PLOT: Young couples travel around the backwoods of Texas and wind up prisoners for a sadistic family. 

Full disclosure: I watched The Devil’s Rejects a few years ago for 31 Days of Horror and more or less enjoyed it. I wouldn’t say it was one of my favorite experiences of all time, but I appreciated it for what it did and thought Zombie did a pretty good job. 

This movie? Fuck this movie. 

House of 1000 Corpses is an assault on the eyes, the ears, and basically everything else that can be assaulted. In a movie in which Rob Zombie has created some of the most reprehensible people ever put on film, it pales in comparison to the manic, unpleasant aesthetic that he tries to ram down your throat. On top of that, Zombie is obsessed with making his wife come off as the most irritating woman-child in the history of history. God, I hated her in this movie, and not in the “She’s so evil. I hate her.” sort of way. No, this is more like “I put my TV on mute and I still feel like she’s too loud” sort of way. Every line of dialogue she says reminds me of a fork getting stuck in the garbage disposal. 

The plot is pretty basic, and it’s more or less taken straight out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Two couples are on a road trip in the middle of the backwoods of Texas. They’re following the urban legend of Dr. Satan, when they pick up a hitchhiker named Baby that tells them she lives right by the supposedly haunted tree they’re looking for. Instead, what they find is a sadistic family, hellbent on torturing them for unknown reasons. 

Rob Zombie loves this family, played by his wife Sheri Moon, Bill Moseley, Karen Black, and a host of others. My problem with this, is I hate their fucking guts, and I get it: they’re sociopaths. Why would I expect to like them? And I guess I’m not expecting that, but I wish I felt like there was any sort of comeuppance. With that, there would at least be some sort of arc. But in this, it just seems like the villains aren’t necessarily smart, everyone else is just really, really stupid, so the villains just get the jump on everyone just because. 

OVERALL

This was Rob Zombie’s first attempt at a feature-length film, so I’ll cut him some slack; he makes a lot of mistakes, in my opinion, but he definitely takes a step forward in future outings. The music video-style is agonizing and I just wanted to see someone kill Baby more than anything. Instead of this, watch The Devil’s Rejects or go back to watch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This one’s skippable, unless you just want to see Rainn Wilson and Chris Hardwicke get murdered, which is entirely possible, I suppose. 

Overall Rating: 4 out of 10