TYTD Reviews

‘The Guy From Harlem’ has a bit of a legendary status amongst lovers of bad movies and in particular, listeners to ‘Rifftrax’ who covered the film as their first ever ‘Blaxsploitation’ entry back in 2012. There seem to be a lot of folk who have a real soft spot for this film. So when AGFA announced that it was going to be releasing a mini boxset of films directed by Rene Martinez Jr. and that one of those films would be a HD scan of ‘Harlem’ I took the plunge thinking watching it for the first time in HD would probably be the best way to catch it…and I was…underwhelmed.

The plot of the film follows the titular ‘Guy from Harlem’ a detective for hire as we follow him on two connected cases. The first sees our man acting as bodyguard to the wife of an African national meeting with diplomats in the States to try and broker stronger relations. He’s given the mission of keeping the wife safe and happy during the discussions, with only one rule. Do NOT try to bang the African nationals wife…

You can imagine what happens next…

Once thats over and done with our ‘Guy’ is introduced to his next case, the daughter of a fairly wealthy gentlman has been kidnapped by a mob group led by the nefarious ‘Big Daddy’. The aim? to rescue the daughter and exchange her for drugs and cash. and…well…thats kind of what happens.

This is one of those movies that trades on the awkwardness of the cast being miscast and the budget so low they cant even afford to properly dress the sets. The idea being that we laugh at our lead because hes a guy who clearly isnt comfortable playing the suave cool detective type, but he’s been cast as just that, and its funny to see him (and the other miscast actors) desperately try to fill the roles. They fumble the ‘cool guy’ lines, can bearly do the physical segments without nearly injuring themselves and from thence the humour arose.

But the problem I have with this one is that its just SO so dry…WAY too dry for me…Not helped at all either by the fact this is essentially two 45 minute films slammed together rather than one long coherent plot.

Its not witty enough to be charming, its not awkward enough to make your jaw drop, its not got the budget to be interesting enough to hold my attention. What this is is a first half thats 45 minutes of two people rambling awkwardly in a hotel room set, with the highlight being a scene where our detective punches a maid who is CLEARLY a woman in one shot, only for it to cut to reveal its CLEARLY a man in a dress as part of an assassination attempt (that bad cut did make me laugh).

While the second half actually has some action and fight scenes (really…REALLY badly shot fight scenes and fight choreography that feels like watching pool noodles fight.) but again, its essentially just folks talking either in the detectives office or in Big Daddys hideout…for 45 minutes…awkwardly…

And dont get me wrong, a bit of awkward acting, the odd weird line delivery, can be really funny, especially if its paced out and timed well…But this is non stop across the whole thing, and its exhausting.

The characters are all super flexible in terms of their character profile, they just kind of, mould into whatever the film needs them to be, whether they naturally fit or not. The tones aiming for straight cut seriouis. But the cringey weirdness ends up leaving it feeling like the answer to the question ‘What if Napolion Dynamite was real life?’

The directions flat, lifeless and bland, theres really nothing standout to me, the cine is ultra basic tripod shots for the most part with maybe 1-2 tracking shots thrown in?…But thats about it, colour use is basically whatever they could get their hands on, with little coherency or ‘coding’ put into the set design. it is very literally just thrown together.

The edit is rough around the edges with cuts happening way to late or way to early quite regularly. they didnt film enough B-roll to help keep sequence structuring fluid so the whole thing is just LONG stretches of mid wide shots cutting occasionally to a head and shoulder close up, and then back again…and thats it.

The performances are probably the only reason to stick around. Loye hawkins turn as our lead detective Al Connors could best be described as ‘So close to shaft, but just…ONE CLICK off’ which is JUST enough to make the entire performance awkward. He’s sincere! my GOD he wants you to believe he’s a super cool detective. But he just cant quite sell me on a single line that comes out of his mouth. and the vast majority of the time he comes across as ‘well intentioned, slightly trippy neighbour’ than ‘Badass detective on a mission’

Wildman Steve is here in a cameo playing Harry De Bauld the father of the Daughter who’s kidnapped in the 2nd half of the film. and he’s probably the most GENUINELY entertaining part of this movie, because he can rev up from a 1 on energy to a 10 in about 3 seconds. He does it so effortlessly and he has some of the best deliveries here…That isnt saying much honestly…But its the best we’ve got.

The rest of the cast get maybe a sentence or two to say every 5-10 minutes, most of it just exposition. they dont have a whole lot of physical presence. In fact i’d say a good 75-80% of the performances here are delivered while fixed firmly in place, or sat in a clearly marked chair to avoid them going off camera or missing the frame. for low budget indie film making from the 70s? this isnt *Too* out of the ordinary…but its sparse and absolutely on the lower end of the scale.

And as for the soundtrack? ‘The Guy from Harlem Theme’ is a bop…but everything else is just elevator music to me. I really didnt get into it. and the editing of the scoring was blunt to say the least. its basically either on, or off. No attempt to time a needle drop well at all.

I didnt outright HATE ‘The Guy from Harlem’…But I just dont see a whole lot here to really LOVE. To me? it just felt like an incredibly low budget blaxsploitation film that had a handful of entertainingly bad moments…But not enough to carry the production as a whole.

Who knows? maybe the Rifftrax riff is the ‘secret sauce’ to this whole thing, and a good set of riffers will take this 1.5 star rating up to a 4? It’s definitely piqued my interest to see what Mike and the gang had to say about this one. But unriffed? it was a slog, not one i’d recommend and not one i’ll be revisiting any time soon if I can help it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-guy-from-harlem/

Watched on Wednesday January 29, 2025.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-six-thousand-dollar-nigger/2/

One that hits a little *too* close to home for me (seriously, the events of this film happened about half an hour away from where I was born) I had relatively high hopes for ‘The Black Panther’ going in, it touted a fairly accurate depiction of events without going to heavily into ‘exploitation’ terratory, and the fact this film carried with it a rattle from the Mary Whitehosue brigade to get it pulled from cinemas (which, effectively worked, as the film was pulled shortly after its release) had me VERY interested to see what it was up to.

As you can imagine, the film depicts the events of the infamous ‘Black Panther’, a chap by the name of Donald Neilson who was trained in the military and began a spree of burgalreys in the late 60s, which developed into robbing post offices in the early 70s, which in turn led to a string of GBH and eventual murder charges, before probably his most infamous incident, the kidnap and (allegedly accidental) murder of a 17 year old heiress he hoped to use as a blackmail piece, in order to take 50 grand from a wealthy family in turmoil.

Of course, non of this goes to plan, and via a series of borderline dark comedy incidents, Donald for one reason or another ends up fumbling things with horrific consiquences.

Donald Neilson by all accounts was a rather nasty piece of work, and his arrest in 1975 and subsiquent death in 2011 clearly made the country a safer place. But what I find fascinating about this film is that they dont shy away from the complexity of Donald as a human being.

Theres really two ways to interpret this film, one is as a man who was failed by society and had a crap childhood and adolesence trying to regain control of his reality and set himself up comfortably, without compromise for the rest of his life, and anyone who gets in the way of that be damned (family included).

Or, this can be read as the story of a deeply disturbed individual, who was further disturbed by his time in the army, who used the skills there to brutally murder and steal from dozens (if not hundreds) of people, who never took accountability for his actions and only showed remorse once his freedom was removed.

This film makes it clear that Donald didnt really WANT to kill anyone unless he felt he had no other option. But at the same time, it doesnt focus on any kind of aftermath of the murders either. In fact, this film really makes it feel like Donald felt nothing towards murder, even though hes quite reluctant to do it in the first place.

