plot in favor for the twisted depredations of the Firefly family. When Dr. Satan is re-introduced later on in the film, it feels like watching a scene from a completely different movie. Nothing much is ever really explained, so there is little in the film’s progressing plot that actually makes sense. The “horror” comes into play in the sense of exploitation and torture, and while these scenes are uncomfortable, disturbing, and gross, they don’t have all that much impact, as only the means are given any detail; never the ends. Also, the victim characters are all terribly unsympathetic because the acting from the villains all steals the show.