![]() Paired with hot Eighties siren Deborah Foreman (you can see through the film on my VHS copy of My Chauffeur), Galligan gives a legendarily awful performance as a blueblood pining for the smutty ministrations of China (Michelle Johnson, the "Me" generation's Kim Cattrall) while ignoring the more modest charms of Foreman's mousy Sarah. Artless and often appallingly bad, Waxwork finds Zach Galligan in the brief period of time between his brush with stardom in Joe Dante's Gremlins and his sudden decline into obscurity in a series of films that didn't disguise his shortcomings as skilfully. While House of 1000 Corpses is where the Scream school of post-modern horror has come now, almost full circle back to a serious consideration of the seminal scare pics of 1970s and '80s, 1988's Waxwork finds an early iteration of the smirky, self-referential horror that Wes Craven would popularize in about eight years time. It's not the money shots, it's the foreplay, and while I sort of liked it as a reminder of the socially aware horror/exploitation movies of the '70s, the picture is really just Cliff's Notes and noise. The lack of a compelling subtext marks House of a 1000 Corpses as a picture of surprising promise and a laudable lack of traditional morality that hamstrings itself with too cavalier a reading of the movies it apes. An agreeably perverse curiosity if not actually a good film, Zombie's debut is, in many ways, no worse than Eli Roth's much-lauded Cabin Fever-its chief shortcoming that it makes too little of its middle-class heroes, so fond of its rogue's gallery of villains that it neglects to develop the idea of civilization intruding on the homogeneity of the rural savage. Unsavoury at the least, now that would have been something to write about.Īs it is, House of 1000 Corpses is that rare film that strives for cult status and will most likely achieve it. A little like Freddy Got Fingered, the reason that House of 1000 Corpses isn't better is that Zombie pulls back a time or two, likely as a result of the much-publicized struggle to garner the film the "R" rating it had the potential to be denied, particularly had it followed through with the rape of a young woman by an attacker in a suit of her father's skin. Its gratuitous nudity (played seriously) somehow more disturbing than the gratuitous gore (played for camp), that the film actually sort of works in an arduous way is a testament to the enduring fascination of redneck roadside attractions. The death of a father cuts to a happy Christmas (his last thought, presumably), while a pivotal slaughter sequence is scored by a nostalgic country tune. ![]() None of which goes very far in explaining why it is that House of 1000 Corpses is so sticky a picture. Its main weakness is that it has no point of view, with the best moment a tongue-in-cheek one where a tribute to the hanging human artifacts of Hooper's splatter classic reveal themselves to be women's shoes. Without due motive save, perhaps, that Zombie's most familiar genre is music video, the picture cuts away often and erratically to a series of mini-rants shot on different stock or in a sepia scheme, offering the audience the sort of insight that its characters aren't afforded. The only thing missing from the picture-besides actual dread-is a helpful annotation so that youngsters intrigued can check out the real deal.įour kids are stranded on a dark and stormy night in a house populated by colourful sickos. More Richard Donner's The Goonies than Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, House of 1000 Corpses is a shoestring series of hyperactive camera movements and disjointed images culled from what seems too many films to count, from Bloodsucking Freaks to Near Dark to Maniac to The Serpent and the Rainbow to Halloween to Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 and so on, with no reason except to demonstrate how many horror movies Zombie has seen. ![]() Starring Zach Galligan, Alexander Godunov, Monika Schnarreīy Walter Chaw Curiously, compulsively watchable in a grindhouse exploitation sort of way, neo-glam shock-rocker Rob Zombie follows in Twisted Sister Dee Snider's capering footsteps with a derivative flick that mainly goes a long way towards demonstrating how hard it is to make a coherent movie. Starring Zach Galligan, Deborah Foreman, Michelle Johnson, Dana Ashbrook Starring Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon, Karen Black
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