This movie if definitive proof that life is not fair. There are probably thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people who would sell their firstborn child to be able to make a film with the budget and resources that went into House of 1000 Corpses. They'll never get that chance. Rob Zombie did, not because he demonstrated any ability or skill as a filmmaker, but because he was a rock star. And what's really unfair is that Zombie took this opportunity and created one of the worst and least scary cinematic goulashes you'll ever see.
There's literally not much more of a plot to this thing than "4 kids get lost in the backwoods and are brutalized by a family of weirdos". It's like a script wasn't actually written, but instead someone just took dictation as Zombie paced back and forth one night, rambling away about how this happens and then that happens and then this other thing happens. You could take the last 40 minutes or so of this film, randomly switch around the scenes and it would make about as much sense.
This movie is also a catastrophe visually. Zombie can't go more than a minute of two without indulging in some cheap effect or digression. It looks like a normal movie, but then there's some hand held video, then everything's shot with 16 millimeter film, then the film is reversed to a negative image, then there's a clip of a TV broadcast, then there's a clip from a old horror movie, then there's some stuff you can barely make out and it goes on and on and on like that. Have you ever encountered a little child trying way too hard to get and keep your attention? Imagine that kid having ADHD and injecting caffeine all night and you'll have some idea of what House of 1000 Corpses looks like.
I'm not even going to get into how the movie is clearly styled after films like The Hills Have Eyes (original, not the sucky remake) but then takes off on this Lovecraftian tangent where it appears as though Zombie forgot what kind of film he was making. Imagine watching The Verdict and finding out about 8 minutes of My Cousin Vinny has been spliced into it at the end.
The acting in this mess is also almost uniformly terrible. Except for Sid Haig, every other person in the cast could have walked around carrying signs saying "I am an actor" and it wouldn't have made their performances any less believable or involving. You can tell that the actors were told to do everything as "campy" as possible, but instead of "campy" they ended up with "crappy". Haig is the only one who makes his depraved beast of a character even vaguely interesting, and that's because Haig's Captain Spaulding doesn't spend every single moment on screen desperately trying to convince the audience how evil and provocative he is.
Almost all of the things wrong with this film could be forgiven, though, if it was really frightening or disturbing. But it's not. Oh sure, someone with a weak stomach may find some of it unsettling but someone with a weak stomach isn't watching a movie titled "House of 1000 Corpses". None of the violence, none of the perversity, none of the gore has any affect at all. That's because none of it is connected to anything real. There's no real emotion and no real dilemmas, so there's nothing real to fear. This film is like that high school kid who thinks he's "edgy" because he dresses up like a goth vampire and drinks Clamato, pretending it's actual blood.
As dispiritingly bad as this movie is, Zombie got to make a sequel to it. That's the sort of unfairness that drives people to contemplate suicide. In fairness to Zombie, however, The Devil's Rejects is a much more professionally competent product. It still sucks hard, but maybe if he gets the chance to make 2 or 3 hundred more movies, he might finally come up with something halfway decent.
There's literally not much more of a plot to this thing than "4 kids get lost in the backwoods and are brutalized by a family of weirdos". It's like a script wasn't actually written, but instead someone just took dictation as Zombie paced back and forth one night, rambling away about how this happens and then that happens and then this other thing happens. You could take the last 40 minutes or so of this film, randomly switch around the scenes and it would make about as much sense.
This movie is also a catastrophe visually. Zombie can't go more than a minute of two without indulging in some cheap effect or digression. It looks like a normal movie, but then there's some hand held video, then everything's shot with 16 millimeter film, then the film is reversed to a negative image, then there's a clip of a TV broadcast, then there's a clip from a old horror movie, then there's some stuff you can barely make out and it goes on and on and on like that. Have you ever encountered a little child trying way too hard to get and keep your attention? Imagine that kid having ADHD and injecting caffeine all night and you'll have some idea of what House of 1000 Corpses looks like.
I'm not even going to get into how the movie is clearly styled after films like The Hills Have Eyes (original, not the sucky remake) but then takes off on this Lovecraftian tangent where it appears as though Zombie forgot what kind of film he was making. Imagine watching The Verdict and finding out about 8 minutes of My Cousin Vinny has been spliced into it at the end.
The acting in this mess is also almost uniformly terrible. Except for Sid Haig, every other person in the cast could have walked around carrying signs saying "I am an actor" and it wouldn't have made their performances any less believable or involving. You can tell that the actors were told to do everything as "campy" as possible, but instead of "campy" they ended up with "crappy". Haig is the only one who makes his depraved beast of a character even vaguely interesting, and that's because Haig's Captain Spaulding doesn't spend every single moment on screen desperately trying to convince the audience how evil and provocative he is.
Almost all of the things wrong with this film could be forgiven, though, if it was really frightening or disturbing. But it's not. Oh sure, someone with a weak stomach may find some of it unsettling but someone with a weak stomach isn't watching a movie titled "House of 1000 Corpses". None of the violence, none of the perversity, none of the gore has any affect at all. That's because none of it is connected to anything real. There's no real emotion and no real dilemmas, so there's nothing real to fear. This film is like that high school kid who thinks he's "edgy" because he dresses up like a goth vampire and drinks Clamato, pretending it's actual blood.
As dispiritingly bad as this movie is, Zombie got to make a sequel to it. That's the sort of unfairness that drives people to contemplate suicide. In fairness to Zombie, however, The Devil's Rejects is a much more professionally competent product. It still sucks hard, but maybe if he gets the chance to make 2 or 3 hundred more movies, he might finally come up with something halfway decent.