House of 1,000 Corpses (2003)

A pair of young couples driving across the country to investigate the urban legend of a serial killer get more than they bargained for when they run afoul of a family of eccentric sadists in heavy-metal frontman-turned-filmmaker Rob Zombie's directorial debut, House of 1,000 Corpses, a harrowing, bizarre, balls-to-the-wall gruesome nightmare brought vibrantly to life with thrillingly imaginative set design, a stellar quartet of villainous performances, and gory yet grounded makeup effects that pays homage to Tobe Hooper's 1974 groundbreaker, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, while amplifying the carnage and surrealism to an 11.

When I was a kid, all throughout my elementary years up until I started middle school, one of my favorite things to do after school, especially on Friday nights, was pay a visit to a Spirit Halloween store. Walking into one of these places was like walking into another world populated by a horde of monsters, many of which I grew up watching religiously. The bags of costumes of horror icons like Michael, Jason, Freddy, Leatherface, and Ghostface. Their statues standing motionlessly yet ominously nearby. Sometimes if you step on a button, they'd make a slight movement or a shrill noise would activate. It gave me an automatic rush as a lifelong horror fan, and even now when I occasionally wander into a Spirit on an October day, it still maintains that power to awake the stimulated elementary schooler still lurking within. Never has the sensation of walking through a Halloween store been so lovingly and painstakingly evoked by a movie as Zombie has created with his throwback slasher debut. 

Making his transition from the lead singer of his heavy metal band, White Zombie, to the gritty world of hardcore genre filmmaking, Zombie recognizes two important things: not only is Halloween the best time to set a horror story such as this, but that it's even scarier to rewind the clock to the decade that birthed the slasher subgenre. A time when cellphones were not an easy option for contacting the police. When security cameras weren't lined around every street to capture people committing horrendous crimes. This is when serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy enjoyed free rein to roam the streets and abduct random, unsuspecting victims to fulfill their psychotic desires for power and control. It is also the time period when filmmakers like John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, and Sean S. Cunningham made their mark on the genre Zombie clearly devoured as a child, and his enthusiasm is as apparent as it is infectious.

On October 30th, 1977, a group of four young adult friends -- Bill Hudley (Rainn Wilson), his girlfriend, Mary Knowles (Jennifer Jostyn), Jerry Goldsmith (Chris Hardwick), and his girlfriend, Denise Willis (Erin Daniels) -- are driving across the country writing a book about offbeat roadside attractions. Stopping off at a gas station called "Captain Spaulding's Museum of Monsters and Madmen" that distributes the dubious combination of gasoline and fried chicken, they meet the titular proprietor (Sid Haig), a vulgar, yellow-toothed clown who informs them of the local legend of S. Quentin Quale, AKA Dr. Satan, a former surgeon who would covertly perform violent experiments on his mentally ill patients with the intention of turning them into a race of zombified slaves. When Quale's actions were discovered, a group of vigilantes took the law into their own hands and hung him from a tree, one that supposedly stands "a stone throw's away" from where these amateur true crime authors are now. Enthralled at the prospect of finding the tree where this madman was hanged before his body mysteriously went missing, Jerry implores Captain Spaulding to draw him a map, ignoring the latter's insistence that they're wasting their time and should turn back to where they came from. 

On their way to "solve the great Deadwood mystery," the quartet picks up a sexy blonde hitchhiker stranded in the rain named Baby (Sheri Moon, Zombie's at-the-time girlfriend and now wife), who claims she knows where the tree is located and offers to direct them there. Baby's brother, Rufus (Robert Allen Mukes), a tow-truck driver, hiding behind a bush, shoots one of the tires to their car, forcing the couples to take refuge from the rain in the home of their deceptively ditzy acquaintance. As they wait in vain for Rufus to fix their car, the couples become acquainted with the rest of Baby's family: Mother Firefly (Karen Black), a promiscuous woman who doesn't own a phone and cherishes the traditions of Halloween, taking offense to anyone who doesn't; Tiny (Matthew McGrory), a gentle giant who suffers from gigantism and is unable to speak or hear due to having been nearly burned to death by his father, Earl (Jake McKinnon); Hugo (Dennis Fimple), the irascible, foul-mouthed patriarch who proves older doesn't always mean more mature; and lastly, the most intimidating of all, Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley), the apparent leader of the family whose stern, stone-cold demeanor sits at variance with the unsettling joviality of the rest of his relatives. Following a nearly violent confrontation between Baby and Mary over the former's unconcealed attraction to the latter's boyfriend, the four are ordered to leave, just in time as Rufus announces their car happens to be ready. But as they attempt a panicked, hasty escape, this bizarro family makes it clear they have no intention of letting them go, plunging these once-optimistic and eagerly curious travelers into a nightmarish world of grotesquerie where escape seems futile and unimaginable pain, both psychological and physical, reigns supreme.

