House of 1000 Corpses (2003)

[baumer]

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Edited April 14, 2013 by baumer

[baumer]

One severely f***ed up, brilliant, old school horror film!I think many self proclaimed horror afficiondoes (I being one of them) are simultaneously in debt to Scream for revitalizing a dormant genre like horror and loathe it for revitalizing the dormant horror genre. For every brilliant and innovative film like Sixth Sense, The Ring and Blair Witch Project, you get such stratagem like I Know What You Did Last Summer and Darkness Falls and so on. Many film makers looking for a quick buck throw together a quickie horror film and hope they can catch a society sleeping and lull us into the illusion that we have seen a good film. With the decade of the 70's long behind us, we sometimes forget films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Last House on the Left, Black Christmas and Halloween. Names like Carpenter, Craven, Romero and Hooper are now more synonymous with the shock pop culture than they are with the brilliant exposes that they created. And that is a shame.But now comes along Rob Zombie and you can put his name along side the greats from yesteryear as a man who has guts and grit and as someone who loves the nasty films that we may be ashamed to admit that we do. Zombie's HOOC is a throw back to when films could get away with the carnage of a film like this. While obviously tipping his cap to films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Evil Dead and Last House on the Left, it is only a tangential tip and one that never strays far from Zombies own touch. Simply put, this is one sick and twisted and macabre film. This is what has been missing from the horror genre since the early 80's. While Craven and Williamson paved the way from the new breed of horror films, lest we forget the ones that they paid homage to. Rob Zombie has remebered all too well.House of 1000 Corpses has a great many similarities to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It has a twisted family, four stupid teens that haven't seen enough horror films, it takes place in the 70's, it has a roadside gas station that starts the ball rolling, it has a hitchhiker that leads them to their doom and a plethora or other obvious imbroglios that tend to come from TCM. But it also has a style of it's own. I read somewhere that Rob Zombie is a horror buff and that he has seen just as many horror films as the rest of us. It shows here. He has given us a pastiche of every horror cliche and at the same time given new life to the fraudulent horror genre as of late.HOOC looks and feels like a well crafted horror film and it has all the right components in place. From the director of photography, Alex Poppas using dark reds and ominous blacks and dusky hues to accentuate the hopelessness at hand, to set designer Lisa Sessions creating a truly wonderful haunted house to the actors to the direction, this is a throw back to the incomparable horror films from days gone by.I can see how some would say that this is too much of a rip off of TCM, but I think that that film was only a blue print, the rest was Zombie at his finest. There are some images in this film that are strong and will not leave you easily. Images like one of the main characters being operated on and dissected by one of the crazies, or a scalping or any number of barbaric images you can witness watching this film. Obviously this is not a film for everyone and to those that don't like this sort of thing, stay away. But for anyone that can appreciate the time and effort and the labour of love that went into making such a disturbing film, this is something you may not see for another 25 years so enjoy it while you can. You can now add Zombie's name to the list of "young" directors that made their mark in the horror genre and I certainly hope to see much more from him. This film is sick, depraved and f***in brilliant.9 out of 10- This is a horror film that is truly horrific and one that deserves to be recognized as a true barometer for the horror industry in the years to come.One last thing, this is not a film for the faint of heart. If certain images disturb you, and I'm sure you can figure out what kind of images those may be, just don't go. Stay home and watch Sixth Sense again. Not that there is anything wrong with Sixth Sense, it is a brilliant film, it is just at polar opposites of horror entities like House of 1000 Corpses!

[The Movie Man]

Loved this movie, and the sound track, also.

[Michael Gary Scott]

Decent movie but I prefere devils rejects. 4/5

[The Movie Man]

Decent movie but I prefere devils rejects. 4/5

 

to me, 4/5 is a good rating for a decent movie (as compared to 3 or 3.5/5)