House of 1000 Corpses

House of 1000 Corpses (2003)

16% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 75 reviews)

Runtime: 89 minutes

Directed by: Rob Zombie

Starring: Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Karen Black, Rainn Wilson

From: Lionsgate Entertainment

As Halloween II is out in theatres (and not doing that well at that) I figured I should revisit a movie I saw in theatres in Normal, Illinois in 2003, back during the days when I rarely went to the cineplex at all. It is something that since then I saw once at a friend’s place in Illinois and then I think I saw it again in 2005 a few months before I saw The Devil’s Rejects (a movie I need to revisit as I haven’t seen it since I saw it on the big screen) but that’s it. During that time Zombie seemed to be doing well in the opinion of the hardcore horror fans. After the Halloween movies, though.. that isn’t the case.

The movie is about a group of college students who are in the backwoods late one night, trying to locate a haunted landmark, an infamous place of local lore (even in my old hometown of Belvidere there was a place like that, Bloods Point Road). Instead, they run into trouble and you get a movie that yeah, is certainly “inspired” by Texas Chainsaw Massacre-the original, at least-I haven’t seen either the remake or the prequel to the remake but I haven’t heard too many good things about either-but for what it is, I enjoyed it. Sure, Zombie needs to sing a different tune when it comes to having too much of the same stuff in all of his movies, but if you don’t think about that and instead just focus on this, you can tolerate the foul-mouthed white trash milieu and the graphic violence and enjoy the interesting colorful visuals and it's trashy but fun 70's style.

It was a surprise seeing Rainn Wilson in this; sure, I loathe The Office but I had no clue he was in this, as when I saw this he wasn’t famous due to his role on that program. Amongst the performances, the standout of course is the great Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding, as he’s so amusing and you have to laugh at him even though at times you know you shouldn’t. The victims…, er, I mean the college kids are your standard type and the acting doesn’t go above or below what you’d expect from a horror film. There’s nothing that’s cringe-worthy from anyone in the movie (not even from the girl now known as Sheri Moon-Zombie) so that’s good.

I’m glad that Lions Gate distributed it after Universal passed due to the pussified reason over the first cut of it being NC-17, which is exactly what happened, but as what always happens, they re-edited it until it became an R, so it’s odd to me they’d dump the film like that.

One thing about the DVD: I enjoyed how in the menus it "talked" to you and the characters were pretty amusing.

I'll be back next Friday night with at least one new review.