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The world of the notorious Firefly family is riddled with vivid sideshow aesthetic and gaudy detail. This creates a wonderful contrast from the bleak, beige daytime scenes, which feel completely grounded and subdued in comparison. It feels as if Zombie unleashed decades of pent-up creative inspiration into one film—a feeling he struggles to evoke in his following movies (in my humble opinion).
Full Cast & Crew
His film career began similarly, with blaxploitation roles and supporting turns in Roger Corman and Jack Hill’s horror, noir, and sci-fi adding up to more than 50 film appearances. George Lucas’ THX 1138 and Sean Connery’s penultimate James Bond outing Diamonds Are Forever are standouts among films like Blood Bath, Galaxy of Terror, and Beyond Atlantis. Others, like Moseley, Karen Black, and Sid Haig, spent years running what McClelland characterized as an “underground publicity tour” simply by going to horror conventions and signing autographs. McClelland, who estimated he goes to three or four cons a year himself, would see them frequently, set up behind booths and interacting with delighted fans. That’s exactly why it appealed to McClelland, who went out and bought the DVD—“the very first one, where it was just a cardboard flip cover without a clasp”—as soon as he could.
Rob Zombie’s ‘House of 1,000 Corpses’ Turns 20: An Oral History of a Bloody Cult Classic
Mixed in with this motley collection of Zombie’s favorite actors were his friends. He gave the role of squeaky psycho Baby Firefly to his then-girlfriend (now wife), Sheri Moon. Chris Hardwick, a buddy he’d met at the MTV Music Awards, was asked to play Jerry, one of the four kids, with Zombie telling him he’d written the part of a “loud, obnoxious asshole” specifically for him. His finished film was Texas Chainsaw Massacre but more gleeful and carnivalesque; it was The Rocky Horror Picture Show but more cramped and grotesque. It was the Marx Brothers and the Manson family chopped up and blitzed in a blender, then poured straight down your gullet as you’re held down by a late-night horror host from the 1950s and an MTV editor from the 1990s. House of 1000 Corpses contains more intriguing characters than it's actually able to explore.
Captain Spaulding
That bums me out to learn, and I hope maybe by some extraordinary chance he’ll happen upon this review and gain a better understanding of how and why people have come to love this movie. HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES also remains the most colorful of Rob Zombie’s films, taking inspiration from the giallo films of Mario Bava and Dario Argento. One reason I’ve failed to connect with The Devil’s Rejects in the same way I’ve connected with CORPSES is the difference in the color palette used between the films.
Clown Horror Movies That Are Underrated - CBR
Clown Horror Movies That Are Underrated.
Posted: Tue, 05 Sep 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Robert Bartleh Cummings, more commonly known as Rob Zombie, came to public prominence in the early '90s as the frontman of the heavy metal band White Zombie. He went on to become a successful solo act, releasing albums under the name of, of course, Rob Zombie. Now that Zombie has had his hands on countless titles, making him a mainstay in the horror movie genre, fans might be surprised to learn that House of 1000 Corpses was his directorial debut.
While the financial terms of Lionsgate's deal were not disclosed, the story goes that the studio made its money back that first weekend. Hence, a sequel, "The Devil's Rejects," was given the green light in short order. Rob Zombie is an incredibly successful recording artist, known for songs like "Dragula" and "Living Dead Girl," as well as his song "More Human Than Human" with the band White Zombie, with nearly 6 million albums sold. Through HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, we begin to see Zombie’s creative genetics – shades of classic vaudeville, Coney Island, rickety funhouses, vintage game shows, rock and roll.
Clown Horror
Zombie’s debut presents a filmmaker still learning the process, and the movie benefits greatly from it. The actors are given plenty of room to flesh out their characters, and career-defining performances are given by genre veterans such as Bill Moseley (The Devil’s Rejects). This film takes risks in a way that Zombie’s following films would not and in result has a playful energy that few movies have replicated. I have a distinct memory of seeing the trailer for the movie playing in the lobby of my childhood local theater, and even then I was both terrified and undeniably intrigued by the whole spectacle. I was much too young to see HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES in theaters, but my older brother bought the movie on DVD as soon as it was released, and I couldn’t wait to point my eyeballs at it. I’ll never forget the first time my brothers and I sat down and watched the movie together.
House of 1000 Corpses was Rob Zombie's directorial debut
Take Dr. Satan (Walter Phelan), hands down one of the most interesting beings in the Firefly trilogy. The cyborg scientist appears briefly in the movie, but will haunt viewers' nightmares forever, even if he doesn't necessarily fit in with the style of subsequent flicks. He directs Jerry Goldsmith, Bill Hudley, Denise Willis, and Mary Knowles in the direction of the Firefly house, where they are terrorized by the Fireflies, especially Baby and Otis. When police Lt. George Wydell goes looking for them after Denise's father Don reports them missing, He directs him to the house as well, where Wydell, Willis, Deputy Steve Nash are killed.
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John Wayne Gacy Movies: House of 1000 Corpses, To Catch a Killer & More - ComingSoon.net
John Wayne Gacy Movies: House of 1000 Corpses, To Catch a Killer & More.
