![]() Rather than to simply ignore the old comment and pretend I never bashed it, I wish to write a new – more positive – review, if it were only to convince other people (who also disliked at first) to give it a second change. In fact, my first viewing of this film was so disappointing that I excessively discouraged other people here to see it. I already had a user comment for "House of a 1.000 Corpses" submitted here on this site, dated over a year ago and um not very praising. This first major effort in film bodes well for his future use of the medium, and I will look forward to his next. This is Rob Zombie's art, and he does it much better than most. It is masterfully visualized and does a much better job of making horror into art than the standard Hollywood horror fair. If you don't have any great objections to standard hardcore horror imagery, or if you like it, you might want to see this. If you have problems with blood and other bodily fluids, and utterly repulsive surgically induced variations on the human body, you might want to avoid this film. For example, at one point, one of the bad guys turns on a cassette player with low batteries so that the voice recorded on it sounds extra-satanic. The film also walks a delicate line between Hannibal Lector grotesque art realism and supernatural forces. Of them all, sex is the least explored, and I, for one, am thankful for that. This film successfully and entertainingly portrays all of RZ's themes in about the same proportions as his music. However, once our protagonists are in "the house", the plot takes a decidedly more sinister spin, and never lets up from that point forward. My narrative has described the first 20 minutes or so of the film, and at this point the film, much like RZ's songs, is so campy that it seems a straightforward horror comedy. The family, apparently headed by the phenomenally weird Karen Black, makes The Addams family look like the Brady Bunch. They pick up a pretty blonde hitch-hiker on their way to see the tree where Dr Satan was hung, and run into some car problems, so the hitch-hiker invites them to her family house. Satan for the grotesque surgical procedures he applied to mental patients in secret. Spaulding teaches them of a few local legends, including a mad surgeon who worked in a local insane asylum and came to be known as Dr. Two couples traveling across country and working on a book on bizarre roadside attractions stumble across a filling station / theme park run by a vaguely evil clown with a bad attitude - Captain Spaulding. Zombie's world is not a place for people who are terribly concerned with reality, but, for Zombie himself, it seems to supply endless muse for a prolific and interesting commercial creativity. Zombie's themes are fairly consistent - evil (without the usual religious connotations and clichés), murder, sex, insanity, and stereotype "hillbillies". Those familiar with Rob Zombie are likely to be the only ones who completely 'get' this clever little film - appreciating its depraved sense of humor and nihilism. Though I do not count myself a fan of either, I do like both at times, and I am quite familiar with both. Fans of both the horror genre and Rob Zombie are likely to love it. In my opinion, House of 1000 Corpses is a fan movie.
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