After an aberrant clown (Sid Haig), who runs a roadside horror attraction/gas station, tells four teens about a local mass murderer, they go off searching for more information and instead find a family of backwoods psychopaths (Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon, Karen Black).
Ignore the hype (and there is a lot of it); Rob Zombie’s creation is just the comedy party version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with a bit of Italian horror tossed in. I recommended that early Slasher (particularly before watching this), but it doesn’t scream out repeat viewing. It works on shock and it only shocks the first time. So, House of 1000 Corpses works as a replacement for a second viewing of old Leatherface. There’s still some shocks, but due to weirdness. Multiple scene will leave you shaking your head and laughing (and raising your beer in salute). Many of the major characters are named for characters from Marx Brothers films and that’s fitting; this is the horror film that Groucho Marx would have made (assuming he stole corpses at night). Sid Haig’s Captain Spaulding is a memorable freak that will keep clowns in the evil camp for a few extra years. The rest of the cast excels as well with Sheri Moon toping them all with a karaoke rendition of I Want to be Loved by You. That’s when I knew this was less a movie and more a surrealistic amusement park ride. It should have been a more extreme ride. In too many scenes, be it violence, gore, nudity, sex, or humor, it felt like Zombie was pulling his punches. This may be due to studio cutting, with seventeen minutes said to have been sliced (but perhaps those were drab scenes of the teens driving). The final third of the movie loses cohesion. Instead of worrying about plot or character, Zombie goes for stylized shots; he succeeds, but it was the wrong goal. However, House of 1000 Corpses doesn’t exist for thought. It’s there for your next drunken Halloween party.