Today's Review: House Of 1000 Corpses
Starring: Sid Haig, Karen Black, Bill Moseley
Written and Directed by: Rob Zombie
Rating: 1.5 out of 5.
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The Naked Critic
"Dead I am the rat, feast upon the cat
Tender is the fur, dying as you purr"
Rob Zombie is a weird dude. The above lyric, from his song "Dragula",
doesn't really do anything to make you think otherwise. Now, there's nothing
wrong with being weird. Hell, ask any of my friends, colleagues, or
acquaintances about me, and "Weird" will be one of the first words
they use (Along with "Cranky", "Angry", and
"Drunk")
Now, this isn't an indictment of Mr. Zombie. I'm not saying he's, say, Ed Gein
weird, but he's definitely a little out there. And I should also qualify this
by saying that I'm a bit of a Rob Zombie fan. There's no denying the
intelligence at work...he's one of the most eloquent people I've ever heard
speak, and he's right at the top of my list of people I'd like to interview.
But he's weird. And he's proven it with House Of 1000 Corpses, an unholy orgy
of disturbing imagery and recycled plot presented with an almost psychotic
glee.
Zombie's a confessed fan of horror films. And, to be honest, so am I. These are
my guilty pleasure. I'm actually looking forward to seeing "Freddy Vs.
Jason" this weekend, so I figured I'd watch "House Of 1000
Corpses" to get me in the mood. I shouldn't have bothered. In a nutshell,
it's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" only with more gore and less
chills. Frankly, I expected a lot more from a guy named "Zombie".
Set in the '70's, the movie starts with your standard 4 young people on a
cross-country road trip. The purpose of this trip is to set them up as victims
for a murderous inbred family of maniacs, but, being movie characters, they
don't know this. They think they're writing a book about unusual roadside
attractions. They stop for gas at Captain Spaulding's, which is probably their
first mistake.
Let me describe Captain Spaulding for you, because I don't want you to conjure
up lovable images of Groucho Marx chomping on a cigar and one-lining his way
through "Animal Crackers". Nope, this Captain Spaulding is a clown
who would make John Wayne Gacy quiver with fear. He's quite honestly the
scariest part of the movie.
Now to be fair, I should mention that I have a life-long fear of clowns.
Whenever they appeared on "Sesame Street" I'd run screaming out of
the room and hide my face, trying to mentally prevent my bladder from
exploding. (And all the while, I WASN'T scared of 7-foot tall birds,
obsessive-compulsive vampires, or gay muppets with pigeon fetishes. I don't
pretend to understand WHY it was the CLOWNS that scared me.) A few years ago, I
was sharing an apartment with a very attractive young woman who works as a
birthday clown. As I came out of my room, she was getting ready, meaning she
was walking around in a bra and panties wearing full clown make-up. It took my
libido three full months to recover from this, but as it turned out I had no
need for my libido during those three months, so I was fine.
But back to the movie. Spaulding's establishment is a combination gas station,
museum of the macabre, amusement park ride, and chicken joint. I don't know how
he got the zoning permit to allow all four of these businesses to co-exist
under one roof, but he did. Perhaps psychotic clowns are really savvy
businessmen. At any rate, he's got a successful business, and AAA rates his
fried chicken as the best in the state according to their 1977 guide, so he's
doing something right.
So the two dudes in this quartet naturally think this is the greatest place on
earth. In fact, by the looks of them, if there was some Michelob and a few
20-sided dice lying around, they'd probably move in. Instead, they pester this
clown-dude into telling them the legend of "Doctor Satan", a
mad-scientist type who had terrorized the area before being killed by a lynch
mob years before. Dumb and Dumber think about this for a moment;
"Hmmm...we're in the middle of nowhere, in some dive town, with our
reluctant girlfriends, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a teeming
thunderstorm, talking to a profane, unstable clown, and he's telling us about a
homicidal maniac that was murdered...let's check it out!" This bugs
me...in real life these guys wouldn't HAVE girlfriends.
Soooo, they pick up a hitch-hiker, and the car breaks down, and they wind up in
a house with a family of murderous maniacs...yadda yadda yadda.
It's not that the movie is "bad" in a
Gigli-or-anything-else-starring-Jennifer-Lopez sort of way. It's derivative.
Zombie's a long-time fan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and it shows. Now, he
didn't rip off TCM per-se (I can use the short-form TCM...we're friends), what
he ripped off almost whole-heartedly was 1994's Return Of The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre, starring a then-unknown Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellweger.
If you haven't seen either (and I bet you haven't) TCM is actually a
brilliantly frightening movie, made with almost no budget and with a surprising
lack of blood and gore, as well as less actual violence than you'd think. For
me, it's right up there with Romero's original "Night Of The Living
Dead" in terms of effective, scary filmmaking with a limited budget. It
also features a very young John Larroquette as the narrator!
RTCM is a crappy rip-off of that movie, with more violence, gore, and less
actual thrills. If you're one of the millions of people who thinks McConaughey
is a terrible, wooden actor, you should SEE how bad he is as a hyperactive
psychopath! The only saving grace is the sight of the gorgeous,
less-bony-than-now Zellweger spending most of the movie in the sexiest
geek-glasses I've ever seen.
House Of 1000 Corpses is, in essence, a shitty version of RTCM.
And Zombie's no stranger behind the camera. He's directed most or all of his
own music videos, and he utilizes a very distinct visual style. It's a lot of
quick cuts that show old-looking clips filtered through primary colours. It's
really cool in a 4-minute music video, but in a 90-minute movie, it wears out
its welcome quickly.
Having said all that, there's some fun stuff in the movie. Sid Haig as
Spaulding and Bill Moseley as Otis (The McConaughey role) are both pretty good.
Balancing them out, however, is Sheri Moon - Zombie's girlfriend - as Baby.
She's got a laugh more annoying than Janice from Friends and - acting or not -
you start to regret seeing her on screen at ANY time, no matter how hot she is.
Meanwhile, Karen Black is everything that Karen Black ever was...which is
harmless and easily forgotten.
It's also incredibly violent and profane. You get the feeling that Zombie is
replacing substance with grotesquely violent acts and more swearing than a
season of The Sopranos. It's occasionally effectively disturbing, but more
often pointless.
The DVD extras are interesting, but not interesting enough to recommend. You've
got the standard commentary, which is okay. Other than that, it's filler.
Pointless interviews with cast members, behind the scenes shots, etc. There's
even one segment in the Special Features called - and I swear I'm not making
this up - "Tiny Fucked A Stump". This is consists of Haig, Moseley,
and Moon in character milling around and telling knock-knock jokes, all of
which end with "Tiny Fucked A Stump!" Oh, and they don't always get
it right. Your guess is as good as mine, quite frankly.
One very cool thing about the DVD though, is that characters in the film host
the menus. If you want a real laugh, fire up the DVD and don't pick
anything...you'll see Captain Spaulding get more and more impatient with you as
he waits for you to choose. This, sadly, is the best part of the DVD.
One thing I did learn - or that Zombie will have you believe - is that the
movie already has a cult following, with people attending screenings dressed
in-character. Now, even the most die-hard Rocky Horror Picture Show fanatic
will admit that the movie itself sucks...it's the experience of going to the
theatre, in costume, and shouting back to the screen that's fun. If House Of
1000 Corpses ever reaches that level of fandom, I'll check it out again to see
what they've done with it. As for right now...stick with Return Of The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre. It's marginally better, and Renee Zellweger really does look
hot. I'd rather see her than a fat, bald, profane clown any day.
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