nycritic Review of House of 1000 Corpses

House of 1000 Corpses (2003)

Deeply Sick Feature Derivative of 70s Horror.

[5/10 · 17 March 2005]

In a nod to 70s movies like THE HILLS HAVE EYES and THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE (and others), HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, while being the farthest away from even a decent slasher movie, does manage to weaken the stomach with its singularly twisted images of an insane family of cannibals who prey on a quartet of young twenty-somethings who happen to come within their reach and become fodder for their truly sick entertainment. Were it not for Karen Black, one wouldn't be sure these are actually actors playing their roles as if they were those barbaric, mentally defective sadistic killers, and while clearly Rob Zombie knows enough of movies to throw in a variety of references to Marx brothers movies as well as slasher classics, the very inhuman nature of the movie will be so forbidding that only hardcore lovers of this sort of movie will see it.