Critic's Grade: D

Two years after its planned release date, Rob Zombie's gritty horror flick "House of 1000 Corpses" has bled its way into theaters. Unfortunately, its not as gruesome or entertaining as one would expect.

On a joyride through the country, a group of college students decide to check out some attractions devoted to strange goings on, including haunted houses, murder sites and thrill rides. They stop at a museum of horrific manor, where they meet Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), who takes them on a ride through dioramas and video of famous serial killers. Perhaps the most fascinating of the killers happens to be a man named Quentin Quayle. He tortured, raped and killed his victims in the most grisly manor. Calling himself Dr. Satan, the man was hanged by an angry mob of people. Afterwards, it was reported that his body went missing and it was never found (ooh, creepy). So, the collegians decide to search for this Dr. Satan, but not before they run into a lonely hitchhiker named Baby (Sherri Moon). Baby takes the gang to her old, essentially demonic home and introduces them to her family. The household is filled with digusting, sex craving beasts, including Mother Firefly (Karen Black), who insists on murdering everyone who gets a thrill out of searching for spooks and frights. The kids are stalked and murdered one by one, and they all stumble upon corpse after corpse, dead or alive. Cannibalism, sex, and disturbing gore, gore, gore is what you see when viewing this ghastly project.

Rob Zombie has envisioned a horror film that takes its roots from older horror films like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or "House on Haunted Hill." While a great metal artist, Zombie has a while to reach perfection. His visions in his music are creepy, but his visions on films are perhaps, in a bad way, creepier. The gritty film style doesn't help, either. It just seems as if Zombie was aiming to make people sick of the movie. But, knowing him, its probably what he was aiming for.

So, did I dislike the film? To the extent that it seemed like an all out parody of itself. However, it was a moderately tempting, bloody film that drifted far from the teen horror films that we have seen in the more recent years. I do not have a solid opinion, so I'll just be safe and say "House of 1000 Corpses" is something... Odd.

My Score: 5 (out of 10)

All Reviews by Jordan Boyd
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