WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
Truthfully, what you know about Rob Zombie really depends on the type of person you are. If you’re into horror films, you’ll know him as a horror director. If you’re into rock music, you’ll know him as a singer. Zombie, like John Carpenter discussed earlier this month, is a horror director that writes his own scores. It’s also very common for him to cast his wife, Sheri Moon, in his films. Actually, she features in all the films discussed in this article.
House of 1000 Corpses
This is the first time that horror fans were introduced to the Firefly family. I will talk about them again later as they feature in The Devil’s Rejects but this is the most of them you’ll meet. Before I watched this for the first time, a lot of people had talked about this film being one of the most gruesome horror films of the noughties but I didn’t see it that way. What I love about the film however is the way Zombie balances the mundane along with the violence. Part of the beauty of this, is the way he uses lighting and grading. The scene where we see Bill being chopped up could easily be mistaken for a snuff film! He even has the art of anticipation nailed! He pauses for so long before Nash is shot that you actually flinch at the sound of gunfire.
However, for me the most important part of this whole film is… Captain Spaulding and I will say no more than that.
The Lords of Salem
This film is actually the first time that Sherri plays the out-and-out lead in one of her husband’s films. Having watched this film – I need to correct something stated in a previous article, as this is also the first time Sherri plays a victim in one of her husband’s films – not 31 as this was realised 4 years prior. I want to quickly talk about the nudity in this film. A lot of the time, in horror films, the nudity is specifically for sexual purposes and only the younger actresses ‘get their kit off’ but instead there is no upper age-limit in this film and all of it feels in context from the witches stripping off at the beginning to the young woman in her bathroom listening to the radio. The amazing thing about this whole film is that everything that happens to Heidi, happens in the space of a week!
I feel like this film is proof that you can have horror without the violence. Now, that’s not to say there isn’t any at all but there’s so little it’s of no consequence.
31
Some people would think that in the opening scene Doom-Head breaks the fourth wall because it feels like he is talking directly to the audience, which makes me a little uncomfortable if I’m honest. However, you come to realise that he is actually talking to another character. Again, this is another example of Zombie’s use of grading as the whole opening scene is shot in black and white. I feel like this slightly follows the same plot wheel as House of 1,000 Corpses but takes it in a different direction and truthfully I actually prefer this film. The reason for that is that I think there’s more emotion to the film, like Levon’s death scene, and that’s more than likely down to us having an opportunity to get to know the characters more at the beginning of the film.
The Devil’s Rejects
OK, yes – this is a sequel to House of 1,000 Corpses but if I didn’t include it I would have run out of Rob Zombie films! Genuinely, for a moment, when I started watching it, I thought Zombie had messed up the plot line because it seemed like a character we knew was dead was back at the beginning but after a bit of searching I think the Wydell in this film must be a relation to the one in the original. You know I said that Captain Spaulding was important to the story, well this film reveals why even more with a shock revelation. This time round, instead of out-and-out horror I feel like Zombie decided to taken on a more thriller aspect. Now, it’s not a big thing because she isn’t actually in the film for very long but it bugs me that Karen Black no longer plays Mother Firefly.
Halloween 1&2
I think I made reference to this when I worked on the remake article for John Carpenter and Rob Zombie’s Halloween films, but it seems that the original films decided to steal Zombie’s idea that Michael and Laurie are brother and sister when they made a new Halloween film in 2018. Interestingly Zombie still used Carpenter’s composition of the Halloween theme instead of creating his own. Instead of Laurie being the main character, Zombie wants Michael to be the main focus of the first film following a truncated 15 years of his life. The second one opens with a flashback to Michael in the sanatorium before picking up directly from its predecessor and for some reason the actor playing a young Michael has been changed. For this film however, Laurie and her path to becoming accustomed to Michael being her brother as well as the attacker is at the forefront of the film. You’ll recognise a few faces in the sequel from some of the above films but even more interesting is the appearance of Octavia Spencer as Nurse Daniels. I feel that Zombie tried to stay within the same style as the original film with the first film but with his own little twist, however you can see in the second he has returned to his much more violent and gruesome style. My only issue with this film is that Zombie seems to have turned Loomis into more of a Gale Weathers style character.
