I’m sorry, but I don’t think I could ever write my usual serious review for this film. Rob Zombie, on the other hand is one of those directors that can’t seem to help but taking himself seriously, maybe because if he stepped back a little bit and took a look at his own stuff, then he too would laugh and find it ridiculous.
This film is the sequel from the first movie, House of 1000 Corpese, and it follows the same family on the run from the law. This family is a family of psychopathic killers. At best, a film like this could have been harmless entertainment. At best. But Rob Zombie, as I said, takes himself very seriously. He really wants to become the new horror messiah, the guy that brings the ultimate post impressionism to horror, the guy that takes the best of the horror greats from the seventies, from the b-movies and the high budget horror films that contributed to making the genre something more then a genre made to sell tickets and popcorn, or a celebration of the genre of movies that sought to do just that. Zombie, is one of those kids ala Tarantino that would proudly treasure the influences from the old cinema, and constantly refer to them in interviews and in the films themselves.
Only a slight problem. Rob Zombie is no Quentin Tarantino. He could be, if, like in this film, he didn’t want to take himself so seriously, by mixing in a violent stylish movie with the cheesiest of messages; whether he meant to or not, the message in this movie can be selected from a list. Number one; don’t judge killers, they too have their feelings, they too have their reasons. Number two; yes, we condemn psychopathic killers, but the lawmen are no better, they too are psychopathic, man, the real normal people are people like you and me, man, or that kid with his mother whose car gets stolen by that clown. This is what he seems to be saying when he suddenly allows the audience to feel sympathetic towards the killers as they get a taste of their own medicine. What people like to think is a great and original thing to be doing is something that happens in more horror films than you would think…heck, it’s been happening since Frankenstein! But what Rob Zombie does, and there is the major misstep, is that he makes the whole thing cheesy. That last sequence that makes some reviewers refer to movies like Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Wild Bunch and other classics is the most uselessly pretentious piece of cinema even Rob Zombie could have made, made all the cheesier by the fact that it is underlined by Lynyrd Skynyrd’s very overplayed ‘Free Bird’, and off the top of my head, I could think of about a thousand songs where it is played.
Backtrack a little bit. The movie actually starts on the right foot. The characters are interesting, and I’m not saying they aren’t. There is something absolutely creepy about the two siblings that go around murdering people in the most cold blooded and psychopathic of ways. When they pick on those country players and their wives, that bit is pretty good, it’s freaky. But that bit doesn’t last long. Soon enough Zombie has to resort to some sort of a plot, some sort of runaway plot that end up blowing the killers to a strange hero status that overturns the principles on which the movie seemed to be based, where the goodies end up becoming the baddies and the baddies some sort of heroes, whether they can be considered anti-heroes or straight up heroes ala Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (there you go, there is my wacky reference of the day). There would be nothing wrong with that, if we hadn’t seen the siblings being obnoxiously violent, and obnoxious in general during their stay in that whorehouse. So, all of a sudden, the chilling concept of the non conventional family as a tight and loving unit becomes a strange concept about a non-conventional family of killers that become the victims. And to do this, Rob Zombie not only relies on a pretentious feeling where he must have thought he was going to revolutionise the psycosis of the nature of a horror film, but he also relies on what he thinks, probably rightly, the psychosis of the average Rob Zombie audience is. That is just downright obnoxious and insulting.
To work on his behalf is the iconic use of a clown as a main character, it’s been done, but clowns can be used effectively, and have proved time and time again to be more suitable for a horror flick than a children’s one. To work against him is the annoying dialogue, the unsteady pace, the strange and cheesy ethics of the movie and a wasted opportunity, as well as a muck up of whatever was done well in the establishment of a plot, or more than that, what was done well in the whole first part of the film. For a Rob Zombie movie, this is pretty average, and that is a compliment. Of course the film is going to have its audience, and I can’t argue with that. But the tastelesness of the film is something that should be acknowledged anyways.
WATCH FOR THE MOMENT – Captain Spaulding steals the car from a lady with her son. Effective use of the evil clown character.