House of 1000 Corpses

This zombie not featured prominently.

"Life and Death are Meaningless...And Pain Is God."

Always one for subtlety that Rob Zombie. Anyway welcome to the spooky conclusion of my October reviews! Today I will round out this celebration of spook by talking about one of my favorite terrible horror movies that's great because of how completely ridiculous it is. Obviously this is going to be a Rob Zombie movie I'm talking about (see also here and here) in this case his directorial debut, House of 1000 Corpses. Though it may be his first, This movie bears all the great hallmarks of Zombie's films, including lots of gore, intense and overbearing background music and soundtrack, Syd Haig doing random shit, and Sheri Moon Zombie being naked on camera, and dressed in a bunch of kinky outfits. Sound familiar? Well YEAH IT IS, but there's so much more to enjoy! You ain't seen nothin' yet. House of 1000 Corpses starts with an almost completely irrelevant scene where two assholes try to rob Captain Spaulding's Museum of Monsters and Madmen. It doesn't work out so great and they both end up getting shot. Later two dumbasses named Jerry and Bill stop in with their girlfriends Mary and Denise because they're trying to write a guide of off-beat tourist attractions, because they're douchebags. On Spaulding's tour they learn about Dr. Satan, a crazy guy who used crude brain surgery to try and make an army of super-soldier zombies, which sounds a lot like the plot of Frankenstein's army actually, a really gross C-budget movie you can see on Netflix ANYWAY. The two assholes decide they just have to find the tree where this guy was hung, so they go driving out into the middle of nowhere in a thunderstorm, and nothing bad happens and they all make it home.

Just tryin' to have a good time man.

OF COURSE NOT, I'm just fucking with you, they pick up hitchhiker Baby (Sheri Moon) on the way and then their tires get shot out by her hiding brother. They don't realize that though, and so let the same guy tow their car to Baby's spooky backwoods house, where they get to meet the fam. That is to say their weirdly sexual mom, crazy gross grandpa, mutated other brother and of course Otis, who is insane and kidnapped, tortured and murdered a bunch of cheerleaders (well I guess he didn't do it all by himself, but he definitely took point). Geniuses that they are, the gang decides to hang out for dinner and a show, until Mary pisses off the family by getting upset that Baby is flirting with... Bill why not who cares. The gang leaves the house, and is immediately jumped and knocked out. Most of them wake up the next morning beat up and tied up. Not Jerry, he gets vivisected by Otis, but you know, the rest of them. What follows is a lot of screaming, running, stumbling, bleeding and dying. You know how this shit always goes. If you were hoping for a movie where the protagonists act not like complete idiots, you are going to be in for a big disappointment here.

This guy... I don't think he has a medical license.

However if you were hoping for a movie where lots of grotesque weird shit happens, and you also see tits a lot and there are a ton of weird TV cuts, then you're in for a real treat. Rob Zombie views the whole world through a grindhouse lens covered in dirt and blood, and that's exactly what you get here. It is a classic splatterfest filled with the sort of horror movie cliches that Zombie renders with such loving care that it doesn't feel cheap. It just feels like he's having a really good time. That being said, this movie IS kind of not very good xD That's really the point though, it isn't SUPPOSED to be good. It's supposed to be B-movie, and it is in pretty much all the best ways. Everyone is 100% committed to the ridiculous plot, and they even fit in some zombies and mutants (and of course the terrifying Dr. Satan, who is a total freak yikes) While it is super gory and explicit, I do have to say that House of 1000 Corpses is approximately 10000% less gruesome and fucked up than its sequel The Devil's Rejects. Now THAT is a seriously fucked up movie.

She's a keeper that one.

Among other highlights, you get to see Dwight from the office hacked to pieces and turned into a merman installation piece, and a girl chased through a field in a bunny costume. Also a bunch of cops doing a bang up job as a rescue team, as always. The moral of the story kids is if you get the opportunity to stumble around the boonies looking for trouble, maybe instead don't do that shit and just go home, because you might be in a Rob Zombie movie. If that's the case you're 100% gonna get murdered in a really bad way.

I know it's short but that's all for today! Have a spooky Halloween, and I'll see you in November for more movies and magic!