The film, I feel leans more towards the latter of the two situations, but I find it quite ballsy of the film makers to not shy away from that former interpretation. They show Donald as a complex figure, a brutal thug and murderer in one scene, but equally as a someone who does have a bit of compassion.

The script itself is pretty accurate to the police reports and court findings on the case, not a whole lot has changed in the time since this film came out and the present day (theres more evidence now to suggest Leslie fell to her death, rather than being murdered by Donald. And this film came out a year before Donalds wife would be arrested for forging postal cheques, something Donald made her do, but a court still found her guilty and sentenced her to a year behind bars) Which does rather keep this film feeling quite fresh.

At 98 minutes its maybe just a *smidge* over long, I think a round 90 would have given it a bit more a clip to its pace. But while it may be a bit slower boil than I personally would have liked, I have to commend the film for really trying to pull the audience into Donalds world and the situation. What really saves this film is the VERY even act sturcturing on hand. all three acts are pretty nicely balanced out, with decent amounts of action married up to exposition, it never feels like its getting too bloody OR too talky. And having that balance across the 3 acts, and having the 3 acts themselves transition rather seamlessly and smoothly, I feel really helps keep this thing afloat.

Given its based on a true story and they take very few liberties in showing what happened, I dont really have much to say in terms of the plotting. I think it does a fine enough job of it, and while they do shy away a bit from character motivations and more personal complexities (due largely to this case only being about 2 years old at the time this film came out) I feel like it does a quite faithful job of presenting these characters as they were.

The direction is a little on the stiff side, its about as 70s Britain feeling as its possible to get, with most of the film taking place either in the pitch black dark, or entirely backlit by archtypical british weather (Murkey, dreary grey skies and drizzle) Its the type of framing where you feel the cold through the screen. Sequences are largely static, with the occasional cut to B-roll helping improve the flow of scnenes. But given a lot of the Panthers activities happened at night, it does really quite limit exactly what they can do with the visuals here, with the lighting mercifully coming to the rescue in those scenes giving us some decen chiascuro pieces.

The cine is much the same, stiff locked off shots with only the occasional dolly or pan to help the effort. Composition is pretty rock solid and i’d say there are some very creative and inspiring shot choices on display here, particularly during the kidnapping segements. But for the most part, it is quite a flat production. and I really wish they’d taken more time for close ups and a bit more experimentation.

Performance wise, its basically a character piece for Donald Sumpter, who I feel fully captures Neilsons awkward and violent mannerisms. he works a perfect range, delivers a transformative performance and is both unpredictable, and at times thoroughly scary. I think he did a fantastic job portraying Neilson and is easily, on his own, more than enough reason to check this film out.

The supporting cast try their best to help set the tone and mood too, for the most part they’re pretty solid, but as the film follows Donald for the majority of the runtime, they feel more like accompanyments to his story, rather than complex and fully fleshed out characters in their own rights…in fact, from what I could see the only other character who gets a bit more than just ‘what was in the trial notes’ is Debbie Farrington as Leslie Whittle, she gives a genuinely terrified performance and looks every bit as petrified as was needed for this film, an incredible piece I think she was marvellous in this.

Throw in a fantastic instrumental soundtrack that marries orchestral pieces to semi-droning incidental synth music (I’d love to hear this isolated) and all in all? ‘The Black Panther’ is a genuinely compelling, if not a little slow movie.

While I think the script could have maybe been a bit tighter, it has strong performances, decent act structuring and it captures the feel of the time perfectly. It would probably pair up well with the much more fictional ‘Town that Dreaded Sundown’ But I can absolutely say this one is worth a look in.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-black-panther/

I dont feel I fully understood what I was getting into with ‘Dracula (The Dirty old man)’ most writeups for it that I found were a little uncertain of what this film actually was, but when AGFA and Something Weird bought the film to bluray, a cross section of film folk I respect got very excited so I decided to take a punt, and im kind of glad I did.

Something I should probably mention up front, mainly because its a key reason as to why this film IS as liked and infamous as it is, is down to the films audio. Or rather lack there of. i’ve heard conflicting stories. With some saying they didnt record ANY audio for this production on set or location, and some people saying that they DID record audio for it, but that it was so awful in terms of the delivery and background noise, they were essentially FORCED to redo the entire audio scape in post production…and they didnt really know HOW to do that in post production. leading to an end result that sits somewhere between ‘Franky & His Pals’ and ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’

The plot follows Mike, some kind of real estate agent?…I assume? Who’s sent a mysterious message from an unknown seller who’s interested in purchasing and reopening a disused mineshaft in the middle of nowhere, and he’s called on Mike specifically to broker the deal. Mike heads out there, and on entering the mine he finds non other than the unliving, unbreathing lord of the undead Count Dracula!

Drack makes Mike an offer, either he’ll kill him outright, or he can be given the power to transform into a Jackyl man at night with superhuman powers, but less willpower than he has now. Where he’ll be tasked with bringing the count beautiful women for him to perv on and drain of blood, and in exchange any woman the count doesnt want. He’ll give to Mike to play with.

Mikes hesitent, but reluctantly accepts and the Count transforms him into the beast, rechristening this monster ‘Irving Jackylman’…and from there? we, basically enter a 40 minute loop of Mike taking a pretty girl out, transforming into Irving and then contacting Dracula who teleports them down into the mineshaft, where he fixes them to a cross, pervs on them for a bit and then drinks their blood. But as the film progresses Irving realises he’s not getting a particularly fair share, and plots to oust the pesky pervy Count once and for all!

And, quite honestly, what makes this film as entertaining as it is is purely down to the redubbing. The script itself is a SUPER high level plot of Dracula commanding a monster to bring him girls…thats the entire movie. But the redub (which feels largely improvised) adds an entirely comedic layer to the production that I feel wouldnt have been there in the original audio.

Dracula sounds like Jackie Mason for the majority of the runtime, and the whole thing is filled with bizarre and awkward improvised lines, line readings that only vaguely match whats ACTUALLY being said on screen, and more often than not. the actors ARNT even talking, they just decided to dub weird and silly improvs over the footage. While I wont personally go as far as to say its hilarious, its mesmorisingly captivating because, you have NO idea what these guys are going to say next and they DO genuinely come out with some funny stuff.

As a knock on to that though, it means there isnt really a whole lot to talk about from a script perspective, I feel like (clocking in at just over an hours runtime) it paces itself about as well as it could, the stark contrast of late 60s grimey, seedy and scratched to buggery film stock combined with the upbeat border ‘beavis and butthead’ style riffing on itself makes it feel refreshingly ahead of its time. and I had a ball just seeing where the film would go next! (It was also while watching this that I realised a couple of clips that were easter eggs on the ‘Monsters crash the Pyjama party’ dvd release were from this movie!’

Direction wise, as mentioned it feels uncannily like ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’ super basic scene building with minimal to no effect work, shots are barely in focus 90% of the time honestly and a lot of it feels like it was set up for function over form. Its rough, im not going to lie. But it at least vaguely holds together like a movie should, and even though the plot is repetative, the combination of riffing in the ADR and that simplicity just makes it get funnier every time Irving kidnaps someone.

Cine wise? its a mess, composition is basic at best and largely unfocussed (both in construction AND in the sense its super blurry) scene building is overly basic and they hang on mids and mid close ups for WAY too long, there really wasnt enough B-roll to help flesh this thing out. This combined with an edit that is impricise and feels very much thrown together, rather than considered does make this a VERY messy piece of work. But! in some regards that does lean into the films favour, making some of the gags and riffs even funnier because of how abrupt the edits are.

