Amazon.com: It's sick! It's twisted! It's House of 1,000 Corpses, and it's more fun than a wholesome bowl of "Agatha Crispies"! Dropped by two studios (Universal and MGM) and doomed to obscurity until Lions Gate Films gave it a limited theatrical release, Rob Zombie's gonzo horror flick is a blood-spattered throwback to the gore-fests of the '70s, lending new meaning to the term "box-office gross." Most critics misunderstood this unbridled exercise in graphic style and violence, but for devoted horror buffs it's a refreshing rebuttal to the comparatively "polite" frights of the post-Scream era. While paying homage to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Last House on the Left, Motel Hell, and other gory classics, Zombie's ramshackle plot (two young couples are terrorized by an inbred family of homicidal maniacs) lacks a crucial sense of dread, but his pastiche of vivid colors, grainy fetish-films, and photo-negative imagery is guaranteed to hold your attention. A bona-fide cult item, this House is definitely worth a visit... if you dare. --Jeff Shannon
All in all this is not a bad movie OK, first off I would like to say that if your like me and don't like watching horror films where the bad guys win, none of them die, and they all kill everyone like they did in the movies "Rest Stop" and "No Country For Old Men". I would very, very, highly, higly reccomend seeing this movie then the Devils Rejects (sequal to this movie) one after the other.
Now on to my review of this movie. It was good, but not geat and it wasn't near as good as Rob Zombies version of Halloween. His is so much better then John Carpenter's and it would be nice to also see Rob Zombie do a remake of the second Halloween. House of A Thousand Corpses is basically a movie about this medical assistant or actual doctor known as doctor (Oatis) Saiten who would torcher people to death. Then after Dr. Saiten got fired he torchered people to death some where along the road and placed their corpses in this tree. And the setting of the movie is about 1978. In this movie a group of people writing a book about road side attractions lead by Bill (played by Rainn Wilson (best known as Dwight Schrude from the hit citcom "The Office") stumble on a road side gas station with a Murder ride. After Bill and the travelers take this Murder ride, they learn about a tree of death where Dr. Saiten used to torchure people to death after he had his Physicians lisense revoked. Later Bill and Co. find out that Dr. Saitin is really a person named Otis who uses his family to pull people off the road so both he and his family can have their fun torchuring them. All in all I thought this movie was very realistic, and had great costumes (something Robert Zombie is exceptionally good at), but I thought the movie could have used a bit more kills. And for that reason this movie gets 2 1/2 stars.
And on my final note, I would like to say that the movie is titles "House of A Thousand Corpses", because the house Otis, his sister and his parents live in has 1,000 dead torchered corpses in it.
Possibly The Most Evil Film Of All Time Rob Zombie brings the viewer thru a series of camp and silliness in the first part of the film, almost a teenage slasher flick. And, somewhere along the middle, becomes one of the most unsettling films you'll ever view. Inplied and visual evil are successfully transposed to the screen by first time director and writer Rob Zombie. Equally good score by Rob Zombie, and a exceptional role as the evil sister by Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon.
the kingdom of god on earth Rob zombie has given us a masterpiece parabale of christian fun-duh mentalist messianic dominionist reconstruction. Praise jah the kingdom is coming.
just. not. good theres nothing scary about this disjointed gore fest. i was interested in the beginning but after the hour or so of "creative" video editing and the inverted colors, the continuous semi-understandable chanting and random addition of characters, zombies,etc it just made me feel stupid even watching this film, if you can call it that. i think that if you could cut this film down to 5 minutes and put it to some of Zombies music it would be a mediocre music video, but as a movie it sucked.
The Boogeyman has a whole crazy family! I actually saw Devil's Rejects first, not knowing it was the sequel to this. I have read over and over that DR is so much better than House. I think they are both pretty good in their own right and can both stand on their own.
I have to say there really wasn't a lot of tension or suspense for me while watching this movie. Nothing that made me jump out of my seat. But, I still enjoyed the wild ride. Sheri Moon is pretty fantastic as the crazy baby. I also loved her in DR and Zombie's remake of Halloween. Believe it or not she is one hell of a great actress. Yes, at times House is crowded, frenzied with all sorts of visuals that are tough to make out. There's tons of gross-out stuff. It reminded me a lot Texas Chainsaw. But I think the Firefly family is far more interesting than the Sawyer family. (I am basing this on the 2003 remake of TCM, not the original which I haven't seen) The visuals in Zombie's film are superior, and the storyline although similar to so many of these slasher movies is different enough to make me want to watch the whole thing.
I loved seeing Rainn Wilson in this. The rest of the victims I didn't really care for or identify with. I hated the clown guy in DR, but here, he's pretty funny.
The soundtrack song selections are awesome and thoughtfully placed
Overall there is clever dialogue, unique character development, colorful imagery and some damn fine performances. You're in for a psychedelic ride with this movie.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
