I have a lot of mixed feelings towards the works of Rob Zombie, he’s a ‘unique’ director in the sense that his work, when focussed well, can be genuinely phenominal and leave a long lasting impression. When it isnt focussed all that well though and he’s left to ‘free reign’ a project?…well…the results could best be described as ‘Fan Wank’.

Sadly, Rob is impacted by a sickness, a sickness that effects me and anyone else who’s ever willingly participated in horror movie debates or spent more than an hour arguing about the logistics of Michael Myers with a video store clerk…Rob Zombie…is a fanboy.

And theres no shame in that, horror fans can be some of the most insightful and eloquent people in terms of being able to justify why films like ‘Bloodsucking Freaks’ or ‘I spit on your grave’ are far from the murder/rape torture porn that the ‘moral panic’ crowd make them out to be…But the problem with ‘Fan boys’ is, if they arnt moderated in a creative capacity by someone who ISNT fully immersed in the ‘fandom’. They run the risk of letting their fandom overrule the creative vision. The idea that, because someones SO bedded into the rules of the system, they either become slaves to wanting to insert the ‘cool’ bits of their favourite fandoms into their work (see: Tarantino) OR, they subconciously limit themselves within a creative work because ‘Thats just not how its done in the genre’…Zombie can (and has) been known to fall afowl of both of these, And ‘House of 1000 Corpses’ is kind of the blueprint for everything I love, and hate, about Zombie as a film maker.

The film is set in the late 1970s and follows a group of kids (2 couples) travelling across the highways and byways of rural America documenting sideshow attractions and the strange sights they see on their way. While stopped off for gas at ‘Captain Spaulding’s Museum of Monsters and Madmen’ a simultaineous gas station/chicken shack/museum showcasing the murderers and terrorisors of days gone by. The captain himself offers the teens an all access tour of the museum.

While on a ‘ghost ride’ through the killers of then, and now, Spaulding aludes to one ‘Dr. Satan’ an infamous local legend. The Doctor worked in an asylum and, behind the scenes, mutilated and operated on hundreds of asylum patients, as he believed that these specific kinds of people held the secret to creating an army of super soldiers. Satan was discovered and hung in the woods for his crimes…But the day after the hanging, his body mysteriously dissapeared without a trace.

Thoroughly curious, as the hanging spot is now apparently another local roadside attraction, the gents query Spaulding about the woods location, they get some very wishy-washy directions, but head out non the less. Its here, that the gang meet ‘Baby’ a mysterious good looking hitchiker who’s…just…weird…for lack of a better descriptive. She tells the gang that she knows where the hanging spot is, and that its not *too* far away from where she needs to go, so she leads them to her old family house, where their tyres are shot out, forcing the group to spend the night at the family home…a decision they’ll come to regret…

I think the biggest problem that ‘House’ has, is just simply that its a little bit of a dogs dinner of a production. Theres just so much going on, and non of it particularly original. What we essentially have here is some kind of unholy mash up of homages, call backs, references and even direct lifts of horror cinema 1930-1980, random cutaways to footage VERY heavily influenced by the styalisation of Rob Zombies music videos, and a strange kind of…kentucky fried ‘eurosleaze’ vibe that just kind of…hard to explain.

It essentially feels like Robs just sort of, made a melting pot of everything he’s loved about horror in the last 40-50 years and reformed all these random grabs into some kind of…bloodied meat obelisk. with an extra helping of blood, guts and gore for good measure.

References range far and wide, with nudges to ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, ‘The Phantom Creeps’, ‘Friday the 13th’. But even deeper cuts like ‘Inferno’, ‘Cemetary man’, ‘The Wicker Man’, ‘Forbidden Zone’ and ‘White Zombie’ are present. and…while its cool to see all these little influences get smudged together into one film. It does kind of open Robs feature length directing and writing career with the question ‘Well…What IS his voice?’

