[HorrorScience] House of 1000 Corpses (2003)

Reading time: 8 minutes

Qualification

House of 1000 Corpses (Spain)

Year

2003

Duration

89 minutes

Director

Rob Zombie

Distribution

Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon Zombie, Karen Black, Erin Daniels, Chris Hardwick, Rainn Wilson, Jennifer Jostyn, Tom Towles, Matthew McGrory, Walton Goggins, Robert Mukes, Dennis Fimple, James McKinnon, William H. Basset

Script

Rob Zombie

Two weeks have passed since the analysis I have done on The Devil's Rejects, and now it's time to continue with the mini-cycle dedicated to Rob Zombie in his role as a filmmaker analyzing what is hisfirst film as director, and the first part of the two that make up the story of the psychotic and cannibalistic Firefly family. I'm talking about House of 1000 Corpses, either The house of 1000 corpses, as it is known in Spain.

Something curious about the film is that it was filmed in 2000, but was not released until 2003 since from the beginning there were difficulties in achieving distribution. Universal Pictures, the original producer of this film, decided not to release it because they feared that the rating the film would obtain would be for adults and they did not want to risk releasing a product that would cause rejection among the audience due to its high violent content. Rob then bought the distribution rights and decided to sell the film to Metro-Goldwin-Mayer, but they also ended up rejecting the film. And it was Lions Gate Entertainment who was in charge of buying the distribution rights and finally releasing it, three years after it was filmed.

Lions Gate was not only in charge of distributing this film, but they later commissioned the director to make the sequel to it (The Devil's Rejects), which, as I have already mentioned, was even more successful than this first part, and both ended up being cult films within the genre.

House of 1000 Corpses is influenced by several 1970s horror films, including the notable Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, and the influence also reaches the decade in which this film is set, since the story begins one day before Halloween near the end of the 70s, specifically on October 30, 1977.

That October 30, following a bit the cliché of the films of the subgenre slasher (where one or more murderers stalk and kill people, often teenagers) Two young couples formed by Jerry Goldsmith, Bill Hudley, Mary Knowles, and Denise Willis are traveling part of the US routes in search of town attractions and local legends to collect information with which to later write a book.

When stopping in a place in search of gasoline they meet the Captain Spaulding, a vulgar but kind guy, who is the owner of the "Museum of Madmen and Monsters" where gasoline and fried chicken are also offered, in addition to being a strange character in himself since he puts on makeup and dresses like a clown, and completes the costume with a small galley with the motif of the USA flag, making the whole thing something that, instead of being funny, is strange and disturbing.

Spaulding sells them tickets to the museum, and gives them a tour of it, telling them the macabre stories of the murderers who are represented there, and seems to always be a friendly guide although the protagonists do not know that What Spaulding was cleaning from the floor when they arrived was the blood of a victim he himself murdered a few scenes ago., at the beginning of the movie.

[HorrorScience] House of 1000 Corpses (2003) — Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), a character who has become a cult classic in the genre and who will appear again in the second part, "The Devil's Rejects"

It is through this crazy clown that the 4 protagonists learn about the local legend of a guy named Dr. Satan, a murderous maniac who ended up being hanged from a tree nearby. After the tour of the museum, the two couples then decide to go in search of the place where this Dr. Satan was hanged, and on the way they meet a young and sexy hitchhiker, and since she is alone and it is pouring rain, they decide to take her. She tells them that she lives a couple of miles away, and then they ask her if she knows the legend of Dr. Satan and if she knows where the tree where they hung him is, to which she answers affirmatively and says that the tree is near her house, and that she will show them.

But not everything goes well since shortly after one of the vehicle's tires bursts due to a shot fired by someone hidden on the side of the road, and on top of that we will learn that Jerry inflated the spare tire well before leaving on a trip, but he forgot to put it back in the trunk, so they have no spare. Baby, which is what the hitchhiker calls herself, tells them that they can walk home from there, that her brother Rufus He has a tow truck and can come get the car from his house, so Bill offers to go with Baby while the others wait in the car.

When they arrive at the house, Baby asks Bill to wait a moment, that the door is closed and that he will have to go in from the back to open it. A moment later she opens it and when Bill asks her about her brother she tells him that he already left, which is a bit strange because of the immediacy with which she did it, as if he had known in advance what had happened.

Immediately afterwards we will see how Rufus arrives with the tow truck to where the other 3 protagonists are, hooks up the car, and takes them to the family house. We will also see how at home Baby tells Bill that there are several in the family, and that Otis must be up. Otis is indeed upstairs, torturing 3 young women who are held captive, tied hand and foot and gagged. Baby also has fun seducing Bill, who begins to feel quite uncomfortable.

At that same moment the others arrive, and Baby gets frustrated at not having achieved anything with Bill, so he gets in a bad mood and stops paying attention to everyone, ignoring them and not answering them when they ask him to please use the phone. It intervenes right there Mom Firefly, played by the fantastic actress Karen Black, and tells them that there is no phone in the house, and that Rufus went to get a new tire but won't be back for a few hours. After talking a little, Mama Firefly will invite them to stay for dinner, and even though the main couples want to leave as soon as possible because this family seems to be going from bad to worse, they have no choice but to play along until they can have the car repaired and leave.

I don't want to reveal more about the plot, so I will only comment that we will meet other members of the Firefly family, such as Otis Driftwood, Baby's adoptive brother; the deformed giant Tiny, whom Mama Firefly's ex-husband Earl tried to kill as a child by setting him on fire next to the family home; and grandfather Hugo, a rather unpleasant old man. We will also meet Dr. Satan, whose legend is more recent than our protagonists believe.

House of 1000 Corpses it's a violent movie, no more than others, and even less than several of those that come out these days. However, as I said in another analysis within this mini-cycle, Zombie knows how to make violence have its natural place within the film, where despite how bizarre some scene may seem to us, violence is justified and is not used as the only resource to generate appeal.

Some curious facts:

Most of the killers in this film have names derived from Groucho Marx characters ("Captain Spaulding" from Animal Crackers, "Otis B. Driftwood" from A Night at the Opera's, "Rufus T. Firefly" from Duck Soup, and "Hugo Z. Hackenbush" from A Day at the Races).
The credits show a dedication to Dennis Fimple (Grandpa Hugo), who died in 2002, this being his last film, and despite dying two years after filming it, it was not until a year after his death that it was released.
El Dr. Satán está inspirado en un póster de los años 50 que Zombie tiene en su casa, perteneciente a su colección personal de objetos extraños, y que anuncia «el terrorífico show en vivo de un mago llamado Dr. Satán».