TOP FIVE ROB ZOMBIE FILM MOMENTS

I remember it like it was yesterday.

HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES was probably the first film I remember waiting in anticipation for.  I visited the website every week for updates.  I watched the trailer that was on the video cassette release of PITCH BLACK so many times the tape started to wear out.  When Universal dropped it and it sat in limbo for two years I was devastated.

So, when I learned it was finally getting released but I would have to drive an hour and a half to see it my friends and I hopped in a car and made a trip of it.  That's right.  I drove for an hour and a half to see HO1C and it was totally worth it.  I had no idea what to expect, and what I got was TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE on acid. Plus we got to eat at Pancho's afterwards, so that helped make the drive payoff.

My filmic love affair with Rob Zombie has continued unabated ever since.  The horror community is pretty hot and cold on his work, but I have to give the man credit for making the movies he wants to make, for better or worse.  Even his HALLOWEEN movies manage to stand on their own two feet and separate themselves both tonally and plot wise from the films that came before.  I might not completely enjoy their white trash aesthetic but I have to give him credit for breaking the mold and even turning what could have been a cookie cutter remake into something brutal.

There is no beauty in the violence you see in a Rob Zombie movie.  They are gritty and nihilistic. They are not fun.  You aren't going to invite your friends over to have a party and watch THE DEVIL'S REJECTS.  He is a filmmaker who wants us to drop our preconceived notions of what a horror film should be.  I think he should be commended for that.  Listed below are five moments that I think define his work.

1) HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES (THE OPENING REEL) - I honestly had no idea what to expect when the movie started and we were dropped in the middle of an average evening at Captain Spaulding's Museum of Monsters and Madmen.  What the hell was going on?  It was kind of funny.  That weird guy from the episode of STAR TREK with the killer kids was talking with a middle-aged clown about Planet of the Apes dolls going up butts, and then, without warning, robbers were getting slaughtered by a guy wearing a huge plastic clown head.  I was hooked.  The rest of the movie doesn't quite live up to the opening scene....but it comes damn close.

2)  HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES (I REMEMBER YOU) - Like Quentin Tarantino, Rob Zombie is an expert at taking music and making you forever associate that music with his films.  His use of Slim Whitman's  "I Remember You" foreshadows his future use of "Freebird" and "Love Hurts" to create movie moments that, once watched, will forever change how you view those songs.  Most people I have watched the movie with hate this scene and think it is boring.  I think it is an amazing way to create tension and do something different with a scene that could have been very cliched.    

3) THE DEVIL'S REJECTS (FREEBIRD SHOOTOUT) - The Hotel Scene may be more unsettling, but I think the way Rob Zombie ends this film is a work of art.  Once again he goes against the trend of sequels and decides he is going to kill his antagonists and end things on his own terms.  There will be no more sequels.  He told the story he wanted to tell, and he is going out on top.

4) HALLOWEEN II (ENDING)  - This scene is completely surreal, completely unexpected, and a real indication of where Rob would be going with his next movie.

5) LORDS OF SALEM (TURKEY DEVIL BABY) - Surreal and creepy in all the right ways.   I really want everyone who hates this movie to watch it and imagine yourself at a Grind house in 1977 watching it as a double feature with SUSPIRIA. It is a perfect companion to the art house, slow-burn of 1970's occult films.  A really interesting film that I hope finds new life on Blu-Ray.