House of 1000 Corpses

Rating:
Summary: Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven?
Review: Oh yeah, baby, oh yeah. This is now officially my 2nd favorite horror movie right under The Ring. Firstly, on a side note, I would like to say that I would be paying a visit and making Captain Spalding take me on the Murder Ride EVERY day.

In the wake of the disappearance of five cheerleaders, two guys and two chicks blunder into Captain Spalding's museum of monsters and madmen. They pay to take the Murder Ride (cool cool cool) and there they learn of the local boogeyman, Doctor Satan, known for torture and abstract experimentation upon mental patients. Captain Spalding gives them a rough map to find the tree from which the good doctor, a victim of vigilante justice, was hung, and then the fun begins.

First, the gang picks up killer #1, Baby, thumbing for a ride on the side of the road. Next, their car is ambushed by killer #2, "R.J.". Next, they are introduced into the tenebrous Firefly fold, where they meet mother Firefly, Tiny, Grandpa, and most importantly, Otis. This is the guy who began as Chop Top in Chainsaw 2, and this is a guy for which I would find a role in EVERY movie. There are, of course, shades of Chainsaw Massacre, but this is what I like to call atmosphere. The house is ruined, with torture chambers doubling as bedrooms. I think Leatherface would beam with pride. If it's cool, don't question it.

The gang begins pressing with questions about Doctor Satan, and then Mary (played by that chick from Milo) starts bickering with Baby---who is definitely the one with the looks in the family. Later, the gang is set upon by Otis and Tiny, at which point the scene breaks. The next morning, the cops start poking around, and I was surprised to see that the senior officer was that guy that played Cooper in the remake of N.O.T.L.D. But they don't last very long once they hit the Firefly compound. Otis ends up laying down the law with a .45, baby.

One by one, the the victims wake up from nightmares. (My favorite nightmare was the one with the Skunk Ape and Doctor Satan's grave.) Only three of them are left now. Halloween is now upon them, and Otis gets ready with Ed Gein panache. The three remaining victims are put into bunny suits and dragged to a type of well. The chick from Milo runs and Baby takes her down with thirty-three seconds to spare. The other two are placed into a casket and lowered into the well, along with tape-recorded incantations. Now the movie evolves into the supernatural with ghouls and zombies; they rise groggily from gelatinous mud deposits kinda like the Pit Witch in Army of Darkness, and then start wading out across a turgid crust of slime. Finding themselves in something similiar to a circle of hell, the last two captives finally get to meet Doctor Satan. And it is cool. All movies should be like this.

Now, for the DVD itself. I've got tears in my eyes. This is the best money I've ever spent. I have spread new of this movie like a plague to all of my buddies. Aside from behind-the-scenes, photo stills, screen tests and Tiny *&$@*#& A Stump, everything, the opening menu, special features, settings and scene selection, is character hosted by Otis, Captain Spalding and Baby. I would advise that you take time to watch everything. During I think the third set of chapter selections, Otis reveals the mystery of Tiny and the stump. Also, the Baby Show rules---of course I would probably pay just to watch Baby sit there and eat a bowl of cereal.

Rating:
Summary: Worst Movie 2003
Review: I rented this move last week. It started out pretty good and then took a nose dive. BAD,BAD,BAD! Shame on the producers who released this movie and shame on the store that rented it to me. There goes 88 min of my life that I will never get back!

Rating:
Summary: A Morbid Journey of Brutality
Review: I have one question to those who thought this movie was terrible - What did you expect? Shock rocker Rob Zombie has created a stylistic homage to films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as he turns the sadistic brutality dial up a notch.

The plot was actually better than I expected. Four 20-somethings come upon a store that sells Gas, Food and Murder. Upon hearing of the local urban legend of Dr Satan, who performed grizly experiments on his patients, they decide to do some research on the subject. Bad mistake.

This movie is sick and disgusting and almost makes you feel dirty after viewing it. In other words, Zombie succeeds in doing what he intended to do(Disturb you).

Rating:
Summary: Tiny Did What to a Stump?
Review: When I heard thrash/industrial metal musician Rob Zombie planned to lens a hardcore horror flick that would serve as a tribute to the grindhouse/exploitation films of the 1970s, I couldn't wait to see what it would look like. I soon lost interest, however, because after a few promising teasers about what the movie would look like I rarely heard anything about it again. Rumors started to swirl that Zombie had serious problems with major film studios, which apparently took umbrage at his endeavor. In some ways, this hesitancy on the part of big Hollywood studios is understandable: if Zombie really wanted to make a movie like the gorefests of the 1970s, Tinsel town big shots might worry about potential backlash from certain elements of the public. The taboo busting stuff that worked wonders in 1973 would cause horrific cries of outrage in the politically correct, whiny present day. Well, "The House of 1000 Corpses" turned out to be a rather tame production. It hardly invokes memories of "Cannibal Holocaust," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," or "Salo." Those films possessed the power to sicken and shock, and they still do today. Instead, "The House of 1000 Corpses" tries to hard to reify those honeyed memories of yesteryear without delivering much in the way of gore or great atmosphere.