As for the performances…well theres only really two characters worth talking about here Vince Kelley as Dracula and Billy Whitton as Mike/Irving. I have NO idea if they got the pair back to redub their voices or if they just found someone uncredited to do it instead. But their physical performances are absolutely dire. they give either nothing, or everything and there is no middle ground…its great. And smoothing over that roughness is some super silly dubbing, Its clear by the time they were redoing the audio that everyone had realised this was never going to be taken as a serious sexy horror movie. hell, even if the comedy was intended from the get go, I dont think anyone would have bought into the other elements. And the pair embrace that, delivering 2 memorable performances that are frankly as strange as the movie itself.

As for the soundtrack? I may be misremembering. But Im pretty sure, what we have here, is a single ONE HOUR improvised jazz backing track dubbing the whole movie. there may be the occasional pause here and there. But otherwise, if you dont like Jazz with a hint of early synth work. then your gonna have a real bad time here.

I was honestly expecting this film to be a bit more ‘Pornier’ than it was. and was VERY pleasently surprised to find out that it was actually much more silly and comedic than it was erotic. I can absolutely see why Something Weird Video had some involvement in preserving and saving this movie, equally I TOTALLY understand AGFA putting it out. its a big daft film, it never quite hits the BIG big laughs. But if you like rifftrax or MST3K, and have a particular softness for ‘Manos’ I think you’ll be very pleasently surprised. Reccomended.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dracula-the-dirty-old-man/

“How much piss do these convicts HAVE?!”

I picked this film up a while ago based souly on the marketing advertising it as one of the more notorious ‘Roughie’ pictures of the 70s. Which was enough of a batsignal to pull me in, but I didnt *quite* realise what I was getting stuck into…This thing is a mess. a dirty…DIRTY mess.

The films just over an hour long and has a plot so loose its hanging around its ankles. We open on a farm with a banjo weilding title theme song that sets up all the characters, Ma and Pa are farm owners, and Pa is restless for some action with Ma, meanwhile the farmers daughters Martha, Jane and Kate are fascinated with this whole ‘Sex’ thing and regularly drop by the house to catch their own parents ‘in the act’. The local farm hand ‘Fred’ is also on the scene and wants all three of the daughters, who tease him relentlessly for it.

And based on the first 10 minutes of this film, I thought I thought I was going to be in for a fairly generic ‘farm based’ adult feature with maybe a little rough housing and mildly incestuous themes (as is expected in farm porn) But it genuinely surprised me at just how depraved the film gets in places. As what follows is an extended sequence where the daughters rape and pee on Fred, who swears revenge. only; THEN, the film cuts to 3 new characters who are escaped convicts on the run. They find the farm house, find ma and pa and decide to incapacitate Pa, so they can have their own fun (against her will) with Ma.

things pretty much devolve from there into rape based, water sport rampant, sodomizing incestuous insanity from there on in. and while a LOT of this film made me feel a bit uncomfortable, the absolute rediculousness of this film on a technical and thematic level made it genuinely too funny to turn off.

For a starters, the film itself is chaos. We open with the intros to the characters, cut to ma and pas sex scene (which repeats the same 2 minutes of sex footage out of sequence for a full 8 minutes) with AWFUL…AWFUL ADR overdubbing that sounds like two furbys having a conversation through a tin can telephone.

The film then jumps BACK in time to reshow the ma and pa sex scene from the daughters perspective, but nothing new is added apart from some footage of the daughters looking through the window and reacting to the sex. we then get the Fred rape scene, in which the actress who rapes Fred is shown either bottom half being penetrated, or top half reacting to being penetrated, but you only see a full body shot once. it’s SO weird. at first I thought the actress had quit out and they’d had to get another adult actress in to shoot the penetration scenes, but then towards the end of the scene you do get ONE full body shot of her having sex, and then it cuts back to the weird ‘top half only reaciton shots’ or ‘bottom half being penetrated’ stuff…

We then jump WAY back in time AGAIN to go through the entire films run up to this point AGAIN from the cons perspective as they flee from the law, find the daughters raping Fred, head up to the house and find Ma and Pa at it, and decide to run a train on Ma.

and what follows from that is LITERALLY all over the place. Im fairly confident the film only existed as one sentence pitches on cocktail napkins. NOONE seems to know what their lines are or how to deliver them, the writer clearly had NO idea how to structure a script because, everytime he forgets to add in something about a character, the film just…BEGINS AGAIN, from that characters perspective to add in 1 extra scene where they clarify that the character DOES know something.

The tone is bizarre flitting between graphic and unpleasent depictions of rape to utterly surreal line deliveries that literally made me wheeze laughing. I dont know what Zebedy Colt thought he was doing here. But in terms of leaving a lasting impression. He has.

The directions incredibly high level, we’re trench deep in that period of 70s adult features where everyone looks ill, even the film stock looks ill and sickly. everythings starkly overlit, and everything has a dirty seedy green and brown vibe to it. 90% of the shots here are done for function over style, Colt makes, the BIZARRE choice to shoot most of the sex scenes in 3 different styles: Top half with actors and actresses clearly gyrating on nothing, but reacting. Bottom half – which is basically just awkwardly placed, murkey, unpleasent penetration shots. and probably the least appealing of the 3 options; extreme eye shattering closeups of genitles. Im talking top to bottom, left to right, barely focussed shots of butt holes, vaginas and penises looking unclean and unpleasent. I brought a yoghurt up with me to watch with my movies tonight, its staying in its pot now.

direction of the cast seems to be nothing more than telling them bluntly what to do ‘Do her doggy style and say something like ‘Do you like piss bitch?!’..and even then the cast dont *quite* nail even that. its just…obscenely rough around the edges.

And thats not even getting into the cine, as mentioned you have the 3 different shot types for the sex scenes. But this whole thing looks atrocious, its largely shot free hand, shots are hideously composed, have no colour coordination, no attempt at visual story telling, and because of the lighting everythings blown out and its a wonder we can see anything at all.

But easily, the worst…THE WORST. part of this movie, is its edit. I thought my DVD copy of this was broken, I honestly did. So…from the top. Because they didnt shoot enough footage of the sex scenes, they just repeat the footage over and over until the ‘pop’ shot. meaning 2-3 minutes of footage can end up running for 7-9 minutes. they didnt bother recording sound during the sex scenes, so they’ve had to ADR ALL the porn scenes. I hope you like the sound of a man slurping soup directly into a microphone thats recording WAY hotter than it needs to, because that WILL be blasting out at you at an unreasonably loud volume whenever a blowjob scene happens.

The ADR doesnt always match up with whats happening on screen either, sometimes its just actors pissing about in a vocal booth saying anything that comes to mind, no matter how ludicrous or strange. (This is an element I actually really like because they’re genuinely hilarious)

The editor seemingly didnt know how to cut a narrative together, so as mentioned, the film flip flops around in time showing the same sex scenes 2- 3 times from each of the characters different angles with very little difference between each run. Theres NO attempt to try and intercut these 3 plots into one coherent story. they literally do just, restart the film every time they want to add something in.

The film will randomly cut WAY too early (mid sentence during conversations) or WAY too late leaving people just standing around. At at least two points, the film abruptly stops mid sentence and just…sits on a dirty block brown screen for 2-5 seconds before hard cutting to a totally different scene. they frequently intercut flash frames from other parts of the movie randomly into the sequence. and the finale is quite literally a seizure inducing flash frame extraviganza of ALL the footage leading up to the end of the film haphazardly thrown together with no rhyme or reason…I felt like I’d entered the 2001: A Space odyssy time tunnel…I sincerely believe this film was edited in a blender.