In terms of plot, that about sums up House of 1,000 Corpses, and it's all the better for that simplicity. Zombie is clearly a diehard fan of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While he grew up on a steady diet of horror, a childhood aspect I can relate to all too deeply, it's safe to assume Hooper's landmark achievement had the greatest impact on Zombie's career as a genre filmmaker and his passion for slasher cinema. In his effort to pay homage to the movie that invigorated his love of horror, Zombie has cooked up a simple, straightforward story populated with a small group of likable, identifiable protagonists and a whole clan of colorful, unforgettable antagonists whose deceptively friendly and oversexed exteriors belie an unmotivated, unquenchable lust for dominance and inflicting prolonged suffering. In a nutshell, this central quartet's only "crime" is being in the wrong place at the wrong time, straying from the safety and comfort of their everyday lives to sneak a peek at the tantalizing underbelly of society, oblivious to the possibility of becoming victims to an ongoing massacre. Their long-term goal is to simply write a book and make some money off the uniquely disturbing artifacts and tall tales with which they're confronted while taking a quiet drive across the country. Little do they know they may soon find themselves the subjects of someone else's true crime account. 

The Firefly family preys on this type of blissful ignorance, abducting anyone unfortunate enough to cross their path and subjecting them to a labyrinth of torture to the point where death becomes the only true escape. Zombie's smartest move as a writer is his decision to make his villainous family as sadistic, unrelenting, and heartless as Satan could envision, granting them each their own flamboyant personality without any pretense of sympathy, backstory, or motivation. These so-called "devil's rejects" aren't setting out to make a political statement or unleash their pent-up rage against an unjust society. They do what they do because they enjoy it. Plain and simple. They derive pleasure from the humiliation and agony they inflict on their victims. It doesn't matter who their victims are, whether they're good people, bad people, or somewhere in-between. If you show up at their doorstep or happen to be driving by while any of them are on the hunt, your life is as good as gone. However, Zombie doesn't just stop at this gritty throwback to the directness of Texas Chainsaw. Remember Grandpa Sawyer, the mummified patriarch of the Sawyer family who revealed himself to be alive with his fondness for the blood of Sally Hardesty's cut finger? Well, Zombie doubles down on Hooper's unexpected detour into surrealism, weaving slightly supernatural aspects like undead zombies into the otherwise realistic framework. These are sprinkled lightly throughout the story at first, such as a horde of barely-living victims springing up from beneath a mattress in a cage and pouncing on Denise. By the final act, which takes place in an underground netherworld, Zombie dispenses with almost any notion of realism.

