Sid Haig Week: House of 1000 Corpses

Well hello there and welcome back to Day 5 of Sid Haig Week.  I thought we would end our week on a generation gap for newer Sid Haig fans.  As many of you are aware there is more than 40 years of films and TV to contend with so it is only logical he would naturally gravitate back to exploitation and this time it is horror. Bounced around for three years from Universal to Lionsgate Films, our feature was a Halloween based horror film clearly influenced by Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes.  This is House of 1000 Corpses.

Bozo the Clown: After Dark.

Otis: It's all spoiled.  The bogeyman is real and you found him.








Two couples  Jerry Goldsmith (Chris Hardwick of Shipmates, Jane White Is Sick & Twisted, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Spectres, The X's and Halloween II) Denise Willis (Erin Daniels of Action, One Hour Photo, Boomtown, Wheelmen, Justice and The L Word) Bill Hudley (Rainn Wilson of Blue in Green, Six Feet Under, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Juno and The Office) and Mary Knowles (Jennifer Jostyn of The Brothers McMullen, Milo, Deep Impact, A Perfect Little Man, Maximum Velocity and Rancid) are hitting the road writing a book about those out of the way roadside attraction when the lot of them when to a ran down gas station/museum where our foursome encounter Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig of The Big Bird Cage, THX 1138, Foxy Brown, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 2 and The Devil's Rejects) a crass clown that tells the lot of them about a local legend known as "Dr. Satan" a doctor that experimented on wards of the state torturing them and pushing their thresholds of pain and anguish.  

The town rose up and hung him from a tree.  Fascinated by the story our couples head out to find the said tree and document it when they encounter a hitchhiker with nickname Baby, (Sherri Moon Zombie of Toolbox Murders, The Devil's Rejects, Halloween, Halloween II, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto and The Lords of Salem) a bubbly blonde that seems to be vapid and vaccant with a hint of something sinister behind the eyes.  She asked if they could drop her off at her family home a few miles away when the car's tire pops and Baby leads Bill to her family home and her half-brother Rufus (Bill Moseley of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, The Blob, Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!, Carnivale and The Devil's Rejects)  grabs a ride to pick the rest of the passengers back to the house.

Thank God, they're just burning bodies and not books.

 After introducing the family to our now disturbed couples, offering dinner and putting on some strange play praising Halloween Baby starts hitting on Bill and Mary takes offense to it and lets Baby know it.  Mother Firefly (Karen Black of Five Easy Pieces, Nashville, Family Plot, Repo Chick, Double Duty and Better People) insists they leave because their tire was replaced and shuns them from the house.   Otis and his mongoloid brother Tiny attacks and mutilates Bill in a warped modern art, Mary is bound tight in a barn while Denise is dressed up for the appreciation of Halloween.
Denise's father gets the police to check out the house when all hell breaks loose.
Will our survivors get away?  Will they summon courage to get revenge?  Will this nightmare ever cease?

A chuck full of tidbits about the movie now.  Universal Pictures refused to release the film believing it would be rated at NC-17 via MPAA.  This was Rob Zombie's first directorial debut.  The title of the movie is coined after a same named song on Zombie's second solo album The Sinister Urge.  Karen Black was due to play in the sequel The Devil's Rejects but demanded a salary increase that Zombie didn't have and Leslie Easterbrook replaced here.

The family house is the same one used for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas which is commonly seen for the Universal Studio tram ride and Universal shockingly enough refuse to stall the tours causing delays in filming many of the scenes.  Rob thinking about how to appease Universal was filming two versions of the more violent scenes to make the rating boards not lose their collective crap.  

Lick of paint and trash hauled and it still would look creepy.