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DAMN fine movie!
Yes...it took many ideas from "TCM", "TCM 2", "Funhouse", "Deranged", "Tourist Trap" etc etc...But so what?
It played around with many ideas as do most horror films.
Yet Zombie still styled these elements into something that was it's own film, has many of it's own tricks and visual stylings and managed to (as far as anyone can in this environment and the way the industry is today) deliver some of the feeling and appeal of those 70's Drive-In films.
Of course no multi million dollar, made in the multi-plex world, film can ever be like those pioneering titles...But (with a budget $21 million dollars less than the new "Dawn" and $2.5 million less than the new "Texas Chainsaw" and far less spent on advertising) this is about as close as you will get.
Rob Zombie brought his own love of horror, his sense of carnival showmanship and his rock n roll stylings to HIS film. So what!
When YOU direct a movie YOU can bring yourself to it. And what's wrong with that!?
There was sometimes an overuse of the flashy edit...but in general the deranged 'video' montages of the Family's psychotic activity's and lifestyle worked very well in showing what they were like but without slowing down or diverting from the main plot.
And they contained some GREAT images! Not least of which were the bloodied and battered Cheerleaders and 'Baby' kissing and playing with the skeletal corpse.
The mad back roads atmosphere was captured better than it has been in many years, and the grotesque backroads carnival haunt of Capt Spaulding was just perfect!
As were the 'video' images of the serial killers as the tourists went through the exhibit. I for one love this kind of backroads/dust bowl psycho romp!!
Zombie perhaps had too many characters (you could have easily lost the tow truck guy Rufus, and just have Tiny or Otis do it) in the Family...But hey! At least he gave us the best damn Family since the truly superb (and untouchable) family in "TCM".
We had some wonderfully deranged set-pieces with them, and some great dialogue. And just how damn entertaining was Capt Spaulding?! Great work from Sid "Spider Baby" Haig!
Lets pile on more goodness...The excellent finale in the underground charnel house! The scene of Dr Satan's experiments bursting from the muddied water and ripping the coffin apart was one of the best realised scenes seen in a horror film for many a year.
The nasty idea was top notch exploitation too! All those deformed, menatally warped 'things' in that cess pit as the crazy Doc (a wonderful looking creation) experiments on screaming victims!!...Top work.
And the scene of the daughter being kiseed by the dead skin mask of her own father was sheer exploitation joy!
Then we have the 'will not to bow down to the crowd pleasing, cop-put crap of "Wrong Turn"' attitude where the hip star has to be saved after only receiving a little, itty bitty scratch!
This was a rock 'n' roll, carnival tinged, purposely over the top fan homage that never tried to make out it was a completley original work and never tried to hide the fact it WAS playing with the ideas from other film's of that ilk...
It knew it was..Zombie knew it was...And he assumed that fans of these films would be happy to see these ideas being used in a repectful and well made way...which is what THIS fan at least thought he did do..and was very thankful for it.
Sadly others would rather wallow in name leeching re-make movies and poorly thought out cop-out stuff like "Wrong Turn" while spitting venom at Rob Zombie for creating one of the best and most satisfying and *shock* nasty horror films in the past decade.
It's a hell of a shame!
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