House of 1000 Corpses

[JunkerSeed]

So, after over a year of studios picking up and dropping this movie (supposedly due to too much gore) it finally comes out, Rob Zombie's very own B-movie. And the verdict is..... eh, it's ok. It's certainly disturbing, it's got dead fetuses, crazy clowns, deadly hicks, and people being buried alive in bunny suits. If you just like seeing a bunch of fucked up shit, this one's for you. As far as the gore goes, man you can tell they cut the fuck out of this. It gets to the point where almost every time a person is killed in a relatively gruesome way, they cut to grainy, handheld footage of the killing where you see pretty much nothing. I don't see how this movie was gonna be an NC-17, they really must have toned it down for release. As a result of this, and Zombie's incompetance as a filmmaker, this is the most discombobulated movie I've seen in my life. He'll go from a shot of people walking to a phone booth, then cut to some grainy footage from an olh horror movie for absolutely no reason, then cut right back. There's more clips from old horror movies than there is new horror movie in here. And when violence occurs, (which is quite often) and they cut to that weird grainy footage, it makes you feel like you're looking at a flashback or something, but you're not, it's happening right then, and then when the person is dead they cut right back to normal movie style again. It looks like they cut and pasted a bunch of unfinished chunks to make this thing. Acting is bad all around, everybody was annoying except for a Clown guy (most interesting character in the movie gets the least importance in the plot, btw). Everyone else is just annoying. The villians are just annoying hicks, and the main characters just exchange shitty dialogue.

 

Great set design all around, lots of cool visuals (none resulting from the camera work tho) coming from the costumes and stuff too. This is the stuff Zombie is good at. The end is especially really cool (movie woulda been a lot better if it were all like the end fourth), cooool monsters and a great set. There are also some funny jokes, granted the other 9/10 of the jokes were dumb, and the same goes for scares, I think I counted 2 good ones, but they try lots and lots of times.

 

The movie wasn't altogether bad. It was entertaining, and lots of the ideas were over the top enough to be cool. If you're a horror buff, you'll like a lot of the references Zombie puts in the script.... but then iif you're a horror buff you'll realize that it's just a Texas ChainSaw Massacre retread and you'll have see a thousand better B-movies. What Zombie shoulda done is made a movie with somebody. He coulda done the costumes, art direction, etc and let somebody who knows what they're doing write and direct.

Maybe this one will be better on an unrated DVD. Some real gore woulda made this one a lot cooler. Hmm, watching it finally makes me wonder if gore was the reason it was shelved for so long... maybe it just wasn't all that great?

[Ganny McVagflaps]

I gotta say I'm kinda interested in this one being a bit of a horror-whore myself, especially the B stuff. I know the reviews have been less than glowing (and yours didn't exactly make it out to be the next Society) but I'm still gonna go out and give this one a go....

 

Couldn't help thinking after reading your post that alot of the THIS MOVIE IS TOO HARDCORE TO BE RELEASED bollocks could've been part of the Hollywood machine's way of promoting Mr. Zombies Opus (now that's a good movie title...get Dick Dryfuss on the phone!). Then again....

[JunkerSeed]

Yeah, well, it was entertaining, so it's not entirely not worth watching. I thought the reviews were a bit harsh, I'd like to know what someone else thinks tho.