The cast are all manic, WAY over the top and just plain weird, which again, Is something I really enjoyed because, their delivery choices and physical presences are all SO awkward and strange, it makes simple lines instantly quotable. Not a SINGLE decent performance in the entire movie…but you want a quotably bad performance? this films got you covered.

And the soundtracks mostly banjo tunes apart from the title track which has a bonus narrator added over the top for good measure. its cut about as well as the footage, so…yeh. its WILD.

Its rare these days that I get genuinely surprised by an adult feature, and with ‘The Farmers Daughters’ I wasnt expecting anything *too* surprising. But this films genuinely nuts. I have no other way to describe it. Its the ranting incoherency of a horny HORNY man who wanted to share his pent up frustrations with the world. I could see some people calling this work offensive, but I think ‘The Sam Raimi Defence’ applies here. In the sense that this work is SO over the top and rediculous that I dont think anyone could ever take it serious, letalone an advocation.

If your into ‘Roughie’ cinema or ‘adult films’ I’d absolutely say this is worth catching at least once, it’s in the same pedigree as films like ‘Batpussy’ for just how incoherent and fever dreamy it feels. You’ll feel fine for the first 10 minutes, but just be ready for that skillet to the side of the head! its a doozy!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-farmers-daughters/

After spending most of this week in the company of Rob Zombies ‘Firefly’ trilogy, there was one question that I had burning in the back of my brain. ‘If ‘The Devils Rejects’ was so enjoyable, and ‘3 From Hell’ was so boring and generic. Was Zombies earlier direction a fluke? Or was there a definitive decline in quality? Well; I found out today that ‘Tubi’ had Zombies next ‘original’ production after his somewhat disasterous attempts at ‘Halloween’ remakes. So I figured, while im in Zombie country, why not finish off his straight horror releases…And I think its been a LONG time since i’ve been quite so dissapointed by a production.

The plot takes place over a week and follows Heidi, a local celebrity DJ and a third of Salems number 1 radio team for the area. They’re your typical, slightly obnoxious Radio hosts. But they’re open to exploring and spolighting talent, on a segment of their show they call ‘Smash or Trash’ The idea is simple enough, Heidi and co source some local bands, play there music and get people to call in calling ‘Smash’ or ‘Trash’ and if its a ‘smash’ they get more airtime and possibly an interview at the station.

Heidi and her Co-host ‘Whitey’ are responsible for picking the titles, and while finishing up the show on monday night, Heidi recieves a mysterious package, a record sealed in a hand carved wooden box, addressed to her birth name, rather than her celebrity name. Weirded out, Heidi takes it home with Whitey and the pair decide to give the record a spin. Heidi is disturbed by the music, but Whitey thinks it would be a great idea to include it in their ‘Smash’ segment, so the next night, while on the air with an expert historian on Witchcraft in Salem, the pair play the record and…strange things begin to happen.

While nothing immediate, Heidi slowly begins to become more and more unwell, the historian asks the name of the artist, only to be told its from a band called ‘The Lords’ which the hosts have instead decided to rename ‘The Lords of Salem’. And what follows is Heidi slowly falling down a surreal and strange rabbit hole into covens, witchcraft and other unusualities. While her friends around her and the historian desperately try to figure out whats happening to their friend, and more about ‘The Lords’.

And the thing is, the way this is pitched on most ‘Bio’ synopsis sites and even on the back of the box for the DVD and bluray version is ‘Local DJ gets sent a mysterious record in the mail, decides to play it on her show and accidentally awakens a coven of pissed off witches who want her dead.’ And, to me? that sounded amazing! A kind of intersect horror thriller marrying up elements of ‘Halloween 3’ and ‘It Follows’ with our DJ having to essentially go into hiding and try to find ‘The Lords’ to figure out why a load of pissed off witches want her dead now. That sounded ace!

This film however, is not. This film is Rob Zombie once again doing his ‘Big Brain’/ ‘Im SO into Horror films, LET ME SHOW YOU’ crud again. Essentially this film is a kind of reimagining/grungey reinterpretation of George Romeros ‘Season of the Witch’ but with a hardy helping of Andrzej Żuławski’s ‘Possession’ heaped in for good measure. But both feel distinctly ‘Dollar Tree-Ized’. Oh! and the 3rd act, bizarrely suddenly shifts into ‘Lair of the white worm’ terratory…I guess Zombie changed channels half way through one of his movie marathons.

The script is slow burn to the point of being immobile. A not insignificant chunk of this film is just Heidi wandering around her apartment, wandering around the town, or walking to and from work learning French. With the rest of the film essentially boiling down to just characters info dumping in very abstract and ‘spiritual’ style dialogue.

All the things I like in this film, are essentially ‘liberated’ from the films i’ve mentioned above, and whats left is an INCREDIBLY derivative film that feels like someone dumped a DVD collection into a blender and hit go. Its so bad on that front that I honestly dont know whats original film making on Zombies part, and whats just something from a horror film I havent seen thoroughly.

The tone of the film is at least somewhat consistently dark, with horror and shock being the main elements being worked on here, I did quite like the occasional peppering of lightness here, it made a contrast that I feel did help lift the production ultimately. Even if it’s ‘lifting’ was from ‘Bad’ to ‘Meh’.

I think the biggest flaw this script has (apart from the endless references to other movies) is just that the characters arnt particularly well balanced. We spend the vast majority of the film with Heidi. But as a character we dont really learn a lot about her. In fact, the film is kind of haphazard with her as a character at times making it even harder to really get a feel for exactly who she is and what her motivations are across the runtime.

A good example of that being that around the end of the first act, they just randomly drop in that Heidi is a recovering Drug addict…nothing leading up to that reveal would give any indication that the character was a drug addict…And once that ‘recovery meeting’ scene is over, we dont really hear anything about that piece of information till the end of the film when (mild spoilers that arnt really spoilers here) she has a relapse.

In fact, that was something that particularly annoyed me about this film (skip the next couple paragraphs if you dont want 3rd act spoilers). At first I thought they were going to try and play with the idea of ‘Is there an ACTUAL coven of witches trying to use Heidi as a vessle for the rebirthing of the antichrist, or is this going to flip things on its head and play around with the idea that Heidi is just an exhausted, stressed DJ dealing with a lot in the work AND home life who’s dealing with all the symptoms of withdrawal, and, on relapsing accepts her fate and ‘makes a deal with the devil’ metaphorically…

But then as the credits rolled on the film, they have a radio announcer overdub state ‘Nah, she actually WAS kidnapped and mind controlled by witches in order to rebirth the antichrist, shes ascended into hell now and 32 women committed suicide to make it happen.’ and I just felt the most pained feeling as an audience member because they had ONE good thing going for this film, the fact it could be read in two ways…But they just HAD to clarify ‘No shes the mother of the antichrist, BYE GUYS!!!’…*Sigh*

She gets a bit of a bad hand in terms of character development and actually giving us something to feel about her. But the supporting cast get an even more raw deal. Her co-hosts, who are basically supposed to be the supporting cast for this movie get a meaty 20 minutes or so across the first act, and the first half of the second act…And then they just dissapear for a HUGE chunk of the movie until near enough the end. I dont know why Ken Foree is in this movie as ‘Herman’. Other than cracking a few jokes on the show, he LITERALLY does nothing to impact the plot of this film in any way…Its wild they actually put a notable name from horror in this role because he does NOTHING. Hell…at least Petricia Quinn got a couple of moody ‘palm reader’ moments here to be fun.