The opening scene perfectly sets the tone for the raucous ride ahead with a smartly calibrated mix of suspense building and screwball black comedy. Transpiring within Captain Spaulding's gas station, the creepily enthusiastic clown converses laughingly with his friend, an old man named Stucky (Michael Pollard), about the strange alleged fetishes of another man they know. Meanwhile, editors Kathryn Himoff, Robert K. Lambert, and Sean K. Lambert continuously cut to an exterior shot of the joint, which cinematographers Alex Poppas and Tom Richmond film suspiciously from afar, accompanied by the thumping beat of Zombie and Scott Humphrey's score. As the camera quickly zooms in on the front doors, bursting through are two of the most pitifully incompetent would-be robbers in cinematic history, "Killer Karl" (Chad Bannon) and Richard "Little Dick" Wick (David Reynolds). Each is (just barely) disguised behind a mask that displays their eyes or stops at their mouth, and they're extending a gun at Spaulding and Stucky, the former of whom is completely, hilariously fearless, ordering the men to leave, raising his middle fingers after being instructed to put his hands in the air, and threatening violence against both Karl and his mother. Once Stucky realizes who's behind the small monkey mask, he calls out Richard's identity and begins teasing him for the nickname given by others who belittle him. Wick struggles to maintain his "intimidating" gun-wielding persona, but once Stucky starts singing a mocking song that the gunman is painfully familiar with, he removes his mask and demands that he stop singing that song. Suddenly, Spaulding's assistant, Ravelli (Irwin Keyes), barges in and whacks Karl in the chest with an axe, while Spaulding seizes the distraction to shoot Wick in the head. As Karl lies on the floor, choking on his own blood, Spaulding rests an oversized clown shoe on his chest and fires his pistol point-blank at his head. As Ravelli's resounding laugh persists against a black screen, Spaulding complains, "Goddamn motherfucker got blood all over my best clown suit." From there, Zombie's titular rock song plays over the opening credits, interspersed with titillating post-production footage filmed in Zombie's basement of a topless Sheri dancing erotically. It's a killer introduction to the world of unrestrained violence and goofball humor that awaits us.

While Zombie dedicates the majority of his character-based attention to the distinct and memorably loathsome personalities of his Firefly family, he still takes the time to delineate and distinguish those of his protagonists as well. The quartet of would-be true crime authors may register as ordinary city folks who exist in the larger shadows of their much more prominent captors, but Zombie assigns them individual traits so that not only can we sympathize with them as credible human beings caught in the web set by inhumane predators, but also tell them apart from one another. Cases in point: Jerry is the most enthusiastic of the group, eager to take his friends on Spaulding's "murder ride" through a room full of kinetic statues of serial killers and, once released, running out of the museum on a natural high, raising his arms in the air and squealing "Dr. Satan". Bill, on the other hand, is the more reserved of the two, in awe of the artifacts that adorn the museum's walls but admitting that, while the murder ride was "cool," it was just "alright" and nothing worth getting worked up about. (Though Jerry believes he's just playing down his reaction "for [his] chick.") Mary is the hothead of the quartet, who always looks and acts like she'd rather be anywhere other than where they are (almost to the point where you wonder why she's even partaking in this cross-country adventure) and has zero qualms about speaking her mind to the deranged woman who's throwing herself at her man. Denise is the levelheaded peacekeeper, willing to contain her feelings of discomfort or irritation with the people she's suddenly forced to associate with to refrain from making waves. 

If the premise of a group of young adults taking a road trip into an unfamiliar, deserted Texan town, only to find themselves ensnared in the home of a family of bloodthirsty miscreants, comes across as instantly similar to Texas Chainsaw, it's in Zombie's colorfully magnificent set design where House of 1,000 Corpses carves out its own remarkable identity. Not content to merely have his story unfold on the eve and day of the spookiest holiday of the year, Zombie strives to project his unabashed enthusiasm for Halloween in almost every single frame, using every facet of his production. It's no wonder that seven years after making this movie, Zombie would produce a remake of John Carpenter's literally-titled holiday slasher classic from 1978. Apart from Michael Dougherty, who else would have been so perfect for taking on the story of a masked madman who pursues his victims on Halloween night? Beginning with the exterior design of Captain Spaulding's Museum of Monsters and Madmen, a lime-green light shines beneath the rooftop in front of the entrance. The inside is pure heaven for true-blue devotees of the weird and macabre, featuring an abundance of bizarre artifacts across the walls and a short "murder ride" that invites attendees through a stunningly rendered funhouse of hell where, on you're left and right, within every room, there stands a kinetic statue of some of the most infamous serial killers from Albert Fish to Ed Gein (chopping repeatedly into a severed human limb) to Lizzie Borden to the fictitious Dr. Satan, popping out of nowhere. It's the cinematic equivalent of taking a trip to one of those haunted house fests in October, albeit more exhilarating and less loud and obnoxious.

