House of 1000 Corpses Movie Review:


Rocker Rob Zombie’s gore-fest "House of 1,000 Corpses" has finally been released to theaters. In August of 2001, Universal refused to release the
film due to its graphic content and Zombie got the rights back to the film. MGM then pulled the film from its Halloween release date last year, and
finally Lions Gate Films released the film in the United States this past weekend.

The film itself is graphically violent, bloody, and full of the world of Rob Zombie. As a horror film, it is flat horrible without even gaining a cent of credibility or entertainment of the B-horror movie genre. "House of 1,000 Corpses" is like a bad remake of the cult horror classic "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and it is like watching a direct to video horror movie
like "The Ice Cream Man" or "The Dentist."

The story takes places in the late 1970s and opens with the introduction of Captain Spaulding (Haig), who is a ugly looking man dressed as a clown
that owns a off the road gas station in the middle of nowhere. His establishment is also a museum of horror and visual collectibles with a ride that lets customers see the wax incarnations of the area’s legendary sadistic murderers, including the cannibalistic Dr. Satan. Of course, the station
also sells gasoline and fried chicken. On the eve of Halloween, four curious college students stop at Captain Spaulding’s for gas on their way home.
Intrigued by the atmosphere, the four go on his ride and then batter Spaulding with questions about Dr. Satan. The happy clown merely draws the
group a map to a house a few miles down the road where Dr. Satan was hanged. Upon entering the rigid home, the four friends are encountered by an insane murderous family that plans to do explicit horrible experiments on them.

As a director, Rob Zombie mimics many B-horror styles; he even uses Alfred Hitchcock’s famous camera in-camera out "Vertigo" shot. Zombie also
interjects a continuous running reel of a 50’s television horror special as well as using every grotesque element in the book. The style and outcome of "House of 1,000 Corpses" is something that one would expect from Rob Zombie,
but the film doesn’t add or create anything formidable for the genre. The script is just a constant run of a gore and typically dunce horror moments. I can’t even recall many of the character’s names and the dialogue is
understandably dreadful. The only notable concept of the film is Zombie’s humor of one of his character’s "cheap" Halloween costume.

The cast of mostly unknowns, is merely just wallpaper for Zombie’s visual intentions. Karen Black, who played Stifler’s mom in "American Pie", shows up as the psychopathic mother of the family and one time "MTV’s Singled Out" host Chris Hardwick plays one of the traveling students. Sid Haig’s fun with Captain Spaulding is the only performance worth noting from the film.

With so many delays and controversy surrounding "House of 1,000 Corpses," I believe a lot of the reasoning around pulling and dropping the film is
because it is such a poor movie. Halloween would have been a more profitable time for the film to be released and the Zombie faithful seem to be its only
targeted audience. The over the top antics and gore is sickening, but I have seen worse. The film’s non-oriented stride to be a genre classic fails and
the end result is a horrible horror film that should have been sent straight to video. I don’t see this film becoming a cult classic either, like "The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or the Toxic Avenger films. It is hard to describe how bad this film is, one of the worst films of the year.

Grade: F

04/13/03

Joseph Tucker

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