I love The Devil's Rejects (the sequel to House of 1000 Corpses). That's just a fun, smart, sick film. But this, the one that came before and launched the sequel I so enjoy, is just lame. I kept waiting for it to get good but the longer I waited the more annoying the film got and the more annoyed I became. Every new wrinkle and twist of the plot is completely predictable and totally boring. The film is basically a group of freaks killing a group of normal people. They don't torture them very much and don't really seem to be having too much fun with the killings so I guess I'm wondering what the point of the whole thing is. In the second film, the twisted family of killers fully embraces their work and exploits their victims in horrible (but pleasant for viewing and analysis) ways. In this film, as often as not, they'll just shoot someone in the head without so much as a hello.
That being the case, my mind started to wander (never a good sign in a horror film) to thoughts of logic and common sense. Usually a horror film exerts enough grip on your fear receptors that you don't have time to consider the why's and wherefore's of the whole mess (which, if you were to actually do while watching most horror films would rob you of any pleasure. It's not that House of 1000 Corpses is unique in this department, it's just that I focused on it more than I'm normally inclined to.). Chief among the ridiculous implausibilities is the fact that the family kills people wantonly, whoever they may be and however they may have stumbled across their path (be they high school cheerleaders or law enforcement officers). The problem here is that this family could not do this for very long without people figuring out that something is amiss down by that crazy looking house.
Which leads me to the second major common sense lapse: the house. It's a fucking nut house. And while that might be scary and all, any sane person looking at that house would know some fucked up shit be goin' on in there. The fact that they've been committing murders left and right for years coupled with the fact that they've been doing it in this ridiculous house makes it impossible to believe that they could have gotten away with it for so long.
Finally, the most annoying logical lapse is the dozens of mutant creatures that live in the web of subterranean tunnels that snake all over the Firefly property. Who are all these people? How did they come to be this way? How has not one of them ever been noticed by a person who's just passing by? Why does the family even keep them around? And how did they get the technology to meld flesh with machine? That last question especially irks me because it comes out of nowhere and is never addressed but for god's sake they've built a Terminator down in that dungeon. I guess by the time you've gotten to this part of the film it's basically over and if you've gone with it this far I guess you can go with it a little more. What the hell?
However, what really turned me off the whole film in the first place was not the illogical nature of the plot (that came later when I got bored) but rather the silly interstitials of, alternately, Sheri Moon dancing half-naked, the brother looking crazy, or some half glimpsed negative image. These interludes are not scary so much as they are disorienting and annoying (not to mention pointless). That wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that, it seems to me anyway, the best violence is done in these little interstitials. You go to see a film called House of 1000 Corpses, you expect some serious grue, full-on and in your face. You don't expect it to be hidden in sepia-tinged, negative printed, shaken camera interstitials that come out of nowhere and return to the ether without making any real impression. That's just not good business sense. But I guess somebody liked it. And I'm glad because that meant Zombie got to make the sequel. And since I really liked the sequel, I guess I can't complain too much.
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