The Firefly home is a large, frighteningly normal-looking building in the middle of nowhere with a somewhat dirty exterior. For decoration, on the walls on either side of the front door, Baby has a collage of the severed heads and limbs of baby dolls from her childhood attached, seeming to stare at whoever dares step foot inside, portending a similar fate. On the inside, everything appears relatively mundane, with an old TV that plays a marathon of black-and-white supernatural horror films, likely some of the very films that planted the seeds for Zombie's future career. It's below the surface of the Firefly's land where Zombie really lets his imagination go wild, constructing a manmade netherworld of seemingly endlessly expanding corridors, housing the brain-dead recipients of tragically unsuccessful mystical surgeries. The underground hell into which the remaining protagonists are lowered and stranded in the final act puts the sewer plant where Pennywise resides to great shame. I thought the colorful lights and cobwebs showcased in the climax of the second episode of It were something to write home about. Not to take away from the artistry of that telemovie's production design, but Zombie outdoes that setting. Like the sewer in the aforementioned film, cobwebs hang from every corner of the walls, some of which cocoon the skeletons of hundreds of victims. It's hard to imagine this is the post-mortem work of human monsters, but as a cinematic recreation of an amusement park funhouse, Zombie's work is gruesomely gorgeous. The hallway is bathed in a moody dark blue light, where emaciated, disoriented, mute elderly people roam aimlessly, but once the door at the end is opened, the blue is supplanted by the golden yellow hue of Dr. Satan's lair, which is as expansive and furnished as a mansion unto itself.

Throughout the entirety of the first night in which House of 1,000 Corpses transpires, Zombie strands his protagonists in the disorienting darkness of nighttime and the perpetual rain of an atmospheric storm. The cinematography by Poppas and Richmond is hauntingly beautiful, rich in the dark blue of a progressively darkening sky that rumbles with thunder and occasionally fires out flashes of lightning. This sort of dependence on natural atmospheric weather conditions may come across as a trope in the horror genre, but a formula can only become a formula if it works, and Zombie uses this tried-and-true method to brilliant effect. In his world, it isn't just raining and thundering; the storm provides the sole motivation for his protagonists to take refuge inside the home of their soon-to-be tormentors in the first place. They don't just walk into their place of death for no reason other than because they're in a horror movie; their car is shot down by the man who falsely promises to fix it, and they have only two options: follow Baby into her home while they wait for their car to be fixed, or stand outside in the rain for a few hours. Obviously we would all pick Option A too. 

Apart from the way in which the weather influences the characters' decision, the rain, lightning, and Halloween decorations add to the sense of impending doom during the buildup of uncomfortable interactions between the travelers and the Fireflys. While Bill, Denise, Jerry, and Mary sit around the living room watching TV or having dinner with their inviters, Zombie maintains narrative momentum through the periodic cracks of thunder and delectably oddball behaviors of his villains. He seems to love blending the colors of black and dark blue, as evinced by a blue mist penetrating a dark forest late in the film. Sprinkling a touch of the psychedelic to spice up his nightmarish stew, Zombie will occasionally interrupt his main story with unprovoked, blindingly white, surreal images of random characters and skeletal corpses. In one instance, a delirious elderly black man aims a rifle at the camera and incoherently screams that he knows the truth and is living in hell. In another, a man and a woman are talking calmly to each other about someone who's caused great suffering to their people. These scenes are presented and executed like the effect of a horrifically bad acid trip. Rather than distract from the story, they amplify its suffocating, otherworldly atmosphere in brief bursts. Zombie's best use of this technique are his cutaways to Otis and Baby talking boastfully to the camera in a manner reminiscent of the Manson family in the 1973 documentary, Manson. Even Baby's first line is nearly a direct quote from remaining Manson devotee Sandra Good: "Whatever you need to do, you do it. There is no wrong. If someone needs to be killed, you kill them. That's the way." These interludes entertain because they allow Moon and Moseley to elaborate on the inhumanity of their characters when they're not actively harming someone, as well as linking them to the depraved ideology shared by a group of real-life narcissistic psychopaths. (Though what makes the Firefly family much scarier is that they don't require mind-expanding hallucinogens to carry out their despicable crimes.)