Posted: Wed, 25 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
He fires his gun multiple times into the camera before the frame goes to black. Then we hear Spaulding proclaim, “God damn motherfucker got blood all over my best clown suit.” And just like that, the world was acquainted with filmmaker Rob Zombie. It’s funny, campy, twisted, weird, and it makes you feel uncomfortable for having watched it.
Captain Spaulding (born Johnny Lee Johns and also known as "Cutter")[2] is a fictional character created by Rob Zombie. The character first appeared in Zombie's 2003 horror film House of 1000 Corpses, portrayed by Sid Haig. Haig reprised his role as Spaulding in the sequels The Devil's Rejects (2005) and 3 from Hell (2019). Haig also voiced Spaulding in the 2009 animated film The Haunted World of El Superbeasto.[3] The character is depicted as a vulgar and murderous clown. After revitalizing his career thanks to House of 1000 Corpses, and teaming twice with Quentin Tarantino (in Jackie Brown and Kill Bill Volume 2), Haig did a run of horror films well-skewed for his newfound fandom, including Hatchet 3, Death House, and Night of the Living Dead 3D.
Art that is ahead of its time usually puzzles and confounds only to find its footing with time. HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES continues to age like a fine wine or, in this particular instance, like fine fried chicken and gasoline. He is presumably the father of Mama Firefly, previously known as Gloria Teasdale. She, in turn, is the biological mother of Baby, Rufus, and Tiny, as well as the presumed adoptive mother of Otis, whose last name was previously Driftwood. Captain Spaulding and Mama are Baby's parents, making her the half-sister of Rufus and Tiny.
The MGM deal lasted mere days before it was dismantled, leaving the film once again in limbo. Things were so sour with MGM that a spokesperson for the studio even denied that they ever had a deal in place. "It was falsely announced in Variety that we had the project. We never had a deal with Rob Zombie. We were in negotiations, let's put it that way, or we were thinking about it," the unnamed spokesperson said at the time. Sure, Universal ponied up the dough for a better ending, but what fate was to befall the film now that they had their ending? In that same interview with Divine, Zombie explained that, by the following Halloween when the maze that was supposed to be titled "House of 1000 Corpses" (it was changed to "American Nightmare") to go along with the film was set to debut, everything had changed. That movie became "House of 1000 Corpses," which Zombie actually cooked up while putting together a maze for Universal's Halloween Horror nights.
His truck runs out of gas on the way, and he frightens a boy and assaults the boy's mother before stealing her car. Back at the motel, Otis rapes Roy's wife Gloria and demands Adam and Roy come with him on an errand. What's most amazing is that things arguably worked out better for Rob Zombie in the end. He was able to control the destiny of "House of 1000 Corpses," and he had a lot more creative freedom in the aftermath with Lionsgate, as the studio was just happy to have a hit on its hands in an identity-building phase. To that end, credit is absolutely owed to them for taking a risk at a time when seemingly everyone else was content to turn their noses up at a finished film that Universal had spent millions of dollars on. "With House of 1000 Corpses, Rob Zombie has created an in-your-face, unrelenting horror film experience. We are really looking forward to working with Rob and having a lot of fun with this campaign."
Later that night, Jerry Goldsmith, Bill Hudley, Mary Knowles, and Denise Willis are on the road in hopes of writing a book on offbeat roadside attractions. When the four meet Spaulding, who is also the owner of "The Museum of Monsters & Madmen", they learn of the local legend of Dr. Satan. As they take off in search of the tree from which Dr. Satan was hanged, they pick up a young free-spirited hitchhiker named Baby, who claims to live only a few miles away.
"By the time the next Halloween rolled around, we had already shot the film and built the attraction now based on the film! Unfortunately, at that moment, Stacey Snider (Chairman of Universal) had gotten pulled into Congress to testify and [Joe] Lieberman was up everyone's asses." Filming seemed to go over pretty well, and Zombie was given a healthy budget (especially considering it was his debut feature). The amount has always been debated, with the filmmaker himself citing multiple figures over the years. "I don't know how much it cost. It cost way too much, I know that," Zombie said in 2014. "Maybe it cost somewhere between $7 and $14 [million]." Whatever the budget was, money wasn't really the issue. While Haig was meant to star in Zombie’s latest, 3 From Hell, as it continued the story of Spaulding’s Firefly family, the director recently revealed that because of health issues, Haig needed to be replaced in the majority of the film by actor Richard Brake.
The movie ends with Denise screaming in horror and the words "The End?" displayed before the end credits. Later that night, the three remaining teenagers are dressed as rabbits and taken out to an abandoned well. Mary attempts to run away, but is tracked down and stabbed to death by Baby moments later. A book’s total score is based on multiple factors, including the number of people who have voted for it and how highly those voters ranked the book. Despite investing millions in the film, it was ultimately decided that Universal was not going to release "House of 1000 Corpses," and the studio dropped the movie completely. In that same AV Club piece, Zombie expressed that the upside of the film he had made wouldn't have been enough to justify the publicity risk Universal would have been taking.
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