Getting together for Thanksgiving weekend is always a hassle for families. There’s all the cooking and the rearranging of family coming to visit. And then, you have law enforcement interrupt your plans by planning a raid where you have several people tied up in the basement. Or you’re stopping by a roadside motel only to run into crazy killers on the run.
Rob Zombie is a filmmaker and a musician. But I’ve always been of the opinion no one gets either right the first time. A lot of people who are successful at either medium do it through trial and error. In 2003, Zombie, or as he was born Robert Bartleh Cummings, released his directorial debut, House of 1000 Corpses and it bombed, both critically and commercially. However, it fared better at the box office earning almost $17 million against a $7 million budget.
Principal production finished in 2000, but Zombie spent some time trying to find a distributor. Filmed with the backing from Universal Pictures, the studio didn’t want to release it because of the content. And when he obtained the rights and took it to MGM, they backed out too, leaving Zombie to go to Lions Gate Films, a smaller distributor. Most critics said it was too similar to Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. However, 20 years later, it’s found its fandom with people re-examining and re-assessing it.
One thing the movie did have going for it was a tour de force performance by Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding, owner/proprietor at a gas station/roadside horror attraction in rural Texas. Haig was both terrifying and very funny as the character who seems to dominate the first act that his absent for the rest of the movie aside from a scene at the end left the audiences cheated. Haig had been a prolific and versatile actor in TV and movies in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s mostly in blaxploitation movies or as baddies in roles. He had a small recurring role in the ABC family sitcom Just the 10 of Us where he played Bob the janitor.
But throughout the 1990s, he remained mostly absent aside from a scene as a L.A. County judge in Jackie Brown. Quentin Tarantino had hired him because of his roles in blaxploitation movies and Pam Grier wasn’t aware of it until she showed up on set and was happy to see him again.
Most fans were left wanting more of Haig. And Lions Gate managed to make a lot of its money back and encouraged Zombie to do a sequel. Now, Spaulding or “Cutter” as he is also called is a more prominent character. The movie begins several months after the events of House where Sheriff John Quincy Wydell (William Forsythe) is leading a search and destroy warrant with several local and state police against the Firefly Family.
Mother Firefly (Leslie Easterbrook replacing Karen Black from House) is arrested while Rufus Firefly (Tyler Mane) is shot and killed. Baby (Sherri Moon Zombie) and Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley) managed to escape through the basement area. On the run, Baby calls her father, Spaulding, and tells them to rendezvous at a run-down roadside motel. At the motel, Otis and Baby kidnap members of a musical group Banjo and Sullivan, Adam Banjo (Lew Temple) and Roy Sullivan (Geoffrey Lewis) and their respective wives, Wendy Banjo (Kate Norby) and Gloria Sullivan (Priscilla Barnes) as well as their roadie Jimmy (Brian Posehn) who is almost instantly shot in the head.
If Zombie seemed to be influenced by Texas Chainsaw Massacre with his first movie, but here he seems to influenced by the works of Wes Craven in the 1970s. With Otis, Baby and Spaulding on the run, we immediately know they’re the villains, but Zombie gives them an odd humanity that Tarantino has also brought to his characters. You know they’re bad guys and murderers, but he makes them three-dimensional as they argue over whether to stop to get ice cream or not while on the run.
Also, during one of the more memorable scenes, Spaulding with his clown make-up on politely tries to steal a car belonging to a woman (P.J. Soles) and then when she doesn’t buy it, he turns vicious. When he gets in the car with her son is scared and crying, he delivers that same mixture of humor and terror as he yells at the boy telling him to get out. Then he laughs maniacally on the thought of traumatizing him.
I really wouldn’t say there are any good guys in this movie. Even Wydell seems motivated more by brutal revenge than the law as his brother, George (Tom Towles), was one of the Firefly’s victims. He hires two bounty hunters, Billy Ray Snapper (Diamond Dallas Page) and Rondo (Danny Trejo), to help him track down Otis, Baby and Spaulding because he intends to torture them before he kills them.
This draws parallels with The Last House on the Left and how the Collingwood parents turn vicious against their daughter’s killers rather than just leaving the house to call police. Zombie even adds some elements of comedy to contrast the horrors the same way Craven did in that movie. During one scene where Spaulding’s friend, Charlie Altamount (Ken Foree), a pimp, and his associate, Clevon (Michael Berryman), go to buy some chickens, they are accused of buying the chickens to have sex with them.
The scene is so absurd and out of context that it calms us down that we’re only watching a movie. And the actions of the Firefly Family are very, very sadistic. But there is also no honor among criminals as they all learn. I don’t want to give too much away. I think Zombie learned to make a movie that was far more original but paying homage to the horror flicks of the era.
One of the biggest criticism of Zombie’s movies is the repeated casting of his wife in major roles. A lot of filmmakers have cast their spouses/partners and family members in smaller roles. But Moon Zombie seems to bog down the movies she’s here. However here I would say that by focusing more on Spaulding and the other characters, it makes the movie feel more like an ensemble.
And while the casting of horror icons like Foree, Mosley, Towles, Berryman, Soles and Trejo could be viewed as stunt casting, it works here. It’s no different than when Tarantino hires certain actors for his movies. The roles of the young people in House seemed both poorly written and poorly acting. Therefore, it was hard to empathize with them. And when they befell victims to the Firefly family, it seemed nothing more than gratuitous violence.
The movie isn’t perfect. But it’s a good improvement over House and quite possibly the best movie Zombie has made so far.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 