Really long movie review: House of 1000 Corpses
Posted on December 9, 2003
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 42 views |
For Melissa:
First, House of 1000 Corpses is not a horror movie. Despite the presence of hapless university students, a plethora of misshapen rednecks, and a creepy old house it’s not The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original, the remake can go piss up a pole). It’s gore, it’s excess, it’s bizarre, it’s troma like Troma. Which means you probably won’t be scared but you may very well be disturbed, disgusted, and in the end you might even laugh. That’s the point of House of a 1000 Corpses and it does it well. Rob Zombie (of White Zombie fame) penned and directed an experiment and it works.
I want to take a moment to extoll the virtues of Sid Haig’s performance as Captain Spaulding, the psychotic owner of the freak show, ground zero from which all other events unfold. Initially it seems as though Haig is in danger of playing his character over the top, creating a caricature of a character that is already caricature by definition, and indeed his performance comes perilously close at times yet Haig always manages to reign it in, most often with a turn of his crazed, wide-eyed head, and keeps the character human. Totally barking mad, but human. And that’s the part that’s eeriest. If you’re not familiar with Haig, this performance alone is worth the three dollars you’ll spend to rent this film.
The same cannot be said for some of the other characters, played with varying degrees of acumen. The crazy mother-figure is one-dimensional in a way that takes some sort of bizzaro skill to pull off: she’s obvious from her very first scene and never ever changes, circumstances be damned. The film would lack little from her removal (or demise which, alas, does not come).
Fortunately superb acting is not the reason to watch this film, composition and cinematography are.
Aesthetically Zombie does in House of 1000 Corpses what he tends to do in his videos: fast, fluid editing, solarization and sepia toning, extreme close-ups cut to create discordant montages. These jarring, literally unintelligible, segments serve to bracket the acts of the film proper, essentially serving as asides to the main story, and in the process provide insights into the insanities inherent in the characters portrayed in them (particularly the daughter, who’s piercing laugh you’ve heard before if you’re a Rob Zombie fan).
Zombie is clearly deft with a camera, a skill that’s easy to take for granted when done well. In one of the most drawn out execution scenes ever the slow pull back from the impending event is practically painful to be a part of, in the best possible way.
Tempering the disturbing aspects is an ever-present layer of camp horror, liberally applied, revelling in excess, and patently self-aware. In the interests of not giving away too much of the plot I’ll just say this: the carnival has come to town and it’s hell-bent on killing everyone. On the Horror/Comedy scale House of 1000 Corspes falls somewhere between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
Cinematically House of 1000 Corpses is just another chase film: freaky psychos vs. hapless innocents. Of course there’s a twist ending but it’s not the typical Hollywood ending - in Zombie’s world you can’t hope for a happy ending, the best you can hope for is a quick demise. You can’t also hope for coherence. The story is chock full of “huh?” moments though unlike in some Hollywood films they don’t feel like the product of gaping plot holes , they seem more the product of the environment itself. “Why not?” rather than “why?”
All that aside, I’m telling you now: you’ll hate it anyhow.
Comments
One Response to “Really long movie review: House of 1000 Corpses”
Leave a Reply
A fuked up movie. Wicked!