Four teenagers get lost in some rural backwater part of the American South in the 1970's. The roadside gas station is no help, and a hitchhiker guides them to a secluded house in which they are taken prisoner by a deranged family of psychopaths. Rather than kill them outright through, these rednecks from hell are more interested in playing with their prey and torturing their fragile little minds until the breaking point comes near. Even the elder members of the clan, Grampa Hugo (Dennis Fimble) and Mother Firefly (Karen Black), are in on the savagery, butchery and depravity that go on in/under the family state. One by one all the teens are slaughtered until only a few (Erin Daniels' Denise Willis, Jennifer Jostyn's Mary Knowles, etc.) are left. They can either try to escape, or they can face their captors once and for all in a final showdown. Yeah right! See ya, I'm outie!

Sounds an awful lot like Wes Craven's "Last House on the Left" and/or Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," doesn't it? It does, and that's both the blessing and the curse that "House of 1,000 Corpses" has to be saddled with. As written and directed by metal musical genius Rob Zombie in his motion picture debut, this homage to the nasty horror films of the 1970's isn't the type of stuff we've seen as of late in horror movies. Most horror flicks these days are more interested in coming up with surprise plot twists ("The Sixth Sense"), showing excessive gore ("Final Destination 2"), shocking audiences with incremental scares ("The Ring") or just plain wink at the audience (the "Scream" trilogy) than in actually scaring, shocking or separate the audience from their lunch in a heartbeat.

Tough it doesn't really get going until the very last act, "House of 1,000 Corpses" harkens back to an era in which just looking at characters and/or locations up on a movie screen would make one sick. The cinematography and production design of this flick, however, gives this updated retelling of the same tales of horror a raw and disturbing energy that is accentuated by its director's willingness to take chances no conventional director would dare come close to. From cutting away to nothing (dead silence, no picture) for what seems like an eternity to many weird POV shots of innocent people getting slaughtered, Zombie definitely makes "House of 1,000 Corpses" his own rather than a complete "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" Xeroxed copy.

Which shouldn't be taken as a blanket endorsement of the man's ability to direct or write a script. With the teenagers coming across as such retarded and unlikable wimps (particularly Rainn Wilson's Bill Hudley) it's hard to care about their plight. Unfortunately the villains in "House of 1,000 Corpses" (Sid Haig's sickeningly effective Captain Spaulding clown, Bill Moseley's sidekick-like Otis Driftwood, Sheri Moon's sexy-but-also-unsexy Baby Firefly, Matthew McGrory's Tiny, etc.) are not only unappealing and played way over the top, but they're also dull and intolerable. Not since the View Askew-produced "Vulgar" indie flick from a year ago have I been so revolted and nauseated by a character just talking and moving about the screen casually. I know that was Rob Zombie's intentions all along, but the way he's structured "House of 1,000 Corpses" gives these terrible and unlikable people much better developed personalities and motives than the potential heroes (like William Bassett's Sheriff Huston).

Then there's the gore, which has been toned down from its original version by the MPAA and not been brought back for our (your?) enjoyment in this Lions Gate Home Ent. DVD. This is still the R rated cut of the movie that Mr. Zombie and Lions Gate had to compromise down to in order to get the movie released. It's still disgusting and masochist enough to make most potential renters/owners think twice about shelling twenty bucks for it, but it's a lost opportunity to see if a director's cut of the movie would have restored some sort of pace, sense of direction, claustrophobia and/or storytelling coherence. That theory, of course, assumes that these elements were in the finished version of "House of 1,000 Corpses" to begin with. Whether it's meant as a tribute, an update or a remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and its 1970's ilk, "House of 1,000 Corpses" hits pay dirt much less frequently than it strikes out.

Maybe it was a bad idea to cast Bill Moseley as Otis; the actor's previous role as Chop Top in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre II" (a far-inferior sequel to the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which Rob's movie resembles more) probably cursed the production to a lifecycle of unwanted and uncalled for introspection. Oh well, at least we'll always have Tiny, Baby Firefly and the sadistic Capt. Spaulding to remember "House of 1,000 Corpses" for.