The script is reletively solid, its really trying hard to combine the slasher/hostage vibes of ‘Last house on dead end street’ with the tone of ‘Bloodsucking Freaks’ a kind of 70s stalker horror meets the more bloodied 80s stuff. I can dig it for what it is, at just shy of 90 minutes it does a ‘reverse home invasion’ narrative quite well, and a thing I personally did appreciate about this film is that anyone whos ‘into’ horror as a genre will NOT be surprised by ANYTHING in this movie, but the film almost acknowledges that to a point. There are several moments in fact where the tone seems to shift to a sly nudge and a wink to the audience where it says ‘We know that YOU know whats coming up…So YOU enjoy the gore, and for the folks who arnt into horror…enjoy their reactions too.’

While I kind of admire that level of swaggering confidence the film has in that regard, the problem with that gambit is, if your audience dont vibe with films making it painfully clear to you that IT KNOWS what your expecting. Its going to go down about as well as sand in an ice cream.

I, for the most part get on with this production, but I did struggle with just how much Zombie wants us to go watch something else. the pacing for sub 90 minutes is decent, but even at sub 90, the film still has padding, still doesnt really give us answers to some of the questions it itself raises, and while the tone is pretty consistent throughout (snarky, loud aggressive comedy underpinning graphic gory horror and psychological horror elements) I did find some moments to be a bit tonal whiplashy, particularly when there wasnt much of a transition piece between the two contrasting elements.

The act structuring is largely fine, I feel like the 2nd act does droop a little bit as the film gets bogged down trying to establish that the crazy family are indeed. ‘Crazy’. I personally always forget just how little Captain Spaulding is actually IN this film, I really enjoyed his scenes here and felt the film was at its best when he was just doing his thing…Making the fact he’s such a prominent character in the next movie, all the more fascinating honestly.

The characters feel a little undercooked, with most of the family getting a handful of lines only, and then being relegated to the background…Only Otis and Baby really getting ANY kind of development beyond their initial introduction, our teens quite literally DONT get ANY development and seem almost purposfully under developed…I assume becasue Zombie just thinks ‘Well, who cares about these guys, they’re probably all gonna die anyway’ which…I cant fault his honesty…But in order for me to care about them…there has to be more present than them just being avatars that spit exposition every so often.

Theres a subplot involving one of the teens fathers trying to locate them that dips in and out of the film, feels WAY undercooked and doesnt really ultimately add anything other than a gross out sequence in the middle of the 2nd act. I really wish they’d expanded on that, or at the very least let it burn out in the 3rd act, rather than being abruptly ended in the middle of the 2nd.

Direction is probably my favourite aspect of this production as we jump about between a VERY colourful, border german expressionist style for the ‘present’ scenes, that intercuts with strange experimental ‘roughed up’ negative footage (an homage to Zombies music video works) and ‘Video tape’ footage shot by the family during their various ‘altercations’ by some mysterious figure, which reminded me very much of the ‘home invasion’ scene from ‘Henry: Portrait of a serial killer’.

This hodge podge of styles, formats and colour creates a movie that feels more like someones ‘mood board’ than an actual coherent film. and had the script been even an iota more grounded, I feel like this would have massively impacted the films ability to storytell effectively. However, given that this films tone is largely jet black self aware horror mixed with grindhouse exploitation and excessive gore. It gives the film a distinct feeling that I havent really seen before from a mainstream production up to this point. I ultimately feel that it hinders the film more than helping it. Its very pretty to look at in places, but I feel like, because the visual styles change so frequently in this, it almost feels like its ‘stop/starting’ the film and story repeatedly…Just because Zombie thinks it looks cool. Its distracting at worst and putting style over substance at best.

Direction of the cast is fine enough, though it does feel like Zombie had clear favourites on the characters he wrote, and it feels like a lot of his energy here went into making sure that Bill, Sherry and Sid NAILED every single mannerism, delivery and physicality given to them…While the rest of the cast were kind of given minimum direction and just told to play it simple. As a result, our baddies, as characters, are tremendous…everyone else though? kind of bland.

