House of 1000 Corpses is a 2003 horror-comedy, written and directed by Rob Zombie. At its core, the film is about family: quirky and complicated. That, and a house full of dead bodies.
The film starts with two young couples on a road trip in Texas, the night before Halloween. They stop at Captain Spaulding’s “Museum of Monsters & Madmen” for gas, but end up staying for the tour of the creepy shop. Captain Spaulding tells the group of the locally famous Dr. Satan, a psychotic murderer, torturer, and surgeon who performed illegal brain surgery on people in order to create a race of “superhuman”, and who was allegedly hanged from a tree nearby. Their goal of the road trip is to write about roadside attractions, the group of youngsters is eager to visit the tree and have Captain Spaulding draw a map.
It’s dark and pouring rain when the group is on their way to the tree and they pass Baby, a member of the Firefly family, hitchhiking on the side of the road. After picking Baby up, she says she lives right by Dr. Satan’s tree and that she’ll show the group where it is. Unbeknownst to the posse, someone shoots their tire from the roadside and they stop. Baby says her brother has a tow truck and that they can just walk to her house, so one of the boys goes with her. When they get to Baby’s eccentric house, decorated with cut-up babydolls and other kooky embellishments, Baby and Bill sit on the couch while Baby’s brother, Rufus, goes and gets the rest of the group with his tow truck. While waiting for everyone to get to the house, Mother Firefly enters the living room and tells Bill the importance of Halloween to their family. In the living room, Bill also meets Baby’s adoptive brother Otis, half-brother Tiny, and Grandpa Hugo. Rufus finally brings the rest of the group back to the Firefly house, where they stay for dinner. During dinner, they’re made to wear Halloween masks. After dinner, the family puts on a Halloween show for the family. After the show, Rufus says their car is repaired and they can leave but when the group is walking out to the driveway, Tiny and Otis, dressed as scarecrows, kidnap the couples.
Scene cut: the next day, Otis kills Bill and turns him into art – some kind of sculpture that makes him look like a merman – Mary is tied in a bedroom, Denise is tied to a bed and dressed as a doll, and Jerry is being tortured by Baby, ending up getting scalped when he fails to guess Baby’s favorite movie star. When the group isn’t home when they said they would be, Denise’s dad calls the police and reports her missing. Officers find the group’s car, abandoned with a dead cheerleader who had been missing for weeks in the trunk. Deputies, including Denise’s dad, a retired cop, show up at the Firefly home and question Mother Firefly. Everything is friendly until Mother Firefly shoots one of the deputies in the head when she gets the chance.
Outside, the other deputy and Denise’s dad are snooping around the property, which is littered with piles of junk. Finally, the two men open a shed to find a roped-up and barely alive Mary and the corpses of many other young women. Otis kills the deputies right then. That night, Halloween, Jerry, Denise, and Mary are dressed as rabbits and taken out to an abandoned well in a field by the Firefly family. Otis wears the skin of Denise’s dead father to torture her and Mary tries to run away but is caught and stabbed to death by Baby. Mary and the bodies of the cheerleaders are burned on a pyre. Jerry and Denise are placed into a coffin and lowered underground into a well. Once they’re in the well and the lid is closed, the coffin is torn apart by a bunch of Dr. Satan’s failed experiments. The weird zombie people pull Jerry away and Denise runs into the maze of the underground catacombs attached to the well. She encounters multiple corpses and mutilated failed experiments wandering through the lair and she eventually enters Dr. Satan’s surgical room where Jerry is on an operating table being vivisected.
As Denise watches Jerry die, Dr. Satan orders his mauled-looking assistant to capture Denise. She makes a run for it, weaving through the catacombs while the assistant, Earl, Mother Firefly’s ex-husband, chases after her. Met with a dead end, Denise prepares to be killed by Earl when the land above them collapses onto them. Denise wakes up to daylight and carefully climbs above ground, Earl lying under fallen wood. Covered in dirt, debris, blood, and probably unknown substances, Denise climbs out of the hole and stands in a dried-out field. She starts walking towards the road and ushers for the road pulling towards her to stop. Captain Spaulding pulls over and lets Denise get in. He tells her he’s going to take her to a doctor and she passes out from exhaustion. The last thing we see is Otis sitting up in the backseat holding a knife. The screen cuts black and reads “The End?”
House of 1000 Corpses is creepy, funny, engaging, and full of surprise after surprise. I love all of the unique characters and that Baby is played by Zombie’s wife, Sheri Moon Zombie. Zombie’s aesthetic, which he has dubbed as “Hellbilly”, is reflected in his music, films, and his many miscellaneous projects and is one of the most interesting and remarkable styles in a filmmaker. Speaking of Zombie’s music, he picked the perfect soundtrack for the film – his own music! While I could spend hours talking about all of the details I love in House of 1000 Corpses, it would probably be easier for you to just watch it yourself. House of 1000 Corpses is available on Prime Video!
