One of 2003’s biggest cinematic horror stories was a Tale of Two Fanboys.
Each obsessed with genre pictures from a tender age. Each with Quentin Tarrantino‘s encyclopedic enthusiasm. Each with an eye for the gratuitous in all its forms.
Each clawing desperately through the Hollywood system to get their gleeful throwbacks to the screen. But each an instant professor emeritus of this nuevo Old School movement once fans got an eyeful. One less than graceful with plot and storytelling, yet masterfully macabre in his characterizations and leap-for-the-jugular bravado. The other more subtle, more palatable, though clearly more enthralled with bread-crumbing audiences into an outlandish narrative with grim wit. Both are equally successful when it comes down to sheer entertainment value.
We’re speaking, obviously, of rockin’ Rob Zombie, whose House of 1000 Corpses borrows liberally from such ’70s films as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Last House on the Left, and fellow first-timer Eli Roth, whose woodland fright flick dog-ears many a page from ’80s chillers such as The Thing and the deified Evil Dead films.
The stories start the same: a gaggle of college students wander into the realm of rednecks, stopping only at a roadside mercantile before heading off to their ultimate doom. Rather than a house of horrors, here we have a more tender yarn. Nay a love story even! Albeit seemingly entirely one-sided. "Boy Meets World" heartthrob Rider Strong — a name infinitely more suited to porn — is Paul, a young fella with eyes for his childhood playmate-turned-hottie Karen, played by Jordan Ladd, the wing-ed daughter of one of Charlie’s original angels.
So, understandably, Paul’s not so much on a post-finals getaway as a quest to rekindle an old game of I’ll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours. Trouble is he’s a NICE guy and she’s a smokin’ blonde who insists on reminding him what a great FRIEND he is. Show of hands, anyone? Right, like the rest of us, Paul is content to keep applying, rather ineptly, a torch to said ice queen. That is until she and his other three friends start falling apart — one hunka flesh at a time. To even further poo-poo Paul’s party, the full magnitude of this decaying downer is most viscerally realized once he finally gets to paw Karen’s holiest of holies!
Yep, there’s coed-munching cooties in them thar hills. Another delicious dish on the menu is Cerina Vincent as Marcy, the genre-mandated sexpot, who thankfully lives long enough to wander the countryside in search of help and reenact Teri "Meat Hook" McMinn‘s lingering hiney stroll from Saw. Although, with all due derriere deference to Ms. Vincent, cinematographer Daniel Pearl better recaptured his gloriously iconic imagery with Jessica Biels‘ backside. However, fear not, as Cerina’s OWN place in scream-queen history is most assuredly secure thanks to Mr. Roth’s ingeniously depraved delivery of the MOST memorable bathtub scene since I Spit on Your Grave.
What’s next from horror’s "it" fanboy? Perhaps a sequel if he and Lions Gate can avoid creative differences. There’s even talk of a teen sex comedy — another milieu of which Mr. Roth has spent years of fevered study. But right now, he’s put his box-office buzz into getting the long-mired 2001 Maniacs off blocks and into theaters with Robert Englund as the chief purveyor of Southern inhospitality. Personally, dear CineSchlockers, it was yours truly’s greatest desire that this sequel/remake of the Godfather of Gore’s finest flick would eventually be helm’d by Herschell Gordon Lewis himself. Though my gorehound gut tells me this Eli character won’t let us down. If he does? Well, there’s always Teeterin’ Rock!
Notables: Two breasts. 16 corpses. Rampant spazzing. Gratuitous urination. Body-part bowling. Projectile plasma puking. One firesuit stunt. Man-eating pooch. Human bonfire. Multiple diddling. Piggy gutting. Bambi clobbering. Window peeping. Marshmallow roasting. Kung fu fighting. Post-coital penial Listerine-ing. Spring-loaded dog innards. <b>Dawn of the Dead</b> screwdriver into the ear gag.
Quotables: James DeBello‘s loveable lunkhead Bert hates squirrels of ALL lifestyles: "I don’t care if they’re gay or straight. I’ll kill ’em either way!" Doesn’t take to pyrotechnical criticism either: "What are you? F@#%ing Smokey the Clown now!?!"
Paul considers himself a connoisseur of masturbatory confessionals: "I’m sorry, but no story is better than Karen and her parents’ Shower Massage!"
Joey Kern‘s hilariously self-absorbed Jeff can’t fathom Paul and Marcy’s compassion: "STOP! STOP! I DON’T WANT TO GET SICK! I DON’T WANT ANY OF US GETTING SICK! BUT YOU TWO F@#%IN’ F@#%ERS INSIST ON TOUCHING HER! NOW SHE’S BLEEDIN’ ALL OVER BOTH YOU GUYS! SO YOU TWO CAN F@#%IN’ ROT! BUT NOT ME! NO F@#%IN’ WAY! NOT ME!!!" Earlier, when the gang accidently immolates a diseased drifter, Jeff aptly reasons: "I think the rain will put him out."
Karen doesn’t rationalize quite so easily: "That guy asked us for help — WE LIT HIM ON FIRE!"
Giuseppe Andrews‘s inspired Deputy Winston digs Paul’s scene: "Hey man, you know what it’s like. Like when you go to a new town, right, and you’re the new guy? All the girls see you walking down the street and they all know you’ve got five pounds of dangling meat."
Marcy makes an offer Paul can’t refuse: "It’s like being on a plane when you know it’s gonna crash. Everyone around you is screaming and yelling … all you really want to do is grab the person next to you and f@#% the s@#% out of them."