Whitey is supposed to be Heidis on/off love interest here, but after the first act he basically vanishes other than a few moments at work and a couple of phone calls. I dont know anything about him, Herman OR any of the coven who appear in this movie. I know more about the Historian guest visitor and the strange heavy metal artist whos only in the film for 5 minutes, than I do about Heidis co-hosts who are supposed to be main players here…and THAT. is a problem.

Add to that, that the film itself is WAY overlong at an hour and 40 (this should have been sub 90 minutes, and EASILY could have been 70-80) and the result is a script that feels largely cribbed, with anything not borrowed badly crammed into place.

The direction kind of goes that way too, expect references within the cinematogrpahy from everything from ‘Silent Night Deadly Night 4’ to ‘Carnival of Souls’ to ‘Fire walk with me’ across the runtime. Honestly I was kind of amazed at just how much of it was visually borrowed from other films. We once again have Zombie flashing up footage from old 40s public domain flicks, it feels even MORE out of place here than it has done in all his previous movies…Once again, its derivative. with even the grander more interesting creative cinematography choices being ‘half inched’ from films like ‘Cinema Paradiso’ and ‘Dantes inferno’.

Well, Does he handle what he’s showing well? NO! because the problem is, this is all stuff borrowed from other movies and squeezed into his mould. The issue being that he’s shooting ‘because it looks cool’ rather than understanding exactly WHY the shots were shot like that in their respective original movies, quite a few shots here, had visual MEANING in the films they were taken from. it was supposed to give a visual subconcious ‘tell’ to the audience about something going on on screen. But here? Zombies just used it because it looks cool in the moment, and the result is a hollow offering for the most part, with only one or two scenes actually feeling the weight of what they’re showing.

To which end, the cine is ultimately passable, its a dingey seedy looking picture, but its kind of aiming for that, so In that regard it does well, the film does manage to balance a sense of grandness against the more ‘micro’ world that Heidi is slowly being boxed into. But its all a bit ‘by the numbers’ with the only standout shots being the aforementioned ‘lifted’ bits. The edit too kind of suffers a bit because of that, as you suddenly find yourself trying to accomodate random shot types into the scene structuring when it really doesnt work with the visual story telling at play.

Performance wise? This is essentially a character piece for Sheri Moon Zombie…and, I dont want to come across as too harsh here, but she really just, isnt the right type of actress for this kind of production. Rob Zombie clearly loves her (or, at the very least he loves her ass as its shown approximately 200 times in this movie AND in every other movie hes ever made) but I feel very much like this was a miscast. Sheri struggles with nuance. subtle micro movements within the performance that give the audience a better idea whats going on in her head. She can do extremes relatively well, but she cant work a spectrum. She can do ‘explosive’ anger, or inconsolable sadness. But ask her to dial down from there to ANY level, and it quickly becomes sub ‘The Asylum’ level fodder.

Heidi as a role required someone who could work with subtleties and give a full range of emotions across the spectrum to the part, its not enough to just get blunt melee’d with extreme emotions…Not helped either by the fact she just simply cant play genuine shock. she can do ‘Oh my god!’ shocked. But ‘head empty’/’jaw dropped’/’lost for words’ shock is something she just cannot physically show, and this film needed that range a good half a dozen times across the runtime. She just doesnt have it, she has moments where shes good! but the vast majority of the time I just really wished they’d given this role to someone able to work with and balance contrasts.

As for the rest of the cast, its a pretty open and shut case. Bruce Davison, Judy Geeson and Patricia Quinn are all great as the historian and Heidis landlords ‘Lacy’ and ‘Megan’…I just wish we got to spend a bit more time with those characters to really get under their skin, instead of being stuck with them strictly in a ‘need to know’ basis.

I dont know why they even bothered having Ken Foree and Jeff Daniel Phillips in this, Its like when Zombie started working on the script he really built them into be main players…But by the 2nd act he forgot they existed and had to hastily pick them back up in the finale. They’re totally unmemorable and get almost nothing to do in this film.

Probably the strangest performance goes to Meg Foster as Margaret Morgan, the head of the coven. Fosters performance is absolutely fine, SOLID even, i’d say shes one of the better parts of the film! But they underuse her to the point that when she does turn up, it takes you a moment to remember who she even really was, and given they do take some time to make her out to be a terrible horror from realms unknown…she basically just shuffles and cackles a bit…ocassionally she messes around with guts and gets naked… and then vanishes. I kind of wish there was more to her than that…but that was about it.

And finally, the soundtrack? drone mainly…mainly drone…a handful of jukebox tracks help give this something approaching a character…But its not enough honestly…

I think there is absolutely a great idea for a low budget indie film in here somewhere. the pitch that does the rounds online is the barest of bones to this film and I feel if it were to be reimagined, with a creative talent behind the wheel, this could be a pretty rock solid picture…Unfortunately we got Rob Zombie. and the results are a movie once again trying its best to tell the audience how much Zombie loves ‘The Incredible melting man’ and the works of ‘Ken Russell’ and does very VERY little with the original scraps presented here.

If nothing else, this film inspired me to want to go make a much better movie than this. So in that regards I have to be grateful. But I probably wont watch this one again, I absolutely cant recommend it. and I really really hope Zombie manages to get some new movies in his collection soon, because the well he’s mining from is running DRY.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-lords-of-salem/

14 years after ‘The Devils Rejects’ graced theatre screens Rob Zombie returned in what was being promised as the ‘Final chapter’ in the newly minted ‘Firefly Trilogy’ and never has the phrase ‘Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted’ been a more apt and fitting description for a piece of cinema.

I dont even really know where to begin on the woes that plagued this film from start to finish, but there were so many incidents, the blurays extra features consist of the movie (standing at damn near 2 hours) and a FOUR PART ‘making of’ series that explains EXACTLY how much this film really didnt want to be willed into existence.

Kicking things off, Sid Hague, a third of ‘The Devils Rejects’ and by FAR the most charismatic ‘heart and soul’ offering of the three, was INCREDIBLY ill, to the point that he could only appear in limited closed set footage, he passed away less than a week after the film came out. meaning the entire script had to be re-edited to hastily make use of what footage they had of him, because the studio made it VERY clear that if Spaulding wasnt in the movie, there was no movie… (essentially they shot a couple of days with him looking VERY frail in a jail cell, and used carefully framed shots of body doubles to fill in the blanks). While redistributing some of his lines to Baby and Otis and then just…making up a completely new long lost relative who takes up the remaining 3/4 of what would have been Sids lines…

At that point, production may as well have halted honestly. Captain Spaulding WAS these movies, and without him, its just not the same. On that note, production problems were aplenty, with production stopping and starting across most of 2018. And post production was equally a nightmare, with Zombie essentially deciding to just…pause doing anything on the movie for 5 months to go tour and support Maralyn Manson. Its a movie the feels like it was forced into the world against any good reason for it to ACTUALLY exist. and it shows.

The film opens with the ending footage from ‘The Devils Rejects’ and a hasty news report fills in the blanks, essentially the ‘Rejects’ were gunned down in their convertable (well…duh?) But all 3 somehow survived and spent a year in intensive care recovering from their injuries. Once they were well enough, Spaulding, Otis and Baby were put on trial for mass, mass, mass, MASS murder. And one by one the 3 were sentenced to life imprisonment. with the death penalty hung over them as some kind of brucie bonus.

