3 from Hell

Grade: B-

My history with Rob Zombie’s movies is an interesting one. His feature film debut, House of 1000 Corpses, was filmed in 2000, I remember seeing trailers for it in 2000, and was finally released in 2003. It wasn’t a great movie, but was a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing other than some hokey campy fun. Zombie reminded me of Tarantino, in that he was obviously a smart, talented filmmaker, and I admired the way he paid homage to old beloved genres. Corpses had a sequel that came out in 2005. The Devil’s Rejects. An amazing thing happened. The caricatures from Corpses became characters, who lived and breathed, and had a through-line. I named it one of the best movies of the year, and it’s one of my all-time favorites.

Which brings us to 3 From Hell – Rob Zombie’s unexpected third movie in the trilogy which deals with the three main characters, played by Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon Zombie, and Sid Haig. I say unexpected because what happened to these characters at the end of The Devil’s Rejects seemed very…final. We find out how they survived and are able to be in another movie, and all I’ll say is the movie plays as fair as possible with the reason. It’s not because it was all a dream, nor is it because they went to hell and the devil didn’t want them, so they got sent back.

The relative absence of Sid Haig (he has less than 5 minutes of screen time), and the abundance of a new character is a curious thing if you don’t know the backstory. About three weeks before shooting was to start, Zombie got a call from Haig saying he just had surgery and was in the hospital. Zombie went to visit him to find Haig had withered away to a skeleton of his former self, but was able to get the OK to get Haig onto the set for one day to film as much as he could. Many of what were supposed to be Haig’s scenes and lines went to Richard Brake, who wasn’t in the first two films, but is suddenly one of the “3 from hell” here. Brake gave the most memorable performance in Rob Zombie’s hit-or-miss feature from 2016, 31, and is a welcome addition with his down-home Tom Petty beard and nasal drawl. I dare you to find a better Petty should there be a biopic.

In preparation for 3 From Hell, I re-watched House of 1000 Corpses two nights ago, and was planning on then viewing The Devil’s Rejects this morning. I didn’t get to, because I had to work, and I was upset. I needn’t have been – the best will be saved for last. And in fact, if you haven’t seen any of the three, Corpses/3FH/Rejects is the order I recommend you take them in. 3 From Hell is well-made. I don’t think Rob Zombie is capable of making a boring movie. He knows his way around a camera, and is the real deal. But it relies an awful lot on extreme closeups of actors’ faces, and I’d say at least 50% of scene transitions are sidewipes. That gets very old. Characters (Sheri Moon Zombie in particular) slip back into Caricatureville, almost to the point of parody. Let’s hope this is the last hurrah for this story. Or, rather, the last heaving, horrific blood gurgle.

Grade: B-