As part of my viewing of all things “Halloween”, which has unexpectedly become prep work for the latest sequel out next month from director David Gordon Green (with, in typical frustrating fashion, the makers again cherry picking which previous entries they treat as canon and which ones they outright dismiss – in this case, dropping all of them except the very first Halloween, meaning sayonara to the brother-sister sibling rivalry) which, from the trailer, not only unfortunately doesn’t look all that promising (didn’t we already do this Jamie Lee Curtis’ haunted Laurie Strode finally facing the babysitter killin’ Shape that traumatized and stunted her teen years – in a film that at least recognized the masterfully done first sequel?) but is also somewhat confusing me with its title (if they’re only acknowledging the events of the first one, which was also called Halloween, isn’t this like naming a sequel to Jaws … Jaws? Or calling all three entries in the original trilogy Star Wars and leaving the confused audience to fend for itself? Perhaps it’s a vaguely clever way of sign-posting the two films, and dismissing everything in-between, but it also just seems… a little off-base), I had reached a low point of slogging through the idiotically pandering 7th sequel Halloween: Resurrection (in which the director of the aforementioned Halloween II cemented his position as the true hack he is, providing further evidence – as if any was needed — that the real masterful guiding forces behind the first sequel were director John Carpenter and his producer Debra Hill) and was about to embark on the even more dreaded (as much as I love the genre, let’s be honest, after you think you’ve seen the worst… things can always go lower, especially in the world of commercial sequels) heavy-metal-rocker-turned-horror-director Rob Zombie’s double remake take on the series. Yes, the franchise had veered off course here and there, but I still overall had tons of affection for it… so the idea of having the over-the-top white trash Zombie aesthetic heaped on Halloween seemed more than a turn-off… it felt offensive.

Yet, in the interest of fairness (at the very least giving myself an additional opportunity to pat myself on the back – ‘gee, Dougie, ol’ self, you’re a fair guy, aren’t you? Why, I like you!’), I decided to side track a bit in the “Halloween” viewings and give Zombie’s initially despised (by me) first two films a re-look to see if maybe I judged too harshly, or missed something worthwhile… and, perhaps after watching these two and then his Halloween efforts (if I’m not feeling too bludgeoned and sucked of humanity) I’ll continue with viewing all of what I’ll generously refer to as his oeuvre. I figure I slag the guy enough that I’ll ignore that other, perhaps more rational voice inside (the one saying ‘How much poison do you have to drink before recognizing this shit can kill you?’) and give a fresh and more complete look at his films. Hey, I’ve even had a few French filmmaker friends claim they appreciate Zombie’s work (there’s that voice again, reminding me about the French’s admiration for Jerry Lewis).

So I watched House of 1000 Corpses again. I didn’t like it when I first saw it during its original theatrical release… and after seeing it again, things have only gotten worse. At least after that first viewing I came out filled with emotions – i.e., disgust at its brutish, insensitive and idiotic barbarism and appalled by the aforementioned freak-and-geek-show middle-America caricatures of humans that are as dumbly conservative-minded as any episode of midday television programs like Gerry Springer that seemingly serve as the inspiration (what there is of it) for Zombie; shows that parade the worst, morally-wayward examples of humanity on stage for the housewives and unemployed at home to gawk at and feel superior to (the better for them not to notice their own complete exploitation and subjugation to the corporate forces who run those shows). This time, however, bereft of any sense of expectation at all (there was a ton of build up with that first Zombie film), what essentially hit me was the complete emptiness of his offering.

Filled with clips (sometimes shown without any context) to classic horror movies and cameos and starring roles from tons of familiar faces (from iconoclastic choices, like Michael “Bonnie and Clyde” Pollard and Karen “Burnt Offerings” Black, to cult genre faves, like Sid “Spider Baby” Haig and Tom “Henry, Portraits of a Serial Killer” Towles), the director gives us his references, but yet can do nothing but flail about trying to create the brilliance of a single moment of any of those movies. He creates no context, no resonance, no perspective. Where the bonkers ‘family’ in Tobe Hooper’s grisly backwaters-set 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre (a seminal film which Zombie, like so many talentless filmmakers we’ve seen, apes and mimics throughout) resonates with a terrifying underlying critique of a discarded yet growing American sub-society slaughtering animals for our food finally coming back to eat those who exploit them, Zombie understands none of that. The only thing that he seems able to present is visual grotesqueries and cruelty, without any awareness that none of that has any real effect without an underlying context. Lacking any meaning also renders the brilliant underlying black comedy of Texas Chainsaw (‘Look what you’ve done to the door!’) completely ineffective in 1000 Corpses (well, that as well as Zombie’s clumsiness as a director).