As the trial goes on, its revealed that theres a big public following for the ‘3 from hell’ with popular opinion being that ‘THE MAN’ is trying to put down 3 innocent people who’s only crime was ‘STICKING IT TO THEM!’…Shortly after this, to set an example, Spaulding is sentenced to death and is murdered (Not a spoiler, this happens in the first 10 minutes of this 2 hour movie…) Otis and Baby narrowly avoid the death penalty, but both get life, and then the film flashes forwards about 10 years.

Its now 1988/1989, and Otis has had his security lowered and he’s now able to go and work on a chain gang. First day on the job, he’s…somewhat miraculously paired up with Danny Trejo (half of the ‘Unholy two’ from the last film) who has NO memory of meeting Otis, but Otis remembers him. Anyway; long story short, Otis murders the entire chain gang, Trejo included, with the help of his long lost half brother ‘Winslow’ and the pair go into hiding, with the plan to bust ‘Baby’ out of jail.

Baby meanwhile, is in jail…and, has gone totally insane. Not psychopathically insane. Im talking full blown straight jacker, jabbering incoherently, hallucinating, Ripper Roo from ‘Crash Bandicoot 2’ levels of insane. Shes been repeatedly denied parole because, in the 10 years shes been behind bars, she’s committed 158 prison offences and beat up half a dozen guards. The wardens make her life hell, but she gives as good as she gets.

and it’s here really that the film starts proper…and, disspointingly, its basically a rerun of the plot of ‘The Devils Rejects’ just with some slight plot changes. So, the rest of the first hour of the movie is Otis and Wimslow doing a ‘Home invasion’ (again) to try and intimidate and terrify the lead warden of the jail holding baby to let her go (I dont think its spoilers to tell you, they succeed) And then the second hour(ish) of the film is the reformed rejects fleeing to mexico to try and lie low. with the only new element being that One of the sons of the ‘Unholy two’ gets wind that the rejects have crossed the border, and out of vengence for his dad, he gets a team of assassins together to try and put the rejects, in the ground, once and for all.

And every single facet of this film SCREAMS “Ten years too late”. Not ONE element of this production feels like it worked in 2019, and its even worse rewatching it in 2025.

The script is a hodge podge. It feels like Zombie started with ‘The Devils Reject’ script and just took it down to its base elements and then re-wrote the dialogue. because thats basically all this is, a rerun of ‘rejects’ but longer, less fun, with older characters who dont feel quite right, and a third of the heart missing. at an hour and 55 minutes, this is painful to sit through. it isnt even really ‘slow burn’ its padding. padding in an attempt to try once again to make an ‘epic’ out of the 70s exploitation genre. It worked once, you cant re-run it and expect it to work again.

I’ve mentioned it earlier, but there is a HUGE Spaulding shaped hole in this production, and the film just cannot get past that barrier. its a difficult challenge, I think any script that had this difficulty thrown at it would have struggled. But its particularly noticable here.

The script feels like two shorter (45 minute) films stitched together with 20 minutes of loose filler stapling the two plots together. The opening home invasion segment is literally just a rerun of the motel invasion in rejects. but less interesting much slower paced, with less characters, the dialogue isnt nearly as scathing, witty or biting as ‘rejects’ it feels like Rob Zombie is ‘Tribute banding’ his own bloody films at this point. ‘D’ya remember this hit?!’ Yes Rob. Yes I do.

The second half is a little bit more fresh, trading a brothel for a Mexican ghetto. But the one thing I hated about ‘Corpses’ starts creeping back into the film around this point, and thats ‘Rob Zombie: Big brain horror fan™’ As the characters start name dropping old horror movies, clips from ‘Bela Lugosi meets a brooklyn gorilla’ and ‘The Hunchback of notre Dame’ are shown throughout the film. shots are lifted from multiple horror films of the 60s and 70s. entire plotlines and themes are stolen from some of the Corman/Poe films at one point. Its frustrating and unpleasent and reeks of a film maker who had an hours worth of original ideas and nowhere to go from there.

The pacing of this film is terrible, as mentioned it feels like an ‘Act 1’/’Act 2’ situation, and honestly? compartmentalising them into clean cut acts (with act cards) may have actually worked more in this films favour, because trying to seamlessly transition our characters from the scenario they’re in in the first hour, with the scenario they find themselves in in the 2nd, is jarring and clunky. it feels like the film has 6 acts rather than 3 (act 1: part 1, 2 and 3/act 2: part 1,2 and 3) which again, just makes the film feel like it drags on for a month and year. The Devils rejects could have been 15 minutes shorter and been basically perfect. this film could lose an hour and it’d make NO difference to the core story…and thats BAD…REALLY BAD.

The tones a bit all over the place too, if ‘House’ was a 60/40 horror comedy, ‘Devils’ was a straight horror with thriller/action elements and a sprinkling of humour throughout, this is just an A>B clean cut bloody horror/action film…and thats about it. guns and goring…thats all there is…just guns, goring and in the 3rd act some nudity. and it feels WEIRD that its that way, because the dark humour and the thriller elements have been so embedded into this series from the start, it’d be a bit like if they made a Childs play film and Chucky didnt get a single gag in the whole thing. ITS WEIRD.

Not helped either by the concious decision to write the characters a strikingly different to how they were in previous entries. Im not going to comment on Sid Hagues development of Spaulding because…the guy was LITERALLY dying and has 2 minutes of screentime…But Otis has gone from weird ‘charles manson’ esq philosophical sexual cult killer in ‘House’, to a dryer, but still somewhat philosophical and rapey murderer in ‘Rejects’ to…basically just a quippy guy who starts conversations with people to just brickwall them and then stab them…thats no fun.

Baby by contrast went from a sociopathic psycho killer femme fatale who used her body and bambi eyes to lure people into a false sense of safety, then kills them horrendously, to a more muted, but still fairly femme fatale psycho in ‘Rejects’ to just…a dirty…dirty hippie psycho who spends most of the runtime just rambling incoherently and murdering anyone who walks near her.

The degredation of these characters means, I dont really feel like im watching the same people anymore. Some people could argue there was a weird shift in genre,tone and character profile between ‘House’ and ‘Rejects’. But the jump in tone and character profile between ‘Rejects’ and ‘3 from’ is an absolute gulf! its unbelievable. and a major MAJOR downgrade truthfully.

In amongst all of this you also have the addition of Richard Brake as long lost family member Wimslow. I mean no disrespect because Brake plays it about as well as its given. But this character is a placeholder. he has no distinctive charm or style, no unique personality traits. It feels like he’s literally only here because Hague isnt. and you cant call the film ‘3 from hell’ if theres only 2 of them. So he’s filling in the ‘Mike the cool person’ of this movie.

I guess what im trying to say is a good hour of the opening of this film is dry and repetative, the 2nd half does *try* to do something a *bit* new. it has a few peppered moments that were fun, but it absolutely wasnt worth the hour and 40 minutes to get to that point, and the ending, rather than feeling like a finale to a trilogy 18 years in the making, instead feels like a film maker abandoning his script midway through a sentence. its very dissapointing.

On the direction front, im going to keep it short, but bittersweet. This feels like Rob rewatched ‘The Devils Rejects’ and then, while not giving this film his full attention, he just tried to redo what he did there here. And the result is a film that at times feels lower quality visually than an ‘Asylum’ studios attempt at making ‘The Devils Rejects’ shots are lazy, halfway through the film they suddenly decide they want to try and reintroduce neon and vivid colour usage (last seen in ‘House’) which comes out of nowhere and feels VERY shoehorned in after everything that comes before it. the style doesnt quite feel as coherent and consistent as ‘Rejects’ had for a vision. It honestly feels like the director lost his way midway through production, and just…couldnt get his thread back.