In addition to the Halloween decor that fills up nearly every frame of House of 1,000 Corpses, the costume design by Amanda Friedland further communicates Zombie's reverence for the holiday and grounds his narrative in the date reported through onscreen text. Zombie doesn't just make the Firefly family a bunch of sadistic murderers, he makes them sadistic murderers who understand and pay respect to, what Mama calls, "the simple pleasures of Halloween." As such, there are so many incredible costumes utilized in this movie, none more memorable than Captain Spaulding's business costume. A clown who entices families around the world who "like blood, violence, freaks of nature" and fried chicken to visit his museum/gas station, Spaulding is never once seen without his attire, or at least the face paint. Haig's makeup reinforces our instinctual phobia of clowns while evoking the faces of other known clown monsters like Pennywise or real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Spaulding may not be seen eating children (or even killing anyone in this film), and he may lack the bushy wig of Tim Curry, but his white facial makeup, black eyeliner, baby blue makeup above his eyelids, and pink dots on either cheek are enough to keep your kids far away, solidified by two rows of rotting yellow teeth and offset by T-shirts with crass jokes on the back. 

When the Firefly clan and their guests finish dinner, everyone is required to wear a mask that only covers their eyes and nose, Mama arguing that "we can't eat our desserts with our everyday faces exposed." On Halloween night, Mama and Baby each wear a long white ghostly dress, while Otis takes a page from Leatherface and Buffalo Bill, donning a skin suit from the father of one of his still-living victims and taunting her with it. In a subsequent scene, almost as a way of paying respect to the dead and dying, Otis changes into a long red dress and paints his face black and white, with a cross on his forehead. Rufus shields himself from the rain on the first night with the skin of a bear, its head hovering over his like a hat. Following her capture, Denise is changed into a doll-like dress, in which she'll spend the remainder of the film. For the end of Halloween night, the three remaining captives are dressed in bunny outfits, as if to liken their fear and helplessness to those felt by rabbits. Lastly, there's Baby's dance costume when she performs on stage a rendition of "I Wanna Be Loved By You" before an astonished audience. Here, Zombie uses a split screen to convey and contrast the divided reactions of his characters: Mama's smile of adoration, Bill and Jerry's captivated lust, and Denise and Mary's open-mouthed revulsion. 

The makeup effects are gruesome and innovative as they are defiant to leaving many details to the imagination. Whereas slasher trailblazers like Hitchcock, Carpenter, and Hooper relied on audiences to fill in the blanks of the most violent images of their murder sequences, showing the thrust of a weapon then cutting away at the precise moment of penetration, Zombie takes a sledgehammer to the concept of subtlety. Without lingering too long on any morbid image, he assaults our eyes in fits and starts with close-ups of bloody, skinned corpses, faces that have turned blue from livor mortis, and at one point, the naked body of a young woman with words carved into her flesh, another reference to a particular murder committed by the Manson family. Due to having nearly been burned to death, Tiny's face is utterly scarred, bearing more than a passing resemblance to Robert Englund's Freddy Krueger. He wears a mask to cover his deformed visage when meeting new people/prey, and the scars extend to his oversized, veiny arms and hands. His father, Earl, has an even weirder and more indescribable appearance, dressed in a miner outfit and wearing night-vision goggles and a breathing mask. His complexion is bright red, and a mucus-like substance spews out of his mouth. Whereas Tiny is merely scarred beyond recognition, Earl doesn't even look human, more like a cross between Harry Warden from My Bloody Valentine and Butterball from Hellraiser. (What attracted Mama to him years earlier will forever remain unknowable.) The most eye-popping and unforgettably intricate image in House of 1,000 Corpses, however, doesn't have anything to do with the villains' appearances or a dead body in itself. Rather, it's the result of a postmortem bodily art piece called "Fishboy," where the upper half of Rainn Wilson's body is sewn to the bottom half of a large blue fish. 

