Rob Zombie's first major assault on
horror viewers senses is 2003's
House of 1000 corpses, and what a violent assault it is. Strangely this movie was dropped by MGM and Universal until finally getting a limited theatrical release by Lionsgate... and we're so glad it did. This movie is a truly
twisted and violent look at crazy family of inbred maniacs and then turns into a terrifying and bizarre freak show of horror.
Two teenage couples, Jerry, Bill, Denise and Mary, are travelling across Texas gathering material for a book they are writing about urban legends. It just happens to be Halloween when they stop for gas at a station just next to Captain Spalding's (
Sid Haig) "
Museum Of Monsters And Madmen", they decide to investigate as it seems ideal material for their book and take a trip on the museums only attraction, "
The Murder Ride". Hear they learn of the local serial killer legend Dr. Satan who worked at the nearby mental institute illegally experimenting on patients. Jerry and Bill decide that they want to see "
The Murder Tree" where Dr. Satan was hanged and from where his body mysteriously disappeared.
Eager to see the place of Dr. Satan's death (and oblivious to the fact that Captain Spalding, the crazy clown proprietor of the museum, was clearing the corpses of two bungling robbers when they arrived), they decide to head off. A little way down the road they stop to pick up a hitchhiker who turns out to be a crazy young lady named Baby (played by
Sheri Moon Zombie), a little further down the road their tyre explodes unaware that it was shot by a strange man in a bear-hat as part of they plot to kidnap the teens. Baby tells Bill that she doesn’t live far and they should walk to her home and speak to her brother who has a pickup truck and will pick up the others.
As the repairs on the car are going to take a couple of hours, Jerry, Bill, Denise and Mary begrudgingly accept to stay for dinner to help Baby and her misfit family celebrate Halloween. As the evening gets more and more bizarre and unnerving the teens decide to leave but end up being captured by the freak family and subjected to
humiliating torture, as is anyone who stumbles upon the house trying to find the missing captives.
As the teens are about to be finished off in the highlight of the families Halloween, the bizarreness of this movie gets taken to a whole new level, and they are submersed in the world of Dr. Satan and his failed experiments.
This has definitely got to be one of my all time favourite
horror movies; it is sadistic, gory and brutal. The first hour or so of the experience is completely bizarre with freaky characters and strange flashbacks (or flash forwards) of the crazy family, then when the Dr. Satan storyline falls into place the whole movie takes on a different feel and totally bombards your senses with amazing visuals and
excessive gore. I had heard this movie was out of the ordinary but I could not imagine how much so until my viewing experience was completed!
This is a top notch
horror epic and needs to be witnessed by every
horror movie lover.