Direction of the cast too isnt the greatest, 50% of this movie is just people sat around lethargically ‘shooting the shit’ you could have told me those scenes were just the actors trying to decide what they were going to do for ther weekend, and i’d believe you. 25% of this is…not even hammy, just badly acted aggressive mutilation and threatening scenes. and 25% is semi decent, but not particularly remarkable fight scenes. and again, I cannot stress this enough. IN UNIVERSE, these characters have been in solitary for 10 years. they should be frail and out of shape for the most part. I have NO idea how Otis is able to go toe to toe with so many people, sometimes 30 years his junior and display incredible knife skills…when the guy was literally a backwater hillbilly who kidnapped and screwed cheerleaders for most of the first film…suddenly his fecking RAMBO…Everyone delivers their lines a bit dryly, people seem to go where they want with limited on screen instruction…its messy and not very clean creatively.

The cine isnt great either, they’ve toned back the seizure inducing editing from ‘Rejects’ (for the most part) which im grateful for…But in its place instead are long LONG minimally edited scenes of just backing and forthing dialogue that reads like an Amdrams 3rd year final theater piece featuring ‘old folks trying to find their place in the world’. Composition is overly basic, with only the fight scenes really getting any kind of upgrade on the visuals front, but even thats hamstrung by the return of the violent editing. Its…just…dull. not bad, not great…boring.

Performance wise? honestly? ‘phoned in’ is about as good as it gets. Bill Mosely and Sheri Moon Zombie both feel like they’re along for the ride because ‘its work’ and they get a paid vacation for a few weeks to hang with their friends. their deliveries dont have that manic sincerity they had in previous entires, and they just kind of feel done with the roles…im sure they’d love the opportunity to cameo in another Zombie movie…but im pretty confident this is the last time we’ll see another ‘firefly’ film.

The supporting cast, are probably some of the better aspects of this production. arguably some of the best to come from this trilogy even…with Jeff Daniel Phillips as the Warden getting a good range to work with as his happy homelife is rudely interrupted. Emilio Rivera as the son of the ‘unholy two’ bringing a cold bluntness, and most importantly ENERGY to proceedings which really did help pump up the final act a bit. and Pancho Moler as Sebastian (a handyman working the complex the gang lie low in) getting a REALLY solid turn to explore some emotional ranges not really seen in any of the other movies…Though this is spoiled somewhat if you remember that a similar plotline was explored in ‘Todd Brownings: Freaks’ and then you remember BIG BRAIN ZOMBIE cant keep his silent era feelings in his goddamn pants.

The scores awful. just awful. its another jukebox attempt, but it feels like bargain basement cuts, rather than the prime ones in the previous film. the incidental music is totally unmemorable. it feels thrown together, and non of it really works…It feels..rushed.

Had Zombie jumped on this project in say…2013/2014, with Sid Hague in situe…AND he ACTUALLY focussed on giving us something that felt like a logical extension and development of these characters, rather than some kind of weird repackaging of the old film with different bells and whistles on it. It could have been a fantastic way to close off this story. as it stands it came out about 10 years too late, with a third of the cast missing and it just feels rushed and poorly put together. Like Zombie realised he didnt have that much time left to finish this, but rather than measure twice cut once to actually try and finish this trilogy off with something that sat like a weight in the audiences stomach, he didnt measure at all and just tried to cut once…and, in my opinion, thats what killed it. 3 From Hell is a poor end to the ‘Firefly’ trilogy…I only rewatched it this time because I wasnt on Letterboxd when I last watched it. And it’ll be a long LONG time before I put this one back in my player again. Stick with ‘House’ and ‘Rejects’ they’re a near perfect pairing and ‘Rejects’ ends the story in a way that this film couldnt have begun to match…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/3-from-hell/1/

Somehow less disgusting, less degrading and more comforting than watching the inauguration…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/salo-or-the-120-days-of-sodom/2/

‘The Devils Rejects’ marks the second theatrical outing for artist, musician and the worlds renowned horror fanboy ‘Rob Zombie’. And its essentially a sequel to his first venture ‘House of 1000 Corpses’ Though, somethings changed in the 2 and a bit years since ‘House’ hit theaters…It seems lessons were learnt and craft developed…

The plot picks up about 12 months or so afte the events of ‘House’ and the family are still grillin and killing out in the backwaters. But their harmonious slashing fare is going to be rudely interrupted when armed troopers storm their shack, murder most of the family barring Baby, Otis and Tiny, and take Mother Firefly into custody.

From there, the film is essentially an ‘on the run’ picture, with 3 main storylines running across the full runtime taking up equal parts of the screentime.

At first, Otis and Baby make it out of the shack alive, they cant find Tiny, so they decide to hit up their dad ‘Captain Spaulding’ who is MUCH more prominent here than in ‘Corpses’. Spaulding leaves his latest hookup and tells the two to head to a motel where they’ll reconvene. Meanwhile, the cops begin to investigate the property and find 75 corpses they can identify, alongside all manner of other gruesome bodyparts and a mass grave…But they also find diaries documenting ALL the killings the family have done over the years, and most importantly photographic evidence linking Spaulding to the crimes as well.

The police and media go into overdrive, organising a manhunt to take the gang in, Our posse meanwhile arrive at a motel to wait for Spaulding, and its here really where the first plotline starts up. A travelling cross country band are stopping at the motel, and Otis and Baby essentially hold them hostage in a kind of ‘motel invasion’ scenario while they wait. Otis takes a couple of the guys out to the desert to help him dig up some guns they buried for just such an occasion…and I wont go into too much detail because I dont want to spoil anything, but its a bit of a ride.

Eventiually Spaulding turns up and the gang head out to a brothel to try and lie low. The cops however have started to piece together a bit of timeline for our villains, and one particular cop, Sheriff Wydell is particularly invested in bringing the family to justice, hiring two vigilantes called ‘The Unholy two’ to track the gang down and bring them to him for ‘interrogation’.

while these plotlines are going on, we also have several interrogation scenes with Mother firefly as the sheriff tries to get information out of her…and eventually finds out more than he would have liked to have heard.

Probably my biggest issue I had with ‘Corpses’ was that Rob Zombie is (as mentioned) a HUGE horror fanboy, and that man just could NOT resist trying to show HOW much his big sexy horror brain knew about horror 1930 – 1979. and it impacted the film, it felt like someone just rented a stack of movies, watched through them, stole the best bits of all of them and rolled them up (unchanged and with minimal modernising) into just one film that jumped all over the place and was quite uneven.

Well, ‘The Devils Rejects’ feels like something of an improvement. Rather than just blatently lifting 3 dozen of the finest grindhouse scenes and shoving them all into one movie. Zombie here has instead decided to just cut out the middle man and has largely just HIRED these actors from these 60s and 70s horror movies to just BE in his movie. with Sid Hague obviously making his return, alongside Ken Foree, Michael Berryman and Bill Mosely.

He’s paired back on the ‘direct lifts’ and is instead going more for an attempt at matching the style and pacing of a 70s grindhouse film, rather than just referencing them. But with the twist of that gory, over the top violence coming in to try to show and do, what those in the 70s could not.

And I think it largely succeeds with that, the references and tones in the script for this one are MUCH more paired back and subtle. Theres a much greater emphasis tonally on giallo and euro horror than slashers. And I think doing that has really helped lift this film. Its still quite referential, but they’re better hidden and not as intense. and I like it for that.

