Yes I am doing it.

(Doing what?)

 I am lumping Rob Zombie’s film House of 1000 Corpses in with a collection of films that includes The Haunting, The Shining, The Legend of Hell House. 

(Why are you doing that?)

See, because, Zombie’s film has the word “House” in it.

(But Zombie’s film isn’t a haunted house movie, and the rest that you mention are haunted house movies. Using your logic, you might as well include House of Cards with the disgraced Kevin Spacey,  or Animal House with John Belushi popping like a zit. Furthermore why not review the genre of House music. Look, here’s a House jam for ya! How about Full House with those bratty twins?)

Okay, perhaps this situation calls for a more detailed explanation. Back in May, I reviewed the 1974 film The House of Seven Corpses. This film more closely resembles a haunted house film than Zombie’s film. It has some of the atmospheric trappings, including a long staircase, high ceilings, and a grave or two out in the back.  Still, I guess I kind of artificially widened the parameters of the haunted house film genre so that I could review Hof7Corpses.  Overall, I didn’t like the film very much. I found it dull and pointless.  Throughout the review, I compare it to House of 1000 Corpses, making parallels where perhaps there were none. Was Zombie trying to “remake” the 1970s film and do it better by adding 993 corpses to the equation?  I humorously and erroneously made that conclusion. Truth be told, I can’t find any references that links the two films.  But I’m not looking that hard because I just can’t take this subject that seriously. However I was right about one thing. I had written that , even though Zombie’s film has a mere 19% approval rating on rottentomatoes.com , I would like it better than The House of Seven Corpses.

I wrote:

..soon I will watch Zombie’s film and then decide with finality if one thousand corpses are better than seven

Well I recently tested this hypothesis. And I was correct. One thousand corpses are better than seven. There is the finality. Reading between the lines, it seems that I was promising a review. So…here it is!  THIS is why I am reviewing House of 1000 Corpses.

House of 1000 Corpses is more of a gore/slasher movie than a haunted house film. It is resembles The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and has little in common with films such as The Amityville Horror or The Shining. Therefore I’m not going to spend a lot of time and effort on this review.  The synopsis will be brief as hell = a car full of youngsters breaks down near the house of a psychotic family. Youngsters meet family and the stuff of horror-gore breaks out on the screen.

This film is widely panned. I’m not going to go against the grain and declare my love for it. But I will say, House of 1000 Corpses is an entertaining movie at the very least.  Rob Zombie is the Quentin Tarantino or Oliver Stone of horror.  He seems to have applied a “no-rules style” of filmmaking to  the film.  It mashes together all kinds of styles; black and white footage with color, video with film, crazy shots and sequences – all this he mixes into an insane brew that smells of..genius?  If “genius” is too strong, than substitute it with “fun.” Zombie has “fun” with the tools and tricks of cinema; he gathers themes and styles from a toy box of tropes and splashes them with bloody gore. Many critics don’t appreciate all this gore. Too much controversy with all the horror-erotic scenes as well.  It goes over the top into the unforgivable, and still it marches on. In a weird way, this constant pushing of the medium somehow justifies the style in the end.  My opinion, of course.  No it’s not a great movie. Perhaps it’s not even “good.”  But it’s an amusing spectacle, certainly preferable to the boring The House of Seven Corpses.

And that’s all I’ll say about that!