FILM  MOVIE REVIEW

House of 1000 Corpses

House of 1000 Corpses **

by Ed Gonzalez on March 28, 2003   Jump to Comments (1) or Add Your Own

Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses has nostalgia on its side but not much else. Pretending the last 20 years of teen slasher flicks never existed, Zombie creates a strange burlesque cocktail that reimagines The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by way of Vulgar. Four teenagers go chasing after an urban legend (Doctor Satan) in backwater USA and meet strange with an ex-prom queen (a busty Karen Black) and her immediate family. The kids have to wear masks before they can chow down on Halloween dessert and soon find themselves rubbing shoulders with several corpses-cum-scarecrows hanging outside Mother Firefly's lovely estate. Zombie's film-stock fetish gives 1000 Corpses a welcomed homespun quality but the effect quickly wears off. Not unlike Zombie's clip for his song "Living Dead Girl," 1000 Corpses is a playful shout-out to the horror films of yesteryear but there's little meat beneath the admiration. In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, anticipation was Tobe Hooper's weapon of choice. Only once does Zombie successfully channel the hellish dread of Hooper's masterpiece. High above the Death compound, Zombie's camera observes the preening Otis (Bill Moseley) as he aims a gun to a man's head and it feels like an eternity before he pulls the trigger. If not for the blink-and-miss sideshow attractions (most notable is the sight of the howl-inducing Fish Boy) and stockpile of memorable quotes (if "He performed lurid acts on my person" and "You stupid fucking whore" don't tickle your fancy, there's also "I'm going to cut you like a pig and make you eat your own intestines"), 1000 Corpses would have been easier to shrug off. This vintage curio is proudly and humorously derivative but that familiar aftertaste is that of wasted opportunities.

  • Director(s): Rob Zombie
  • Screenplay: Rob Zombie
  • Cast: Sid Haig, Karen Black, Bill Moseley, Michael J. Pollard, Sheri Moon, Jeanne Carmen, Chris Hardwick, Tom Towels, Erin Daniels, Dennis Fimple, Robert Allen Mukes, Chuck Aronberg, Freddy Waff, Rainn Wilson, Jennifer Jostyn, David Reynolds, Irwin Keyes, Walt Goggins
  • Distributor: Lions Gate Films
  • Runtime: 88 min.
  • Rating: R
  • Year: 2003

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Comments

No-Personality on August 15, 2010, 08:24 PM

I refuse to let this one go- for Zombie's hatred of teen films (which really only seems to begin somewhere in the 1990's, from what I've heard- I doubt he would ever seriously burn stuff like Night of the Creeps or the remake of The Blob in the same pile as Scream- let alone Carrie and Halloween which were teen films too), he sure seemed oblivious to how panderingly obnoxious his own whatever-aged group of teen-like morons were. His idea of rising above Scream was to make the bodycount pool dumber? On the audio commentary, he even starts insulting his own characters. So much for being the change you want to see in the genre.

Anyway- dumb as the movie was, it was almost superior to Hooper's often awful Funhouse. But Bill Moseley is a terrible actor. Great guy in interviews; thoughtful, amusing, charming. But whenever he's onscreen, I start grinding glass and preparing a bloody-mouth smoothe as I reach for the remote control. I'd rather swallow the blood fresh from my internally severed throat than watch that guy ranting away onscreen as some Manson-esque loser. He drives me to the nuthouse. Yet the joke's on me because other horror fans seem to love his character, especially in the sequel- which I find less tolerable than this film. Which I've actually managed to sit through 4 times to date, I believe. That's about how much I enjoyed Sid Haig and Karen Black in this movie. And despite the fan distaste for Mrs. Zombie (except in the sequel, where she actually loses potency from this in exchange for a pose her man thinks looks tougher than her groupie-cheerleader-pissed off doll from hell), I actually liked her in this movie. The camera and the assless chaps love her. And she's not competing with the other killers as much for screentime, they just give it to her.

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