I am not exactly sure how to describe this movie. It seems to be all over the place, dropping references to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and various slasher flicks from the old days. Four friends tooling across the country to gather information about bizarre, out of the way highway tourist attractions stumble upon a stand run by a profanity spewing tough guy clown named Captain Spaulding. We know Spaulding is nasty because he kills two robbers an hour or so before our heroes arrive on the scene. The clown convinces these four bubbleheads to take a tour of his museum of serial killers, and then tells the story about a local baddie named Dr. Satan who did a lot of decidedly unfriendly things to the inmates at a local insane asylum before his sudden demise at the hands of miffed locals. Predictably, one of the kids on the tour loves serial killers and convinces Spaulding to write down directions to the site where Doc Satan met his untimely end. Within minutes of leaving the roadside stand, the kids pick up a sexy blonde gal named Baby. And right after that the car suffers a flat tire. Are we there yet?

Almost. Baby offers to take the kids to her house where a brother (or some sort of relation) will fix the car. Of course, Baby's home contains various fruitcakes: there's Mother Firefly, played with hilarious zeal by 70's star Karen Black, and Grampa Hugo, a rambling basket case who eats with his mouth open when he isn't wowing the crowds with his stage act. Throw in Tiny, a mountainous goon with a face that looks like a lawnmower ran over it and Otis, a guy who looks like the twin of that guy the kids picked up at the beginning of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." There are probably some family members I left out, but you get the idea. This clan should have chlorinated the gene pool generations ago. The house these characters live in is interesting, decked out in all types of junk, dolls, and garbage. The four travelers, of which two are women, slowly come to realize that something is seriously wrong with their newfound surroundings. They are correct in that assumption.

That is really about it as far as plot goes. As the movie progresses, this family turns downright mean to their guests. Some of the kids die in gruesome ways, with one turned into an oddity called "fish boy." One girl manages to survive the ordeal after a lengthy underground encounter with zombies and Dr. Satan himself. There is enough screaming, running around, and generally wackiness to hold a modicum of interest, but the whole exercise tires rather quickly. There just isn't anything here we haven't seen before in other, better films. Even the twist ending has been done to death in nearly every slasher film made since who knows when. Of course, that may be what Zombie is trying to accomplish: he wants to rehash these plot devices in order to pay respect to the horror genre.

The best thing about Zombie's film is the campy performance from Karen Black. Even with pounds of makeup and outlandish clothing covering her from head to toe, Black is great. It is nice to see her return to a genre in which she once had a firm stake. I also loved Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding. He cracked me up nearly every time he appeared on screen, and he has some of the best dialogue in the whole film. Sheri Moon does a good job as the giggly Baby, with a voice that sounds like Mariah Carey stuffed in a bear trap. Overall, my problems with the film don't arise from the performances, but from the uneven feel of the film and a lack of unsettling gore sequences.

The dearth of gore may not be Zombie's fault. The 88 minute runtime makes me highly suspicious that I watched a cut version. At least the DVD comes with plenty of extras and a few easter eggs. The best extra is a clip of three of the characters in the film doing knock-knock jokes with the same punch line. That Tiny does get busy, doesn't he? If these extras don't do the trick for you, there is a scene-by-scene commentary with Rob Zombie to hold you over. "The House of 1000 Corpses" isn't great by any stretch of the imagination, but it does contain enough interesting threads to make me wonder what Zombie could accomplish in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Bizarre Doesn't Quite Describe This One
Review: I remember seeing a trailer for this film years ago and thought it looked really interesting, but then it seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth and it wasn't until recently that I rediscovered it. Well, I think my curiosity got the best of me. I have been a fan of horror movies for years now, and this one just didn't do it for me. Yes, there are some gory moments and there are some disturbing moments, but for the most part I just sat there wondering, "is this really supposed to be happening or is this an accident?"

I understand that Rob Zombie was paying homage to many old horror films with this one, particularly "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". After a while the characters just started to get on my nerves and they seemed more annoying than scary.