Zombie's approach to gore is extremely graphic without becoming gratuitous. He takes the necessary time to develop his characters and their relationships to one another, but when the time comes for them to meet their maker, he shamelessly refuses to restrain himself from indulging in a Halloween bag's worth of carnage candy. One scene in particular, in which Jerry has to pay the penalty for incorrectly guessing Baby's favorite movie star, actually elicited a yelp from me, even though I'd seen this movie countless times since the sixth grade. The money shot is intelligently brief, but long enough and realistic enough to make you physically share in Jerry's agony, strengthened by Hardwick's believably mounting screams. 

As for the most brutal death in House of 1,000 Corpses, that honor definitely goes to Mary's. After breaking free from Tiny's hold, Mary, trapped in her restrictive bunny costume, runs through the forest, pursued by Baby. Upon reaching a cemetery, Mary finds herself haunted by the voice of Baby, her taunting words echoing through her head as if Baby has access to her mind. Out of nowhere, Baby pounces on Mary and stabs her repeatedly in the chest, spitting out a squirt of her blood and licking the rest off the blade of her knife. Zombie cuts back and forth between Baby gleefully plunging the knife downward and Mary screaming until she goes silent, a gaping, bloody wound growing larger around her chest. Zombie spares our eyes and ears nothing, evoking (intentionally or not) the murder of Abigail Folger in the process, tinged with a supernatural touch. 

For Bill's death, Zombie dials up the sadism of his two most appalling creations, Otis and Baby, a brother-sister duo who recall former Manson murderers Charles "Tex" Watson and Susan Atkins in their thirst for blood and lack of empathy for human life. Combining his affinity for no-holds-barred horror and 70s rock music, Zombie juxtaposes the slow torture of Bill, complete with the gruesome sight of a hand being quickly severed by a hatchet, with the diegetic use of the Commodores' funk hit, "Brick House." 

Zombie reserves his most suspenseful, artistically orchestrated kill for one of his two police officers, Naish (Walton Goggins). After Naish and Don Willis (Harrison Young), Denise's father, bust open the shed in the Fireflys' backyard, revealing several deceased young woman, plus one naked screaming one, Zombie makes a bold choice to once again contrast the eye-widening horror of the sight with the non-diegetic use of the somber romantic ballad, "I Remember You" sung by Slim Whitman. As Don makes a run for it, a bullet inaudibly penetrates his back. He falls to his knees in a puddle and experiences a flashback to a Christmas gathering with his wife, daughter, and their puppy, adding a degree of weight and poignancy to his death before the second, fatal bullet is administered. 

Otis sneaks up behind Naish, armed, and orders him to turn around, drop his gun, put both hands behind his head, and kneel down. Otis walks up to the now-defenseless officer and aims a gun straight at his forehead, Naish staring up at his devil with a pleading expression. As the song comes to a close, Zombie allows the remainder of the scene to play out in excruciating silence, pulling the camera away and raising it to a high angle. We look down at Otis, certain that he will pull the trigger but incapable of knowing when. Zombie uses this extended, silent take to build anticipation and generate empathy for Naish's psychological torment, milking the moment for every last drop of dread. Imagine staring death in the face, knowing that in any second, quite literally, you were about to bite the bullet, and that second lasts so long you almost wish the gunman would pull the trigger already just to release you from its crippling psychological grip. When that release finally comes, there's nary a speck of blood; we're too far away to see any. But that bang we all knew was coming, just not at what precise moment, is even more jarring thanks to Zombie's unpredictable, pitch-perfect timing.

One of the hallmarks of a Rob Zombie horror movie is the group of actors he repeatedly employs to bring his characters to life, and the manner in which he brings out the best in their abilities each and every time. To date, Sheri Moon has appeared in all eight of her husband's movies, admitting that she has no intention of starring in a film directed by anyone else (in 2004, she agreed to do a cameo in the opening scene of Tobe Hooper's Toolbox Murders, only because Hooper and Rob were friends). Until his passing in 2019 at the age of 80, Sid Haig had appeared in five out of eight (his last bit of film work occurring in 3 from Hell, the third installment in Rob's Corpses trilogy for which he was intended to play a larger role). Bill Moseley, the most iconic actor of the trio still working in horror, appeared in half, ironically the least. In their first collaboration with Rob, all three of these devil's rejects contribute deliciously terrifying and fearlessly uninhibited performances, giving lifeblood to three of horror cinema's most morally bankrupt serial killers to ever (dis)grace the silver screen. 

