Again, there are flaws, a good deal of them. The commentary on his DVDs is usually pretty great, and he gives insight to some of the ways to try and do things old school, practically, which in turn always helps on the production side of things no studio or financier could be unhappy with a director who hands money back after wrap. So there’s also an admiration I have for his way of indie filmmaking. I dig it especially because apparently Zombie sort of did that off on his own, just him and the actors. Both he and Baby are disturbing characters, so seeing them in those little videos is unnerving.
Some of the Otis digressions in the handheld style are truly terrifying. And then other scenes I’m drawn into the way Zombie uses different choices of edits, between the lavish frames sometimes recalling the technicolor vibe of Mario Bava, and the handheld home movies of the Firefly clan. There are times where it doesn’t work, as if we’re trapped in a music video instead of a proper film. Some people might find that too frantic or fast paced. A lot of the film has a very Tony Scott-MTV-ish sort of feel, which is not necessarily bad. His style is pervasive, in that it never surprised me how his first horror feature turned out. Yet Zombie’s style as a musician all but guaranteed his movies would follow similar suit.
This movie was never going to be for everyone, not that any truly are. Even some deformed babies in a jar, as well as the deformed giant Tiny (Matthew McGrory).įrom there, the legend of Dr. First, Mother Firefly (Karen Black), then her brother Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley). Later, once the friends are all there, Baby introduces members of her family. A tire blows, so Baby and Bill go on to the house. Her name’s Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie), and she invites the group to her place a short drive away.
He even draws them to a map where the doctor is said to have been hanged.Īlong their way, a young woman hitchhiking in the rain gets into their car. When they come across a gas station and proclaimed Museum of Monsters & Madmen, a rough-looking man in clown paint named Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) tells them all about the legend of a supposed Dr. The night before Halloween in 1977, a group of friends – Jerry (Chris Hardwick), Bill (Rainn Wilson), Mary (Jennifer Jostyn), & Denise (Erin Daniels) – head out on a roadtrip to find roadside attractions that are, let’s say… different. Not only is there plenty of horror, but Zombie gives us plenty of his trademark sense of humour, macabre and over-the-top alike. Equal parts Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, add in a bit of Beetlejuice and Tod Browning’s Freaks to boot. The love Zombie has for horror films out of the 1970s shows strong and proud. None of this is ripped right out of other movies, as some will have you believe. What Zombie’s debut feature does have is the power of nostalgia. All the same, House of 1000 Corpses is not near perfect. When I first heard he was making a movie it had me sold before it was finished. His music with White Zombie influenced some of my own music I used to write as a teenager. On IMDB particularly, so many people rag on Rob Zombie. Although, I do frequent them to see what people are saying about films. Spectacle Entertainment Group/Universal Pictures. Starring Sid Haig, William Bassett, Karen Black, Erin Daniels, Joe Dobbs III, Dennis Fimple, Gregg Gibbs, Walton Goggins, Chris Hardwick, Jennifer Jstyn, Irwin Keyes, Matthew McGrory, Jake McKinnon, Sheri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Robert Allen Mukes, Walter Phelan, Tom Towles, Harrison Young, & Rainn Wilson.