I am, perhaps surprisingly, not a massive fan of horror movies. At least not the whole "use loud noises and random smash cuts to make you jump" genre that has cropped up of late; it's frankly just lazy, dull and takes zero skill. You can try it yourself at home if you like; leap out of the shadows at a random passer-by, screeching at the top of your lungs. You'll find that they will likely jump out of their skin but be forewarned that they may decide to punch you in the throat hard enough that your larynx becomes an external organ. Also be prepared for a visit from your local Community Support Officer to find out why you think inducing cardiac arrest in someone's granny is a reasonable course of action on a Thursday evening*. I'm similarly un-fussed by gore-fests like Hostel (which was utter shite by the way; crap premise, crap script, crap effects, crap film. If you've never seen it, just punch yourself in the face for about an hour and a half and you'll lose roughly the same brain cells but not have had to put yourself through watching Hostel. You're welcome). I'm happy to admit that I'm bored to figurative death of spooky ghost movies so I don't even bother. And honestly some of them look like they'll freak me out and I have no need to prove to anyone how hardcore I can be by watching a scary movie so I leave them too.
I sort of prefer action-horror, if that's a thing. Or The Thing if you prefer. Monster movies and slasher flicks or a combination of the two. They've worn pretty thin of late though, they're sort of more trope than film now, most of them. The last of the great franchises are way long in the tooth/fang/blackened nub and there's only so long you can flog that walking corpse. The good news is that there are some people out there striving for a bit more and doing interesting things with the genre. It Follows was a great movie for example; it had fun with the clichés it was using and was nice and creepy. It also never tried to sell you the next big franchise monster which is basically all the low-budget, straight-to-DVD, get-them-for-a-fiver-in-Asda-and-then-wish-you'd-spent-it-on-cake, shit show horrors try to do (I'm specifically looking at you here Hatchet series. You suck, your villain sucks, just stop). So hats off to them for that. And whether you like him or not hats off to Rob Zombie, the horror embodiment of Marmite. At least he's trying.
I've always been a fan of Mr Zombie as a musician; you can spot one of his songs a mile off and he's carved a pretty decent career out of that and covering himself and his band mates in flour at every given opportunity. I wasn't surprised when I heard he was going to have a pop at directing movies, seeing as he started his career behind the scenes of Pee Wee's Playhouse (that probably explains a lot) and his album covers have always been interesting affairs. Actually I think the first thing I saw of his was the hallucination sequence in Beavis and Butthead Do America which is probably the second best bit of that movie after the Great Cornholio scenes. Best song on the soundtrack by a country mile though, had it as my ring tone for years.
So if you're sitting comfortably, we'll begin. Even if you're not, I'm cracking on anyway, I have things to do. House of 1000 Corpses. I liked it. It had that weird "two completely different scripts gaffer taped together to make a semi-coherent whole" vibe going on, but for the most part it works. It's got shades of Texas Chainsaw Massacre which isn't a bad thing necessarily, it's better than any of those sequels and reboots by far without even trying. It sort of plays out like a live action White Zombie album cover; all greasy looking clowns (Megan Fox strangely not considered for a role, that I'm aware of) and general shabbiness. Captain Spaulding has become somewhat of a folk hero in horror circles and not because the DVD case told us he should; overall it's a pretty decent debut I thought. Devil's Rejects was a decent sequel and a much better film all in all; complete change of genre and direction and all the better for it. It was Halloween that split as many opinions as it did heads.
We all have movies we're precious little snowflakes about. The collective shit that was lost across the internet regarding Paul Feig's poorly received Ghostbusters is a testament to that. (I'm still putting off watching that even though I suspect it'll be really good cannon fodder). Halloween is a classic and it has a legion of very loyal, slightly rabid fans, not least of whom is Rob Zombie. The general consensus was that Michael Myers got too much back-story and it killed that invincible mystique. I'd disagree personally, but mainly because for me that realistic approach just fits better. As great as Carpenter's original was, the 43 sequels that followed it just ended up diluting Myers down to worn out trope. Does that little bit of humanity not make him scarier? Knowing that the kid you sit a few rows in front of on the bus every morning might very well be plotting to stick something heavy and sharp into the back of your head, wiggle it about a bit and play with the leftovers? No? Just me then I guess.
Sadly that was really the unfortunate moment where things started to slide. I don't even really want to talk about The Haunted World of El-Superbeasto; I wanted to like it, I genuinely did, but it was just drivel if we're being honest. It was Kricfalusi-esque but just sort of littered with the slightly childish sex jokes and lewdness that sadly is becoming a staple. Halloween II sort of went AWOL somewhere around half way and never really made its way back. Lords of Salem showed a bunch of promise but ultimately fell really flat. It was a decent concept, but even having watched it a couple of times, I'm hard pushed to remember what happened. Satan and a vinyl record and some witches maybe I think? 31 was my tipping point though.
I was really looking forward to 31. There was a long, drawn out wait for it as per usual; he really needs to stop announcing projects half a decade before they've even started filming. There wasn't much hype though and I don't remember seeing a lot of images or spoilery trailers before it came out. Matter of fact, I'd kind of forgotten it until I saw it on the shelves. What do you mean not getting a massive run at cinemas probably means it's a bit shitty? Frankly, I'm beginning to doubt your commitment (to Sparkle Motion or anything else). Sadly, it isn't far from the truth. Closer to the truth is that 31 is effectively Running Man with clowns.
I'm going to be blunt here: 31 starts out pretentious, gets dull at best in the middle and ends up perplexing. Zombie does his now signature foul language and crude sex jokes only it's not shocking or disturbing like he thinks it is; it's more just embarrassing. As is his weird predilection for Nazis; a knife wielding, Mexican dwarf Nazi in this case. Having said all that, he's the most interesting bad guy in there; everything else is just horrible cliché. You don't get to find out how or why any of this is going on but frankly at that point I didn't care any longer because I'd spent have the movie playing on my phone (don't worry, I was in my living room, I'm not That Guy) and wondering when they were going to get to the point.
The finale, such as it is, really sealed it for me. It's indicative of our times I think that filmmakers are no longer able to simply finish a movie. There has to be some sort of twist, or double ending (or triple or quadruple or whatever), or ultra-weird fake out where no-one is really sure what's going on or why. Gone are the days when our villain has a solitary, definable motive; nowadays everyone has to be long lost brother of the protagonist's second cousin who once went to the same summer camp, where they were abused by disgruntled woodland creatures upset by littering and who now stalks everyone involved wearing an elk costume, murdering people with weaponised taxidermy wild fowl. Either that or they have no motive at all and we all just sit there looking slightly bemused as they perform a series of odd behaviours designed solely to extend the run time and make the script look more clever than it is. You know what? Just finish the goddamned film or leave it wide open for a sequel. You should be aware of my policy on spoiler alerts by now (i.e. screw 'em...) so buckle up. 31 sort of ends and it doesn't; why would the psychotic, smutty clown (who likes to remind us he isn't a clown, but has no qualms with being smutty and looking like a clown) respect the rules of the game and spare the heroine because the buzzer has sounded if he's just going to kill her later, after randomly bumping into her on his drive home? No sense is being made here; it just feels tacked-on. I've long held the opinion that if you can't fix something with gaffer tape, you aren't using enough gaffer tape. Perhaps that shouldn't apply to film scripts.
*Anger in a Man Suit indemnifies itself against any and all liability if you terrify your Grandma to death. You're on your own buddy.
Bonus Random Ironic Moment.
For some unfathomable but entirely reversible reason, I only own the DVDs of the more recent ones that I don't actually like as much. How is that a thing?
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