While the true nature of Captain Spaulding, and his kinship to the Firefly family, wouldn't be revealed until the sequel, The Devil's Rejects, Sid Haig still makes the character so repugnant and flamboyantly creepy that we can't help fearing him the second his lips part into a slobbery grin. Even though he isn't shown killing anyone, and he does earnestly attempt to dissuade Jerry from taking his friends to Dr. Satan's hanging tree, there's something deeply untrustworthy about this wide-eyed clown. Haig spends a good portion of this debuting installment standing behind a counter, interacting at first with the wannabe authors and later the policemen tasked with finding them, yet from the opening shot of promoting his morbid business on TV, he dominates the frame with a spine-chilling exuberance that recalls Tim Curry's performance as Pennywise in It. Sporting a mouth of rotting teeth and a face full of white makeup, Haig doesn't rest on the laurels of his showy physical features, oscillating between a buffoonish demeanor (complete with a stereotypical Southern drawl, obnoxious hillbilly laugh, and overzealous grin) and an intimidating frown and growl of fury, sometimes in the same scene, hinting at the monster lurking within.

Bill Moseley first cut his teeth on playing horror villains with his role as Chop-Top Sawyer, Leatherface's older brother, in Tobe Hooper's 1986 sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. While his performance was gloriously unhinged, generating immediate chills with his demented smile and hippie-like cadence, he was ultimately let down by an overly improvisational script that gave him little to do besides run around with a puppet while spraying a fire extinguisher and screaming gibberish to the air. In House of 1,000 Corpses, Zombie gave him a far more terrifying role worthy of his talent. Once more, Moseley is portraying a relative in a family of sadistic murderers, and like his previous character, he's costumed in a wig and makeup that utterly transforms the actor. Sprouting from a bald head are long strands of white hair that match a strikingly pale complexion, which, coupled with a pair of red eyes, indicate that Otis suffers from albinism. Moseley fully inhabits the skin of Otis, instantly establishing him as the most dangerous and delusional member of the Firefly clan from his first scene in which he lectures a group of shaken cheerleaders whom he abducted. That's perhaps the most frightening aspect of Otis' personality, the self-righteousness with which Moseley imbues him. He believes that the pain and torture he inflicts on people is "work," delivering a chillingly manic monologue to express his desperation to break free from an unjust society. However, there's a hint of irony in Moseley's delivery that makes it difficult to discern whether he truly believes what he's spewing or is using it to shame his victims for their "privileged" lifestyles. When he isn't laughing at the futility of a captive's attempted escape, Moseley communicates loathing through his reddish eyes that, combined with a slow walk and hunched shoulders, suggest a lifetime of abuse and hardship. 

Matching Moseley's insanity stride for stride is Sheri Moon in her debuting acting role as Baby Firefly. No matter what anyone says, Sheri is a phenomenal actress, one of the greatest and most versatile working in the horror genre today. The only thing that's slightly unfortunate is her expressed disinterest in appearing in anyone's movies except for her husband's because, truth be told, she's amazing, and could easily carve out a successful career for herself outside of Rob's projects. Nonetheless, I have no problem with her wanting to work exclusively for her husband. Rob and Sheri are one of the top-tier husband-wife teams in modern horror, each bringing out the best in one another. As long as Rob is behind the camera and Sheri in front, the results are almost guaranteed to produce a quality horror film. Sheri is an actress who can play a protagonist and antagonist with equal conviction. As the emotionally drained mother of a burgeoning serial killer in Halloween, she aches the heart. As a cackling, emotionally stunted sadist, she makes the blood run cold. That is the true test of an actor with range. For her original embodiment of Baby, the deceptively accommodating and naive hitchhiker stranded in the rain, Sheri leans into the disarming playfulness of her personality, presenting Baby as a ditzy blonde with a flirtatious smile and lighthearted dissociation. On the first night, she comes across as a lonely young woman in desperate need of companionship, which, in her deluded mind, she believes she's found in Bill, despite him having a girlfriend. By the second day, when her true colors are revealed, Sheri goes for broke as one of the scariest and most soulless female villains in horror history, alternating between a childlike petulance and cheerful sadism. She plays Baby as a cross between a boundlessly enthusiastic cheerleader and Susan Atkins, adding a shrill yet endearingly disturbing cackle of delight for good measure. In addition to her acting talent, Sheri possesses a naturally stunning face and immaculate physique, qualities her husband capitalizes on to add a dash of sex appeal to the mayhem, and she feels no fear about occasionally baring her bottom in close-up for his camera.