In reading other reviews, there are many people who believe that this is an incredible piece of work and I respect their opinions, but I just didn't like it. Maybe this type of horror film is way out of my league and I just don't understand it. I've never really been into the modern horror films like "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summmer" because they seemed trivial, but in my opinion, "House of 1000 Corpses" can be skipped at the video store.

Rating:
Summary: What?...reminds you of 'Texas'?...say it ain't so!
Review: I love the irony ..."not enough gore", "not as good as 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'". Well if gore gets your rocks off, this is a hell of a lot more gory than 'Texas', which was crafted to aim for a PG rating. Look at 'Texas' again, and quit whining about lack of gore. If you like 'Re-Animator', you'll probably like this if you haven't somehow turned stupid.

Rating:
Summary: Great but could have been better
Review: These days with all the Scream and Friday the 13th movies, most horror movies are typical and formulaic (although I do love the 13th series, as a strictly guilty pleasure, having grown up on it). This one is not. Or at least not in that way. This movie is something of a throwback to 70's horror flicks, like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or "Mother's Day". It has little plot, and mostly consists of how different members of a psychotic family torture a group of young adults unlucky enough to fall into their grasp. There is, predictably enough, the broken down car, the victims who are fans of the horrorific and freakish (a certain platitude comes to mind: "be careful what you ask for . . . "), though only vicariously, and hints of the victims sins which may thematically require punishment. But, after all this is established, the movie goes almost insane. What follows is a pastiche of sadism, torture and murder as the family of psychos engage in their ultra-violent fantasies. Various pieces of avant-garde technique are spliced in throughout which tend to leave one feeling disoriented and wondering what he may be looking at. Good over-all but with characters whose only well-defined personality trait is sadism (combined with demagoguery in the lead psycho). Could have been better had the psychos displayed greater depth or at least had Dr. Satan evinced something like a philosophy, reason, or history behind his actions. The relentless violence and gore seem to lean towards something which must be more than their corresponding visceral thrill, simply by their sustained high level, but nothing more than a simple visceral thrill is ever expressed as any reasonable motive for either the movie or any of its characters.

Rating:
Summary: Decent, Seen it Before . . .
Review: House of 1,000 Corpses is a good horror movie to watch in the dark. But, after a while it starts to exactly mimic the happenings of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But besides that, i still liked this movie. Rob Zombie does know his horror movies and how to make them. I loved some of the stuff he did with the camera and direction. The actors were only okay though. I felt they overacted MANY of the lines. I did like the one girl though. Her name? I forget.

House of 1000 Corpses tells the tale of two couples on a road trip that are seeing all the odd sites so they can write about it in a book. They stumble upon CAPTAIN SPAULDINGS a small gas station with a murder ride. Being intrigued they go on the ride. The ride mentions the usual killers: Lizzie Borden, Albert Fish, etc. But the thing that catches their attention is the local killer "Dr. Satan". Once done with the ride, they ask for a map to a tree that has something to do with Dr. Satan. On the way they see a hitchiker (TCM). They pick her up and find out right away that she is not normal. Then their tire goes flat. The hitchhiker, a girl, offers to go up to her house to get her brother, so one of the guys goes along. Well before you know it, they all end up at the house to find a bunch of Halloween freaks. Then at dinner things start to get spooky. They are all tied up.

Things get good from here. I fell the whole last 30 mins. is like an Alice in Wonderland thing (bunnies, girls outfit in tunnels). I actually loved the ending. so rent this one. Enjoy

Rating:
Summary: Totally Crazy Ride!
Review: Rob Zombie's latest flick, House of 1000 Corpses was not what i first expected..It was better! I thought this was going to be some italian gorefest rip off, but it turned out to be a sick, twisted horror film with flavor. The plot, while not anything new, gets the movie from beginning to end, but it's the Characters that stand out. Sid Haig as Dr. Spaulding takes the cake. His flair and wild one liners are great( just watch the entire menu before making a selection on the DVD..very funny! ). The wacky cast from the seductive to the bizzare are worth a look. The movie takes a turn half way in by actual corpses comimg to life for the finale. Most of the reviews are mixed with this movie, but i still think you should see for yourself. If you are in the right frame of mind, you will be surprised with House of 1000 Corpses. Destined to become a classic. What a ride! Thanks Rob!

Rating:
Summary: House of Fun
Review: House of 1000 Corpses is very well done, in my opinion. Zombie really knows how to set the mood:negative film, good scores used at appropriate times, good and trashy dialogue(Trashy in a good way!), and most importantly, the gore was effective and shocking-even in the full cut version! This is very entertaining. It's funny, disturbing, and tragic. Not bad, Zombie, not bad at all.