The cine, like the direction is a little inconsistent. for the most part its fairly basic sequence structures, but those homages to 40s and 70s horror just will not go away and we get crash zooms, dolly zooms, atmospheric slow pans and not a whole lot of shallow depth of field shots. Its a shame really because the rigidity with which he’s stuck to scene structure here at times makes it feel a bit *too* sharp of a contrast when things suddenly all go a bit crazy, we go from pedestrian, by the numbers conversational scenes, to crazy ‘negative’ processed crash zoom sexy time…the tonal whiplash continues.

For the most part? I kind of like the vibe put across in the cine and direction, the edit isnt the tightest in the world, but it works 90% of the time…so thats good enough for me…It just feels at times like this is a film maker who isnt entirely sure how to craft a story…But noones guiding him or telling him no.

Performance wise, Sid Hague CLEARLY steals the show as Captain Spaulding, a role pretty much built for him. He nails every scene he’s in, is genuinely unsettling at times and again, im AMAZED at how underplayed he is here. he essentially IS a whole star on this review just by himself. One of the few times where I genuinely couldnt see anyone else playing this role.

Sheri Moon is fine enough as ‘Baby’ (whether thats an homage to ‘The Baby’ I…I really dont know at this point, but it wouldnt surprise me) I am firmly in the camp that wishes Zombie would make a movie WITHOUT his wife once in a while. But here, and more broadly as ‘Baby’ I think she really nails the brief. Shes got a fantastic ability to play ditzy and innocent, but to twist it into something truely horrendous on a dime. I think she was born to play that kind of character, and she plays it very well!

As for Bill? As Otis, his role is hardly a stretch, the guy played ‘Chop Top’ in texas chainsaw 2, and this is basically just asking him for an encore honestly. while he does have a little more ‘Manson family’ in his performance this time around over his Texas 2 appearence. I dont really feel he brings anything new to the role here. Dont get me wrong, im more than happy to watch Mr. Mosely just do the thing he does well…again…But I feel like the best of the character really comes out in the sequels…here? he’s just treading water really.

As for the supporting cast, as mentioned our main teens are MASSIVELY underwritten, and thats a real shame because it makes their performances kind of underwhelming. they’re basically just stereotypical late 70s, early 80s slasher kids…and I get that thats kind of the point…but Zombies dedication to the ‘Fandom’ really dilutes what could have been a good idea to take those 70s/80s teen archytypes and subvert the expectations on them…rather than just rigidly sticking to the usual formula. given this film came out at the end of the ‘subvert the expected’ era of 90s horror film making. I feel like ‘subverting the subversion’ just…doesnt really work.

Tying this film together is a fantastic soundtrack a mixture of older tracks, Zombies own music and some amazing incidental work, all perfectly well timed to punctuate the film at key moments, and a score i’d love to try and grab on vinyl at some point.

As a first stab at a feature? I kind of feel bad hitting this film as hard as I have here, Its absolutely a fun film, filled with plenty of great moments, it looks good for the most part and if the brief was ‘do a 70s/80s slasher/home invasion horror…but introduce modern horror sensibilities’ I think Zombie nailed that brief.

But the issue for me is simply how little of Zombies actual voice is present here. Like…having watched this film, It looks cool…But I have no idea really what Zombie as a film maker, as an artist to that end…really has to say other than ‘hey, old movies are pretty rad!’ While I feel we get a bit more out of him in later films. Its an issue that I feel does plague him, even to this day. and its ultimately what stops me rating ‘House’ higher than I have.

I’d say its definitely worth checking out if your a fan of 70s horror. Its not an essential watch, it wont really change your life. But its a fun 88 minute horror slasher that’ll give you what you need if your looking for blood, guts, gore and a dark laugh.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/house-of-1000-corpses/