House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
Cast: Sid Haig, Karen Black, Sheri Moon, Bill Moseley
Director: Rob Zombie
Synopsis: Rob Zombie's much-delayed and controversial gore shocker has its moments
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

 

 

Rob Zombie’s highly anticipated gore shocker encountered numerous hurdles on its way to the screen, and more than once it appeared that it might never see the light of day at all. With America barely recovering from the Columbine killings, only to be devastated by the terrorist attack on New York, the atmosphere was hardly ripe for any major studio to release what could only be described as a bloodbath of deliciously degenerate proportions. The studio originally handling Zombie’s update of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre considered it so ghastly that it feared the film might permanently taint its reputation. It was dropped like a hot potato and threatened to rot on the shelves until Lionsgate snapped it up and released it in the spring of 2003, much to the delight of dedicated gore-hounds the world over.

The film begins quite brilliantly, setting the tone perfectly for what one hopes will follow. In the opening scenes, more than a little reminiscent of the classic prelude to From Dusk Till Dawn, we are introduced to a ramshackle yet utterly spellbinding Museum of Monsters and Madmen run by the deranged Captain Spaulding, sporting a hideous clown face. His wonderful establishment is not only a fabulously cheesy and typically dislocated, rickety old horror museum-cum-carnival, but also a flea-pit fried chicken dive, convenience store and petrol station. Spaulding and his chum are gassing away about this and that—well, actually about some schmuck who has recently stuck a Planet of the Apes Dr Zaius doll up his rectum!

Their evening’s ghoulish tranquillity is broken by the arrival of two masked, armed robbers who bark instructions at Spaulding, much to his disgust. He barks back in his sublime Southern accent, with no intention of being robbed of anything except perhaps a piece of congealed chicken. The heist goes badly wrong and the canny Spaulding ends up blowing the scum away with gleeful relish. Later, as he mops up the blood—“Goddamn motherfucker got blood all over my best clown suit!”—some snotty city geeks arrive asking a series of very dumb questions. Two couples having car trouble stumble into Spaulding’s museum and, being Fangoria-reading types, the boys are immediately taken by the wonderful old-world horror cheesiness of the carnival-like establishment. They force their extremely reluctant and long-suffering girlfriends to join them on the “Murder Ride”, one of the undoubted highlights of any visit to the museum.

Spaulding takes them on the hair-raising ride, where they encounter some of history’s most notorious killers, including Ed Gein, Albert Fish, Lizzie Borden and one rather less well-known local freak by the name of Dr Satan. This local psycho apparently took enormous pleasure in torturing his patients in the most sadistic manner imaginable. He was eventually brutalised by the townsfolk, who discovered his house of horrors and dispensed some savagely effective local justice. Legend has it, however, that his body was never found and that he might still be alive somewhere out there, continuing his grisly and barbaric human experiments. The Murder Ride ends with one of the horror buffs almost wetting himself with excitement, particularly at the thought of being in the very town where the unbelievably monstrous Dr Satan once operated. Moments later, having pestered Spaulding into drawing them directions, the group set off to find the spot where Dr Satan was supposedly hanged for his terrible deeds.

Soon, travelling along the dark and deserted roads, they spot a stunning blonde desperately trying to hitch a ride. Much to the displeasure of the two girlfriends, the girl is picked up and proves only too willing to show them the exact spot where Dr Satan supposedly butchered his patients. Up until this moment, the film is simply stunning. The opening sequence featuring the hugely charismatic Captain Spaulding tending to his glorious Museum of Monsters is riveting stuff, while his guided tour through the fabulously staged Murder Ride drives anticipation to fever pitch. Tragically, the moment the setting strays from Spaulding’s scintillating Museum of Madness, the film loses direction and proceeds to fall completely flat on its face.

The first quarter of an hour hints at a horror masterpiece, yet the moment we are introduced to the occupants of the House of 1000 Corpses, matters begin to fall horribly apart. One yearns for the return of the charismatic and hideous Captain Spaulding to rescue us from the entire middle section, which attempts to recreate the “charm” of the family from the superlative The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It simply does not work, and the film becomes hopelessly bogged down in a quagmire of mindless violence and spectacularly bad-taste gore effects. The nastiness is offset by a constant injection of humour, though much of it is misguided and not particularly funny.

It is delightful to see Karen Black back on screen, and she will not disappoint those who have appreciated some of her more eccentric characterisations over the years. This time she plays a completely demented cannibalistic matriarch and does so with her customary relish and a distinct twinkle in the eye. Sadly, apart from Ms Black’s unhinged performance, Sid Haig’s brilliance and the magnificent museum itself, very little remains in the memory beyond the mess, the gore and the mindlessness of the plot. Rob Zombie runs out of storytelling ideas very early in the proceedings, and the ensuing procession of noise, bloodshed and flashy MTV-style camerawork fails to camouflage the fact that there is very little resembling an intelligible plot and not much point to any of it either.

Despite its inability to find any real direction after the opening twenty minutes, several elements remain memorable, notably Sid Haig as the clown-faced lunatic, his ramshackle but superb museum and the wonderful Murder Ride. Those opening twenty minutes are brilliantly atmospheric, doused in crackling humour and visually exhilarating, particularly during the Murder Ride. Sadly, after that it is all downhill, and very rapidly and irrevocably so. Rob Zombie’s film remains one of the most frustrating horror movies of recent years, promising so much and ultimately delivering so little. House of 1000 Corpses is worth seeing for its opening twenty minutes; after that, it degenerates alarmingly into little more than a bloody mess.