Rating: 2/5
Oh My Horror 2025 | 24|52 | Daddy Horror
On May 18, 1978, Sheriff John Quincey Wydell, along with local authorities in Ruggsville County, Texas, led a "search and destroy" mission on a decaying farmhouse. Inside the house, police discovered a collection of diaries and scrapbooks detailing the accounts of more than seventy-five murders. The family responsible for these brutal crimes was forever to be known as "The Devil's Rejects."
Tiny Firefly drags the naked body of a dead woman through the woods, her skin pale and bloodstains covering the inside of her thighs—a dozen or more cars race by, entering the Firefly family farm. Inside the house, Otis lay sleeping, cuddling with another naked dead woman, her body covered in cuts, nicks, and blood. Baby and Mother Firefly also lay sleeping, awakened by the sheriff’s department over their loudspeaker. The Fireflies arm themselves, taking on the police.
In the fallout, the police kill Rufus and take Mother into custody. Otis and Baby abandon their basement full of kidnapped victims, escaping through the sewer drain pipe. Down the way, Baby plays dead in the street, and a woman stops to help her. Otis stabs the woman in the back, and he and Baby steal her car to escape. Meanwhile, the police find evidence in the house that implicates Captain Spaulding, the clown who runs The Museum of Monsters & Madmen, in the family’s murders.
The film follows Spaulding, Otis, and Baby as they evade the police and engage in their bizarro form of hijinks.
I didn’t care much about House of 1000 Corpses. This movie abandons all the funhouse elements for torture porn. Most of the movie is a boring parade of, “Woah, isn’t this fucked up? Aren’t you disgusted?” And maybe I’m jaded, but without any structure or character, it’s mostly tedious.
What this improves upon is the consistency of style and aesthetic that 1000 Corpses lacked. Rob Zombie is at his best when he transcends his genre trappings—Halloween 2 makes some wild swings by exploring Michael’s internal reality and developing the character in ways no one else considered. Here, we get a tiny hint of that with the dream sequences, but the dreams are nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the movie.
The police interview a movie critic, believing his knowledge will give the police a hint as to the Firefly’s motivations. It’s Rob Zombie’s chance to make fun of the critics who care about movies. I guess he didn’t expect most critics to enjoy this movie.
To get a hint at the movie’s sense of humor, there’s a scene where Cutter gets up to use the bathroom. We hear him sigh and see brown liquid hitting a white surface—pull back to coffee pouring into a white mug. Or, there’s a scene where the three killers are eating tutti-fruit ice cream, and I guess the joke is, “They’re just like me; they like ice cream too!”
I know many horror fans are into this movie. It could be that I’m losing my affinity for horror. Or maybe I prefer the original trash to neo-trash pastiche. I also like horror movies that don’t waste 2 hours of my life for 30 minutes of story.
** Actor Talk **
- Seeing E.G. Daily as Candy hits a weird place in my childhood.
- I miss Karen Black as Mother Firefly :(
- Sheri Moon Zombie’s bit seems to be her butt.
- Ken Foree!
- William Forsythe becomes the most interesting character when he has a motivation-shifting dream.