Director: Rob Zombie
Writer: Rob Zombie
Stars: Sid Haig, Karen Black, Bill Moseley
Get it from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2YwSzXf
1 Hour, 29 Minutes
We start with an introduction from Dr. Wolfenstein, our horror host. This is followed by a TV commercial for Captain Spaulding’s Museum of Monsters and Madness. Subtitles tell us that this takes place October 30, 1977.
The scene opens with Spaulding and Michael J. Pollard talking about a guy who got a Dr. Zeuss doll stuck up his butt. Suddenly, two robbers break in. One robber says he hates clowns and Spaulding gets angry. The little guy recognizes one of the robbers and starts making fun of him. Another guy comes in and kills the robbers. Spaulding laments, “They got blood all over my best clown suit!”
Credits roll.
Two couples stop for gas at Captain Spaulding’s place. Spaulding’s still mopping up blood as the group goes in and enjoys the museum. They all go on “the murder ride,” hosted by Spaulding. They pass active displays of cannibals mixed with hokey funhouse shows. They have a great time in the show. One of the stories is a local one about Dr. Satan, a guy who experimented on mental patients until vigilantes hung him from a tree… and then Dr. Satan’s body vanished.
There’s a news report about five cheerleaders who recently disappeared.
One of the guys wants to see the tree where Dr. Satan was hanged, so Spaulding draws him a map. They stop and pick up a hitchhiker. They offer to drive her home, and says she’ll show them to the Dr. Satan tree, but on the way, someone shoots out their tire.
Between more coherent scenes, we get flashes of news reports of missing people interspersed with Baby, the hitchhiker, posing with knives, clips of old monster movies, and occasional phrases by the horror host, Wolfenstein. We then cut to Otis, who’s giving a whackadoodle speech to the tied-up cheerleaders.
They all wind up at Baby’s house, and they meet her mother. She invites them to dinner, where they also meet Tiny, a huge, disfigured man who wears a mask. He can’t hear much and wears a mask because his father went crazy and set Tiny on fire. They all have to wear masks at dinner. It’s a truly awkward meal. Otis joins them and brings in a pickled baby in a jar.
Suddenly, dinner is over, and Grampa does a complete stand-up comedy routine, complete with stage, microphone, and amplifier. His act is followed by Baby, who does a sexy lip-syncing dance. One of the girls gets jealous and starts a fight, but just before things get carried away, RJ bursts in to say their car is repaired. They all get in the car eagerly, but they never even make it to the gate before they’re attacked by Otis and Tiny.
The next morning, it’s October 31st, Halloween.They show flashbacks where the family cut up Bill with a straight razor and an axe. They pose his body as a kind of merman display.
Sheriff Wydell comes looking for the kids, and they talk to Spaulding. He tells them the young folks were there, and that he gave them a map to the Satan tree, which is the truth. The sheriff goes out to the tree and sure enough, they find the car, abandoned and vandalized. In the trunk is one of the missing cheerleaders, dead and mutilated.
They head to the Firefly Ranch, the closest house. The deputy finds the cheerleaders in the barn and radios the sheriff, just as Mother Firefly shoots the sheriff in the head. Otis does the same with the deputy and one of the victims’ father. Otis cuts off the old man’s face and skin and wears it as he torment’s the man’s daughter, asking, “Who’s your daddy?”
The whole group of prisoners, all dressed up as Easter bunnies, goes out to doctor Satan’s grave. There is a lot of humor here, like Otis yelling “They all run. Like scared rabbits” as the girl, dressed in a rabbit suit, runs through the woods. Baby catches up to her and stabs her repeatedly.
The last two victims are dropped into a coffin and lowered into a mineshaft. Ghosts (or maybe crazy people) rise up out of the mud and attack the coffin, releasing the girl. She runs into still more crazies, who strip off her rabbit costume, but otherwise leave her alone.
She explores the crypt she’s in, and sees that the walls are lined with dozens of mummified bodies. She passes through room after room of freaks, and we eventually realizes that this is Doctor Satan’s workshop. He’s still alive and working on people down there. A creature wearing a gas mask comes at her with an axe, but accidentally breaks down the door instead. There’s a brief chase where the girl and the baddie eventually get buried in rubble.
The next morning, the girl wakes up and climbs out of the crypt. She makes it to the road, where she is “rescued” by Captain Spaulding. She passes in relief at being rescued. Otis sits up; he’s asleep in the back seat, and obviously Spaulding is in on everything.
Commentary
There are a lot of flashes to grainy, oversaturated, and out of focus cuts to various scenes, sometimes with characters we know, sometime just for the sake of weirdness. This is interesting, but gets distracting quickly. It most likely was done to make poor special effects stand out less.
Kevin asked me ten minutes before the end what the “final girl’s” name was, and I couldn’t tell you (it was Denise). This is one of those films where there’s literally no characterization, is just one reaction after another as things are thrown at the people onscreen.
We saw this after “The Devil’s Rejects,” and I was surprised that there were so many characters from this one that didn’t appear in the sequel. I guess it had to do with the actors’ availability, but it would have been nice to see some of them make a comeback.
This had a fairly straightforward plotline, some really good funny moments, and seemed to hit all the normal horror tropes on the checklist, while the sequel seemed to mostly just go for “brutal” and only had a little humor to it. As a standalone film, a lot of it doesn’t make sense. Paired with the sequel, it’s a lot more coherent, but the two films are wildly unbalanced in quality. I’d still recommend them both, but there are some issues here.