Most of my family and close friends know that I'm a big fan of Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and follow-up The Devil's Rejects. In fact, my first Facebook profile photo was of me with Sid Haig who plays Capt. Spaulding in both films. As much as I loved both movies I thought Zombie's efforts with his re-telling, because they certainly weren't remakes, of Halloween and Halloween 2 were pathetic. He needs to stick with original material like this.
Above anything else this movie is about one hell of a crazy family. There are definite elements of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre here and many people think it's a straight rip off of that classic. I can understand that, to a point, but there's enough originality for the film to stand on its own.
The movie opens with two college aged couples pulling into a gas station/road side attraction which they're going to check out because they're travelling cross country writing a book about just those types of places. They meet the nasty straight talking proprietor, Capt. Spaulding, who’s in full clown make-up. He sells them tickets to his Murder Ride and gives them directions to where the local legend Dr. Satan was hung.
In route to find that spot they pick up a hot looking blonde hitchhiker named Baby Butterfly. She says she’ll take them where they want to go but they develop car trouble and end up at her spooky home. There they end up meeting her giant brother Tiny, her crazy mom, Momma Butterfly, a few other weird relatives and Otis. All of the family seems to be pretty much under the influence of Otis and Otis is nuts. Bill Moseley's depiction of Otis is great and the highlights of the film to me are when he's center stage.
Once one of Baby's brothers fixes their car the couples try to leave but it's not going to happen. They find out what this group of psychos is all about real quickly and the rest of the film is about them trying to escape and one of the girl's father and the local cops trying to find and rescue them.
I love the dialogue in this film along with the performances of Moseley, Haig and Sherri Moon Zombie as Baby, but everyone does a stellar job. This film is a must see for any real horror fan and gives you everything you want from a horror movie. As if there were any doubt, the movie gets an "A".
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