As the daughter of a similarly promiscuous and absentminded murderer, Sheri is paired perfectly with Karen Black. From the moment Mother Firefly steps into frame flaunting her pink feathery shawl and wrapping her leg around Jerry's, it's clear whom Baby obtained her charisma and forwardness. A flirtatious, brassy blonde with a fondness for skimpy outfits that expose her cleavage, Black has the time of her life as the attention-grabbing matriarch of this deranged family, sharing a warm maternal bond with Sheri that shows in their embraces and simultaneous laughs. Even with an excess of body fat and lack of a conventionally attractive appearance, Black oozes sex appeal and self-assuredness in her attitude and seductive voice, and like her onscreen daughter, utilizes those traits to conceal the malice waiting to emerge. A perfect example is in her interaction with Deputy Wydell (Tom Towles), as the second the latter turns his back on the seemingly friendly and cooperative woman, Black's face turns stone-cold as she slowly raises a gun from beneath the kitchen table and aims it square at his head.

While Matthew McGrory isn't tasked with showcasing much acting talent, as his imposing height and makeup do most of the heavy lifting, he still has the benefit of playing the most sympathetic member of the Firefly family. In fact, his inner nature stands in stark contrast to his terrifying appearance because, overall, Tiny is a victim of his father's psychosis and the rest of his family's control. In this way, he's not dissimilar from Leatherface, a hulking, mute, disfigured animal of a man who both loves and fears the people who are supposed to protect him. When Tiny makes his first appearance at the dinner table -- standing at 7 feet 6 inches, hunched over, and wearing a leather mask to hide his deformities -- the young couples stare up at him, speechless with terror. Once he temporarily leaves to fetch his grandfather, his mother explains that one night, his father, under the delusion that the house was possessed by spirits, set the basement on fire, unaware that Tiny was sleeping there. As a result, his ears were damaged and his hearing impaired. While it would be a stretch to call Tiny "harmless," he isn't inherently hateful, as evidenced when he tries to offer a spoonful of his Agatha Crispies cereal to a bound and crying Denise and unties her one hand after she begs him to let her go, waving goodbye as she carefully backs away. Rather, Tiny is more like a stunted, mindlessly obedient child, uncritically following the orders of his inhumane, able-bodied family. 

Rob Zombie's brand of horror is an acquired taste. His hardcore style and foul-mouthed, exuberantly evil villains definitely don't cater to the tastes of all horror fans, especially those who prefer their violence psychological and their carnage implied rather than demonstrated. I, for one, am capable of loving my horror both ways, so long as either approach is executed by talented filmmakers in control of their craft and unhesitant in following through on their vision. Rob Zombie is a master of his horror craft. Beginning around the 2010s, many filmmakers initiated their journeys with bold, original, and bravely unconventional entries in the horror genre, from the black-and-white blend of shocking gore and artful restraint of Nicolas Pesce to the scathing social satire of Jordan Peele. Zombie was one of the earliest (and still pitifully underappreciated) pioneers, crafting one of the greatest Texas Chainsaw homages of the early 2000s (filmed in 2000, released in 2003). House of 1,000 Corpses is a relentlessly terrifying slasher that emphasizes the helplessness of its characters without pulling a single punch when it comes to delivering the gory goods that hardcore horror fans crave, announcing Zombie as a passionate horror-loving auteur who celebrates the films that shaped him while creating a story and characters that feel distinctly his own, enriched with a unique psychedelic flavor to remain in touch with his heavy-metal roots. 

7.8/10