Horror fan Zombie mimics his favourite images and films, with his only contribution a sledgehammer-style dumbing down of what any genre fan with even a modicum of thoughtfulness holds as important and meaningful. Maybe that sort of scowling reciting of influences, with an attitude of rebelliousness, works in heavy metal (with a propulsive head-banging beat, of course) where Zombie is a god, but cinema demands more. A lot more.

For better or worse, we’ve been shown every nasty act one human can do to another, conjured up on screens both big and small (television has long ago gotten into the act of displaying depravities). There’s nothing brave or daring about it at this point. In fact, where the cruellest of horror films in the 70’s had a sense of bubbling up and confronting the violent hypocrisy of ‘the Man’ and his patriarchal and repressive institutions, in today’s climate, where bloodthirsty war is sold as a necessity by the military corporate forces, easy presentations of bloodletting are now aligned with the voices of power and repression. Ultimately, 1000 Corpses is about as subversive as a government-commissioned US propaganda war movie (though perhaps Zombie does understand this and is quite fine with it, as heavy metal — as became wildly apparent post-9/11 — is notoriously peppered with spewing right wing, fear-filled xenophobes, both on the fan and band fronts).

With the constantly un-motivated video-style effects, clumsily handled editing interludes to apparently show ‘character’ (mostly just showing the various sicko ‘family’ members doing more acts of barbarity and cruelty) and the in-your-face sledgehammer quality of the entire film, it’s obvious the indulgent Zombie (with an ignorant confidence I guess born from being a metal head superstar) is determined to show us what a ballsy visionary he is. But the film just sits there; it’s all been done before, and so much better. The actors do their best with what they have (clearly meant to shriek out their emotions), but one thing I was starkly reminded of is just how awful a performer Zombie’s wife Sherri Moon is in the film; and, with the clueless relish in which she embraces that horribly annoying giggling, I don’t suspect this to get any better with each succeeding Zombie film she’s in.

It’s the final act, though, in which Zombie takes us to the shiny pinnacle of his complete witlessness; his ability to feverishly conjure up (in what I’m sure he imagines as fits of dark and deep creative inspiration, with Sherri Moon likely regaling him with fits of enabling horrifying giggles) as the final battered and bruised female (Erin Daniels) stumbles upon the hellish dungeon where mutated cyborg-like humanoids perform bloody surgical experiments on their victims, with little concern for anything approaching a shred of logic over what the hell these creatures are, or what they’re doing there (other than, I imagine, Zombie’s thoughts that, man, they’d look killer on an 80’s Iron Maiden album cover).

No surprise, there’s an obligatory bleak ending. But what Zombie doesn’t seem to understand is that a truly profound and despairing ending has to be earned (in the same way a brilliant filmmaker like Ernst Lubitsch understood that a happy one needed to be). Or that Tobe Hooper or George Romero did with the ultimately nihilistic endings of their great works. The real horror masters understand that isn’t about indulging in your favourite horror movie imagery, or replicating your favourite scene, but having something profound to say. In a film with no underlying sense of humanity or sensitivity (or real suffering on the part of that filmmaker over what that ending means) like 1000 Corpses, its ending is just another empty affect. I can only imagine the most intellectually barren and emotionally empty of the horror crowd celebrating this film – they and the film are poster fodder for everything people on the outside imagine as reprehensible about the genre and the menacing, drooling rabble that adore it.

Jerry Lewis… and now Rob Zombie… I’m really starting to question the thought processes of those French people… as well as my own decisions, as I plan to continue down this road… it’s on to Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects and his Halloween entries. I vaguely remember Rejects as being slightly better… not holding my breath.

Buck A Review   horror   rob zombie