La Maison des 1000 morts

I already had a user comment for "House of a 1.000 Corpses" submitted here on this site, dated over a year ago and…um…not very praising. In fact, my first viewing of this film was so disappointing that I excessively discouraged other people here to see it. Rather than to simply ignore the old comment and pretend I never bashed it, I wish to write a new – more positive – review, if it were only to convince other people (who also disliked at first) to give it a second change. Several factors (like the praising reviews on "The Devil's Rejects"-sequel and conversations with fellow horror fans) nearly forced me to re-watch "House of a 1.000 Corpses" and I'm glad I did. This truly is a film that requires multiple viewing before one can properly judge it. Rob Zombie's style is often innovating and so overwhelming that it might look overly hectic at first but, in reality, his dedication towards obscurity and his knowledge on classic cinema is one of the best things that could ever happen to the horror genre. And that is something you (or at least I) have to discover with repeated viewings…

The power of this film lies in the fact that the screenplay covers all kind of successful horror premises. Serial killers, mad doctors, a family of crazies, deranged clowns, devil-worshipers….you name the type of terror and "House of a 1.000 Corpses" features it! This movie is a small revival of the entire horror genre all by itself. No extended and boring intros or pointless red herrings in this film, "House…" is straightforward and surefooted sickness from start to finish and you're given almost no time to breathe. Some of the sequences in this film are so damn close to brilliant that I can't possibly figure out why I didn't love them right away!! The execution-scene guided by the moody "I Remember You"-song, for example, is amazingly atmospheric and quite unsettling. Although Rob Zombie's directing skills are still open for improvement (the abrupt climax, overly rough editing), his debut is a staggering gorefest that every horror fan has to experience…repeatedly! Bring on the sequel…I'm ready now!!

Now, let's not get carried away here: is this the best horror flick ever? Not that I've seen. Does it sometimes trip over the fine line between scares and laughs? Sure. Will it remind people of certain other movies? Probably. But bottom line, is this movie a blast? Absolutely.

Writer/director Rob Zombie's music has always had a kind of comic book/horror movie sensibility which he translates into his screen project, a tribute to the pioneering take-no-prisoners classics of the 1970's like "The Hills Have Eyes" and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," in fact a prominent role is played by Bill Moseley of "TCM II." We're informed at the outset that it's Halloween Eve 1977 in some one-horse town in an unspecified region of the country (which of course allows each actor to use any accent he or she likes, even within the same household). The chief attraction of this town seems to be a "horror museum" run by a Captain Spaulding (who bears no resemblance to Groucho Marx) played by veteran B-movie stalwart Sid Haig, whom I recall from way the hell back in "Busting" as the big menacing bald guy. He's still big and bald but not so much menacing as jovially deranged with undercurrents of menace (and lots of make-up). After a delightfully overwritten robbery sequence involving a couple of local yokels, four fresh-faced young people with one foot in the grave show up at the museum, setting in motion a series of unpleasant events.

No particular reason to dwell on the plot, especially if you've seen "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and/or it's sequels. It's the tried-and-true damsels (and their boyfriends) in distress. (We even get a pack of cheerleaders thrown in as a bonus. Apparently people have been going missing in this town but back in the Seventies the term "serial killer" was waiting to be invented, so no squads of Feds and profilers have arrived.) For movies like this to work, the actors have to be on the same page in tone; aside from Haig and Moseley I barely knew anyone except Walt Goggins from TV's "The Shield" and of course Karen Black, whose performance is the only one that doesn't quite click. It's like she's playing a whack job where the others are just being whack jobs. (But if they ever wanted to remake "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane," there's your girl!) In terms of direction, Zombie takes a kind of kitchen-sink approach; some of it reminded me of Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" and others of that ilk, with the eye-blink jumping to and from videotape, color variations, flashback and/or fantasy, etc. Some of the editing's a little too jumbled in the modern trend of trying to obscure what's happening, although not to the "Darkness Falls" degree of complete chaos. (I'm old-fashioned, I still think the best way to scare you with something in a movie is just train the camera on it so you can see it coming at you with no way to escape.) But Mr. Zombie has a nice feel for where to put the camera and how to move a scene along. Some of his sequences have a kind of sinister poetry to them, like when the two deputies go checking out the homestead from hell, the kind of setup we've seen in how many shlock items (I just saw one in a recent victim of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew) but in this case Zombie replaces all sound with a Slim Whitman tune (we recall how Whitman's voice was enough to slay big-brained Martians a while back) and holds the final crane shot an audaciously long time. Then once the coffin gets lowered into the water towards the end, "House" kicks into overdrive and from then on if there's nothing in the movie that spooks you, then maybe you're unspookable. I know a lot of that imagery will be lingering with me for a while, such as Fish Boy.....

