"Whatever you need to do, you do it. There is no wrong. If somebody needs to be killed, you kill him, that’s the way." -- Baby

Well, the wait is finally over for me. I recently caught a R-rated version of this film and finally got to see horror rocker Rob Zombie’s directorial genre debut. For me, it was worth the three-year wait.

The plot: kids get stranded and killed by psycho family and yes, it purposely echoes "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to the point of making the upcoming remake feel even more trivial. On this end, Zombie’s stamp made it quite a unique and visceral trip. Although sporting an infectious dark sense of humor (loved the Manson girl magazine), gnarly set designs and crazy ass costumes, the high card here was, without a doubt, Zombie’s excessive die-hard “horror fan” approach to it all. The horror imagery was constant throughout with scarecrows, scary masks, doll heads, skulls and much more put out in high, relentless doses till the end. The early amusement ride in serial killer heaven was definitely the highlight for me in that respect. THANK YOU!

Rob’s presence behind the camera also took me on a loop-the-loop and always kept me wanting more (like a junkie with no money torturing his dealer with a sharp blade and a handful of salt). Zombie served up a delicious RIP-MTV kind of jive with psychotic shots, brilliant use of colors (red, green, blue), split screens, kinetic editing, pleasurable indulgent shots (all about the money shot with the cop…wow), weird ass filters…you name it, it was in this graveyard! Zombie also went hogwild with flash cuts of hot nude chicks, clever grainy reels of the killers revealing info about themselves to the camera intercut between the action (loved that shite) and he even went as far as communicating his love for the classics via a horror TV show that would often comment on the goings-on in the world of the film. GENIUS! Then, there was the use of music throughout that never failed to engage me. If it wasn’t the “Mack Truck” score or hard tunes roadkilling my carcass over and over, it was the Tarantino-like use of soft tunes set behind violent scenarios. YEAHHHHH! Basically, the film assaulted my every sense and I thanked it for it.

The cherry on top of this bloody ice cream treat were the loveable, endearing and “non-annoying” villains who were, after all, the heroes in this madhouse. Rob assembled quite a horror-friendly cast here and he let them run wild for our viewing pleasure. My favs were “is he a villain?” Sid Haig ("Spiderbaby", "Coffy") who easily stole every scene that he was in as the extravagant Captain Spalding, Bill Moseley (Otis) who was so unpredictable that he gave me the willies and newcomer Sheri Moon (she’s in Zombie’s "Living Dead Girl" video and is now his wife) who charmed the boxer briefs out of me for more reasons than one. If it wasn’t her hot “Laura Palmer”-like looks wooing me, or her many moments of nudity, it was her cackling psycho laugh that put the possessed "Evil Dead" chicks to shame.

The gore was surprisingly low in this “abattoir” (mucho trim-trim will do that to a film), but that wasn’t really what hindered it. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" didn’t need the graphic red stuff to whoop that bootie, so why would this baby? This film’s pitfalls were mostly on a script level. First, the good guys suffered from being less interesting than the villains with the two “good” girls in particular being nearly interchangeable. They had no distinctive personalities and looked too much alike. That toned down the fear factor, since I was rooting for the loonies the whole way. The flick also lost its focus during its middle section. I was expecting extensive torture of the leads and I did get some in random doses, but it was never emphasized upon long enough to affect me full blast. The lack of conflict between the heroes and the baddies also made the middle section a more passive watch and lastly, characters good and evil would disappear for long periods of times, which often led me to ask myself who I was supposed to be following through this run. Actually, what’s the story again?

"House of 1000 Corpses" history: In 2000, Universal Studios picked up the film and dropped it in 2001 judging it to be too graphic. In 2002, MGM picked it up and Zombie began editing. MGM dropped the film after Zombie made this comment on MTV: "Apparently they have no morals over there. They're happy for some blood." In late 2002, Lions Gate Films picked it up and is now preparing to launch it on screens in limited release on April 11, 2003.

I heard that the DVD will be uncut. It better be.

Zombie was once set to direct the third chapter of "The Crow" series, working from his own screenplay, but Miramax Films eventually pulled out.