Rob Zombie surprised everyone in 2003 when he wrote and
directed House of 1000 Corpses. Zombie was (is) a heavy metal musician with a
lot of theatrical flair a la Alice Cooper.
Few people expected him to reveal himself as a grindhouse auteur, and
yet that was exactly what he did. House
of 1000 Corpses was a grungy, low budget
horror film with a load of 70s nostalgia. It’s
a mashup of The Hills Have Eyes,
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Manson family. It made waves.
Zombie followed it up two years later with The Devil’s
Rejects. Rejects was a sequel without being a retread. Rejects takes the Firefly family (many of the
names in these movies are lifted from Marx Brothers characters) and transforms
them into the gritty heroes (or, at least protagonists) of a 70s style road
picture (think Dirt Mary, Crazy Larry; The Getaway; Vanishing Point). The Fireflys
are still presented as psychotic murderers, but we in the audience are invited
to like them and root for their escape.
The success of Rejects led to Zombie being offered more
mainstream projects. He would re-imagine John Carpenter’s Halloween and
Halloween II before falling back into relative obscurity as a director. After the Halloween movies he would make the very interesting,
though largely overlooked, Lords of Salem and then the execrable 31. To many
critics, 31 looked like the end of Zombie’s film career. It was a big, ugly,
dumb mess of a movie, It had no coherent thesis. It was a film crying out for
someone to rein Zombie in, and curtail the worst of his excesses.
Now Zombie has returned to his roots, bringing us the third
film in the Firefly family saga, 3 From Hell.
The first thing to note about 3 From Hell is the massive
amount of raw talent on the screen. The cast includes Bill Moseley, Sherri Moon
Zombie, Sid Haig (In a final role before his death), Danny Trejo, Dee Wallace, Bill Oberst jr,
Clint Howard, Richard Riehle, and many others. Seriously, look at that cast. Between them
they have been in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2; The Howling; Machete; Stressed to
kIll; THX 1138; Galaxy of Terror; Texas
Chainsaw 3D; Halloween; Frost/Nixon. How could this go wrong with that cast?
3 From Hell picks up
ten years after Rejects. It retcons the ending of the earlier film. At the end
of The Devil’s Rejects it seemed pretty clear that Otis, Baby, and Captain
Spaulding all died in the final shootout with the police. Here we are told that
they were grievously injured, but survived. All three have been in prison for
the last decade. Near the beginning of the film Captain Spaulding is executed
for his crimes. It seems likely that
Haig’s part was cut back due to his failing health. For the rest of the film, Spaulding will be
replaced by Foxy Coltrane (Richard Brake), a previously unmentioned half
brother to Otis and baby.
Foxy breaks Otis out of jail and they go about trying to
free Baby, who is suffering a mental collapse, becoming more and more unhinged
as time passes. Otis and Foxy kidnap the warden and his wife in order to force
the warden to get Baby out. Once Baby is free, they kill the hostages and flee
to Mexico. There they hole up in a
hotel. They are recognized by the hotel owner, and he alerts Aquarius. Aquarius
is the son of Rondo (Danny Trejo) who was killed during the prison break. This all builds to a big fight between the
Firefly family and Aquarius and his men. It gets messy.
Everybody involved seems to be having a lot of fun. Moseley
is at his unhinged best, chewing through scenery and spitting his Manson
inspired dialogue with rage tempered by humor. Sherri Moon Zombie does a great
job playing the mental decline of the character she created in the prior
films. As frightening as she was before,
here she shows no compunction, no limits.
The supporting cast all know what this is, and they seem
like they are on a very weird vacation. N one is taking this seriously, but they sure are
enjoining every minutes of it.
It’s clear that Zombie has a real love for these characters.
Maybe that’s the issue, though. As much fun as this movie is, it is entirely
unnecessary. The Firefly family had a good run, and came to a perfect end in The
Devil’s Rejects. Resurrecting them was always going to be a bad idea; resurrecting
them for something as inessential as 3 From Hell feels almost cruel. For all the panache, and style, and weird
nostalgia that Zombie brings to this, I couldn’t help feeling that I’d really
rather re-watch the previous two films.
If there’s a big bright side, maybe the success of this
movie will allow Zombie to finally make his Reboot of The Blob that he has
talked about. That’s something I could get behind.
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