Ordinarily I try to ignore a movie's external circumstances and go by what's on the screen in front of me but in this case it's pointless to pretend this movie has not been in limbo for three years due to it's supposedly violent content. I've read it had to be cut to make the R rating, although I really can't see how an NC-17 would've hurt it; people will go see it partly because it's by Rob Zombie and it's said to be gory and for those put off by such factors, an R rating won't make them less put off. "Hey, honey, it's an R now--forget the babysitter, let's bring the kids!" I've also read Zombie was satisfied with the released version. As released, there's really nothing there you haven't seen before in some form or other; some gore fans may even feel let down, but of course there's always the DVD. I think that had it been released as made three years ago without all the hype, with the chance to "sneak up on" us, it would've been even more effective. But maybe that's what the studio feared? Well, Mr. Movie Mogul, if you're going to commission the guy from White Zombie to do a horror flick, what exactly do you anticipate as a result? Please either defecate or get off the toilet....

Hard to nail down a favorite moment with this one, but it's hard to resist picking the youngsters getting abused in their bunny suits. It's visually striking, it's unusual, it's blackly funny and also somewhat unsettling the more you think about it. When we watch a horror flick, what exactly are we anticipating? Is the one-sided nature of the conflict (overwhelming villain, hapless or helpless victim) part of the appeal for us? Do we "identify with" the chaser or the chasee? Should we feel a little ashamed of ourselves afterwards? Or, as Captain Spaulding put it, are these just a bunch of jack-ass questions?

Great soundtrack, I may have to buy it....

Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) is a foul-mouthed clown owner of the "Museum of Monsters and Madmen" and "Fried Chicken and Gasoline". On October 30, 1977, Spaulding shoots a bunch of holdup guys. Jerry Goldsmith (Chris Hardwick), Bill Hudley (Rainn Wilson), Mary Knowles (Jennifer Jostyn), and Denise Willis (Erin Daniels) are traveling the country investigating weirdness. Spaulding shows the group his roadside show and tells them about Dr. Satan. They go in search of the hanging tree where they hanged Dr. Satan. They pick up hitchhiker Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie). Their tires get popped and they end up with Baby's family.

I like directer Rob Zombie's weird outsider style. It's over-stylized Grindhouse. I just think that writer Rob Zombie needs help pulling all the craziness together into a coherent compelling plot. He needs to figure out rooting interest, and how to create tension. This is a bit of a mess but it's a fascinating mess.

This is the first movie rob zombie ever made. While he would go on to make better movies, This was a great horror movie. Captain Spaulding is easily the most terrifying part of this movie. I kind of wished they had focused on him, and his museum of monsters and mad men more than on the fireflies.

I have to ask because it seems that I'm not a true horror movie fan if I don't like this movie. Thats a load of crap. I have seen all the Nightmare on Elm Streets, Halloweens, Friday The 13ths, Hellraisers, Evil Deads, etc. etc. I like film directors like John Carpenter, Wes Craven, George A. Romero, Eli Roth. I've seen some obscure horror films too, like Blood Beach, The Company Of Wolves and even seen The Last House On the left (even though I didn't like it that much).

Problem I had with this film was it was too sadistic for its own good (the "bunny" killing scene especially made my blood turn cold), the villains antics grew tiresome, and THAT scene where the gun was held on the guy's head was JUST TOO LONG. No matter how stylish it was meant to be, it was just a director letting the scene run for too bloody long!

That said, I didn't totally dislike this movie. I could see that Rob Zombie has an obvious fondness for the horror movie and he set out to create a familiar story with his own sadistic and creative additions. The film was effective at making me wonder if the actors playing the villains were really acting or not, they did seem genuinely disturbed. However, the victims were kind of ho hum.

The production design of the film looked impressive too, with a lot of visual points of references to horror clichés.

Main problem was that I didn't really enjoy watching it, and I grew bored with it in its latter stages. It was shocking (in parts) just for being shocking and was just a film made by an amateur film maker (albeit an obviously enthusiastic one)