Mini-Movie Review — House Of A Thousand Corpses

by John Hawkins | April 28, 2003 12:46 am

Mini-Movie Review — House Of A 1000 Corpses: I caught Rob Zombie’s directorial debut, “House of 1000 Corpses[1]” this week-end and I was blown away. For the most part, the movie hasn’t gotten great reviews and it’s not reeling in the money at the box office. However in my humble opinion, this is one of the best horror films of all time. Coming from a horror film aficionado like myself, that is high praise indeed.

To begin with, there’s nothing like this movie in the horror genre. Sure, you can make some comparisons to the, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” because of the demented family angle, but stylistically the movie reminded me more of, “Natural Born Killers.”

The opening scene of the movie that takes place in, “Capt. Spaulding’s Museum of Monsters and Madmen” & is quite frankly one of the coolest scenes I’ve ever seen on film. Two young couples wander from the above mentioned museum into what can best be described as an “Alice in Wonderland” version of Hell on earth and things deteriorate for them from there.

The pacing is excellent and the details are superb. Little things like the dolls at the front of the “Firefly clan” house, how Tiny eats his cereal, and the nursery rhyme Baby says at an “odd” (I don’t want to tell you too much) time make the movie memorable. Speaking of “Baby”, she’s played by first time actress “Sheila Moon” and she’s the sexiest villainess ever to walk the screen as far as I’m concerned. Again I’m not going to give away too much, but you’ll never think of the song, “She’s a Brick House” the same way after seeing this film. Furthermore, the movie is totally unpredictable. I can’t tell you how pleasant I find it these days to actually be 90% of the way through the movie without having any idea of how it’s going to end.

Summing it all up, “House of 1000 Corpses” gets a thumb way, way, up. In fact, right this moment I’d rank it as my 2nd favorite horror flick of all time ahead of movies like, “The Ring”, “Pet Semetary” and “The Shining” and just behind, “The Blair Witch Project”. If you’re not bothered by gruesome imagery (which this movie has in spades), catch it at the theater while you can…