Do Rob Zombie movies have a place in our current era of arthouse horror? It’s tough to say, as Zombie is a director who has willfully chosen to stay in the grade-Z grindhouse lane. The filmmaker has his supporters, and those people are going to be quite happy with his latest, “3 From Hell,” the third installment in the saga of the Firefly Family seen in the films “House of 1,000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects.”
Whereas many modern horror directors often make use of nightmare logic, patient slow-burn narratives, and shout-outs to the likes of Ingmar Bergman and Michael Haneke, Zombie prefers sociopathic clowns, lucha libre killing squads, scantily-clad women, and the kind of sadism usually reserved for slasher films of decades past. Zombie’s debut, “House of 1000 Corpses” is a crummy, but genuinely stylish, ‘Texas Chainsaw‘ homage that has amassed a fiercely dedicated cult audience since its release in 2003. “The Devil’s Rejects,” the grisly and problematic follow-up, is a thing of twisted beauty: a proudly immoral exploitation classic indebted to the likes of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone. Which brings us to “3 From Hell”: the last hurrah for the Firefly Family, who were thought to have perished in a hail of gunfire at the “Freebird”-scored denouement of ‘Rejects’ but are shown to be more or less alive here.
The Firefly Family is a clan of depraved backwoods butchers made up of oversexed vixen Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie, dialing it all the way up to 11, particularly in a scene where she meows like a cat that you have to see to believe), Charles Manson-esque madman Otis (Bill Moseley), and cackling psycho-joker Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig). Zombie devotees are going to get exactly what they paid for with “3 From Hell”–an anarchic, over-directed, ultimately wearying bloodbath that definitively proves that this director doesn’t possess the outlaw gumption of his despicable lead characters. This is the filmmaker giving his rabid audience what they want, in a particularly craven fashion.
“3 From Hell” begins with Otis and Baby locked up after the events of the previous film. The local community harbors a strange goodwill toward the criminals, choosing to view them as misunderstood martyrs rather than the bloodthirsty killers they so obviously are. Throughout, Zombie frames his heroes in a mythical, near-reverential light, so as to underline this particular point. Baby has been sentenced to solitary confinement, where she’s tortured by a merciless prison guard played by genre queen Dee Wallace. And Otis breaks out early on, but not without a little help from his brother in barbarism, the literally howling-mad Winslow “Foxy” Coltrane (Zombie repertory player Richard Brake, who manages to be menacing while just watching old movies).
And so begins a narrative that acts more or less as a teasing echo of “The Devil’s Rejects,” following the exploits of a band of merry murderers on the lam. Along the way, we get occasional low-key hangout scenes of the 3 killing time (a refreshing change of pace from them killing people), Zombie’s signature penchant for vulgar humor, and Clint Howard as a children’s party clown named Mr. Baggy Britches. Rest assured, there are plenty of gags about clowns in “3 From Hell.”
While it’s certainly never a dull viewing experience, “3 From Hell” seems almost actively afraid to give its audience anything they haven’t seen before. Occasionally, the film feels like the director’s cinematic greatest-hits tape. Horrific acts of mayhem scored to ironic slices of ’70s easy-listening cheese? Check. Flowery redneck dialogue that feels like Tarantino by way of “Hee-Haw?” Double-check. Appearances from cult media icons like Emilio Rivera, Wade Williams, and Richard Edson? Triple-check. And like most greatest-hits tapes, “3 From Hell” sadly overstays its welcome.
Zombie’s seventh directorial effort is a sporadically effective mash-up of a few different movies. Sometimes it’s a prison thriller, sometimes it’s a video nasty, other times it’s a bandits-on-the-run flick. The film is genuinely appalling, sometimes funny (albeit, sickeningly so), and a nightmare for anyone that views themselves as “progressive.” (Sheri Moon Zombie dons two forms of culturally insensitive headgear within the span of five minutes, and the filmmaker depicts Mexico, where the second half of the movie unfolds, with all the restraint and good taste you’d expect of him.) Of course, expecting political correctness from a film directed by Rob Zombie is an exercise in futility.
At this point, you’re either on the Rob Zombie train or you’re not. His latest film is self-aware, more than a little aimless, morally deplorable, and both admirable and disgusting in its refusal to conform to either the trends of our current era of horror or our more enlightened social climate. “3 From Hell” is a movie that’s proudly out of step with the times: a sustained assault of white-trash brutality that some will find exhilarating for the same reason that others find it tiresome. It’s a veritable orgy of cruelty and ornate profanity, peppered with groovy vintage music cues from the likes of Slim Whitman, the James Gang, and Suzi Quatro, and infused with an overriding air of fugitive defiance.
Where “3 From Hell” really works is the downtime spent with the central trio. Sadly, these scenes are few and far between. But then again, that’s not what the horror fans came to see. All that being said, “3 From Hell” is bound to delight the director’s admirers and will repulse just about everyone else. [C]