So, the script itself is pretty okay. I like that the plot has a bit more variety over the last film. the ‘motel invasion’ storyline was compelling and interesting, the subplot with the sheriff hunting the gang down was enaging and at times had me on the edge of my seat, and I think its nice to see these characters who were comfortabley in their domain in the first film, get thrust into uncertainty at multiple points, and even find themselves on the back foot a few times.

This film feels much less like a conventional horror and much more like a set of character pieces that just so happen to have horror wrapped around it. and I feel like that suits Zombies tone much better. Its clear he likes the Captian, Baby and Otis. So being able to just solely give them 110 minutes to really bed in, build personalities beyond their psychotic fronts and have ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ not only helps better define these characters, but helps the audience better engage with them and take them on boad, they’re certainly not anti heros. But in doing this, they do somewhat soften the characters, it shows that, despite their circumstances, they are a close knit family unit who would literally die for each other.

While this film IS much more focussed however on what it wants to show and tell, I do rather feel a sacrifice of that is the wider universe. ‘House’ went out of its way to show the limitations of communications back in the 70s, but used it as a worldbuilding element connecting our teens to their parents and by proxy, the police. Here? the world feels a lot more closed off, essentially the majority of the plot follows the gang, or the cops and that lack of outside worldbuilding is a shame, as it feels like the films somewhat more closed down as a result. With only the occasional media and news report offering any kind of idea as to whats actually going on out there.

On the whole though? this is a pretty solid script, I feel it maybe overstays its welcome by about 15 minutes, but Zombie wanted a ‘Grindhouse’ exploitation epic and by GOD that IS what this IS. The act structuring is fairly tight with nice transitions between the plot threads, the second act once again does seem to droop a little, but not to the extend of ‘House’ and the end result is a somewhat pacy, if not incoherent at times piece that manages to keep the audience constantly second guessing whats going to happen next, right up to the final act. Which was another thing I appreciated, because with ‘House’ you could basically predict the full plot rundown after watching for 5 minutes and probably be pretty much bob on. This, is a little more original in places.

The pacing runs at a clip (saggy 2nd act aside) and it ends about as solidly as it could possibly have ended…Though, they do some soundwork which I feel is a little TOO heavy handed and on the nose. they basically do overkill to remove ambiguity…and i’d have preferred a more stripped back approach.

Probably my favourite shift for this film over the last one is we’ve now swung WAY WAY into the realms of ‘Horror’ from the ‘Horror comedy’ of the last film. This one now is really more a ‘Horror exploitation’ piece, that just so happens to have one or two dark comedy moments in place. Rather than comedy being a prominant part. I think it not only massively benefits the film to pivot in that direction, but in doing so it really helps feed the 70s aesthetic attempt, creating something that, at times feels more like an ACTUAL 70s exploitation flick than anything Tarantino has managed in his career.

Speaking of, The direction is a bit of a mixed bag. While I think they largely nail the 70s aesthetic and produce something that definitely has the soul of 70s exploitation at its core, AND I have to say im incredibly grateful they’ve toned down the ‘music video’ influences here (no more negative film shots and VHS shot footage has been massively toned down to now only the ‘news broadcast’ segements. with some scenes even getting the 8mm treatment to help sell the 70s style even more) It is a bit of a dogs dinner of an assembly at points, particularly moments in the motel raid sequence. it felt like they didnt really know how to show the fear, rush and terror of the gang storming the place, so they just shot it from every conceivable angle and then, using ultra quick cuts, just shoved as much of it on screen as possible. This ‘quick cut’ style was common for the time, but rather than give me the sense of panic and fear, it just makes me feel a bit nauseus and confused as to what im actually looking at. Moments like that are quite prominent throughout…which is a shame.

However! the tasteful use of mixed media and formats to increase impact, and a clear sharp focussed vision on what he wanted to get out of the story and the characters journies absolutely helps lift this produciton above and beyond ‘House’ in my opinion. It may not be as varied or stylish. But it KNOWS what it wants to be and makes NO mistakes about finding its identity. Which I have a lot of respect for.

Same goes for direction of the cast. It feels like Zombie worked VERY closely with the core cast here to help them understand the characters, and once they were on board, he allowed them to experiment and shape them into what made it on screen. its wonderful seeing these characters, who we only had fleeting encounters with in the first film, slowly become fully fleshed out beings across the runtime and by the end of the film, to see that complexity hit the audience back in a quite memorable finale, was a great feeling.

The cines much the same as the direction honestly, while MASSIVELY toned down on the colour and visual front from ‘House’, ‘Rejects’ manages to carve its own identity into the cine with mixed to positive results. when it hits, its iconic and representative of the decade. when it misses, its a largely incoherent mess. Shots do seem to have thought put into them across the sequence building. But there are moments where it really feels like Zombie just frustratingly dumped all the shots on the timeline, shoved them together and called it a day.

Im not entirely smitten with the colour choices here, this was the era where horror basically went the colour of ‘Mud & Blood’ I was a fan of houses dedication to effective colour use, so to me this does feel like a bit of a backslide. But then, because of the tonal shitft, I dont feel like excessive neon colour usage would have helped this production, and may have in fact felt out of place. I guess what im saying is, im not a fan of this eras colour grading, and im not a huge fan of it in this film…But at the same time, It is one of the few examples of the era where it actually DOES kind of suit what the films trying to do and say.

Which leads me into the edit, which isnt as tight as ‘House’ either, but again, much like the cine, when it hits. it’s PERFECT. absolutely nailing not just the 70s aesthetic brief. But giving us some cuts that a nothing short of cinematically astounding. Its just a shame that so much of this film feels thrown together at times, as with just a little more patience to unpick that frenzy, we could have had the horror of the decade on our hands here.

As for the performances? Much like ‘House’ this is really more of a character piece film for Shery Moon, Bill Mosely and Sid Hague, and each and every one of them deserved every award going that year. ASTOUNDING is too small a word honestly. they FULLY embrace the characters and create some of the greatest performances of the decade in horror. Every moment they’re on screen, they’re tornados. and seeing their manic and totally unpredictable energy leave devestation in their wakes, only to be followed up with some genuinely heartening and touching moments. is just crazy to see honestly. they’re incredible. And I think this film may well be the performances of all their respective careers.

As for the score? Its a jukebox soundtrack for the most part, 70s hits ranging from ‘Lynard Skynard’ to ‘Boz Skaggs’ and every hit in between. I love 70s music generally, so I really had a bop to this one…By this point in time, while the ‘jukebox soundtrack’ wasnt ENTIRELY new…It was still a somewhat fresh concept, and I think its handled especially well here. with the final scene in particular being incredibly well handled and leaving a lasting impression on me.

While ‘House of 1000 Corpses’ was trying to go grand pulling from here, there and everywhere to create a messed up semi psychadelic fever dream of a picture. ‘The Devils Rejects’ feels like the kind of movie thats trying to do a set number of things as close to ‘perfect’ as possible, rather than trying to spin EVERY plate. and I honestly think in that regard, it largely succeeds. If the worst thing I can say about this film is that its a bit overlong and in places still doesnt feel *entirely* original…then in my opinion, we’re on to a good thing.

I’d say you do need to see ‘House of 1000 corpses’ to really embrace this production. But if you have seen it, then this absolutely should be your next port of call. Just be aware that this IS a much less comedic, much less surreal, much more grounded horror film with one or two dark comedy moments sprinkled in, and I think you’ll have a hell of a time. A genuinely impressive work. I really need to revisit this one more often…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-devils-rejects/

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/