House of 1000 Corpses

dir: Rob Zombie
[img_assist|nid=1015|title=It stinks it stinks it stinks it stinks it stinks|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=450|height=300]
There was 1 retroactive laugh that I got out of this movie. At
its beginning, the onscreen credits read 'Written and Directed
by Rob Zombie'. That anyone claims credit for pretending to
write and direct this film is staggering, absolutely staggering.

Look, I knew going in that it wasn't going to be masterpiece
theatre. I mean it's called House of 1000 Corpses, for Christ's
sake. But people joke about how when something cinematic is so
crap that it's Z grade. This is one of the first pure examples
I think I've ever come across.

This is a work of such unremitting stupidity that I find it
amazing that it ever got released. What confuses me the most
is why they would release it in cinemas now in Australia. Not only that,
but they had 'special preview screenings', of which I was 'lucky'
enough to score a free ticket to. Although now I consider it
having been less of a prize and more of a punishment for some
sins best left forgotten.

At least a quarter of a pretty packed audience left during the
film. I wished I'd joined them, because I physically had to restrain
myself from leaving. None of them scampered out because of
gore or violence. They left because the film was so profoundly boring,
pathetic and pointless to a degree I could barely have previously
guessed possible.

Rob Zombie, on the strength of his work here, must be a complete
fucking moron. The movie lacks any attempt at even the rudimentary
aspects of a story. The performances, even for a horror film,
are uniformly awful. There are no scares, there's nothing frightening,
ghastly, or creepy about any of the film, except for the fact that
Rob Zombie thought anyone could have found this entertaining in the
slightest. Whoever was dumb enough to give him the money to make this
did the equivalent of handing a video camera to a six year old with
Down's Syndrome who then proceeded to tape themselves taking a dump.
The greatest insult is that Zombie then decided it needed to be
shown to the public. To call his work here amateurish is an insult
to amateurs everywhere.

It seems like the only reference points the appropriately
named Rob Zombie has is the crappy video clips
made for his mediocre metal industrial band White Zombie. Wow, what a rich
vein of material that is. He tries, inexplicably to stretch out the
(thankfully) short running time by putting in clips and shots from
other films and other sources, none of which have anything to do
with what's going on. At all. Scenes are interrupted by sloppy
edits, there's pratically no continuity, the cheapest colour shift
and shabby el cheapo effects are used to try to 'spice' up proceedings,
it's just outright awful all over. But not in a Ed Wood 'it's so
bad it's good' kind of way. That would be giving Rob Zombie way more
credit than he deserves.

The absolute worst that the film has to offer is Zombie's
wife Sheri Moon, who matches the stupidity of her husband by
being clearly retarded and giving a performance that would look
bad in any film of any genre at any time. When Karen Black is
in a film, and she isn't the worst actor in the film, you know
that it is entirely without merit. But singling her out is
unfair to everyone else. They all deserve to have shit heaped
upon them in equal doses.

It actually starts out promising. The first ten or so minutes
could have been a reasonably amusing short horror film. It so
swiftly goes down the gurgler from there that I swear I got
whiplash. My lawyers will be in touch.

The film has something like 17 different bad guys in it, and none
of them are frightening in anything more than the equivalent of
opening your mail and finding a bill. Oh, damn.

I didn't think there could be a film that would make last
year's Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake look like a good film,
but here it is. Because that is all it is, a bad TCM ripoff
with nothing to contribute in the slightest.

Rob Zombie is clearly a man bereft of ideas, creativity, talent
or any form of ability when it comes to making movies. He should
stick with making his fucking awful music and consider only
insulting one of our senses instead of both sight and sound. Better
yet, he should just stop bothering completely.

Purely from a horror point of view, as an example of the genre,
it doesn't work. The editing is so bad that you spend so little
time with any actor or scene that none of them make any impact.
Even from the point of view of the macabre, the 'kills', which
is what I guess people watch these movies for, barely register
and have nothing horrific about them. The horror consists of
half naked girls pretending to be dead with red lines around
their breasts. No-one does anything that makes any sense at
all. Everyone seems to be making up dialogue as they go along.
The makeup and special effects would look bad at a kiddie's
birthday party, and I've seen more frightening and horrifying
episodes of Touched By An Angel.

Essentially, this movie robbed me of precious time that I will
never get back. Writing further about it steals further life
from me and the few unfortunates that will read about it. Don't
see it. You're better than that, and this is just worthless crap.

zero corpses out of 1000

--
Red Hot Pussy Liquors - sign above Bottle Shop, House of 1000 Corpses

Rating: