Well, what did you expect? When a movie delivers pretty much what I expect of it, I can't say it disappoints. Given that the title is "House of 1,000 Corpses" (H1KC), and that the director's name is Rob Zombie, one expects... what, exactly?...Right.
H1KC is an entry into the horror subgenre that could be called "Fear of Yahoos," wherein a carload of vacationing urbanites are beset by a clan of Hollywood's idea of country dwellers. This subgenre arguably traces its pedigree to the legends of Sawney Beane, and certainly has a 20th-century fountainhead in the career of Ed Gein. The granddaddy of the subgenre is, of course, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"; other entries include "The Hills Have Eyes" and "Race With the Devil." The nadir is probably "Razorback," while the most "respectable" example is "Deliverance." The previous entry H1KC most closely resembles is "Mother's Day."
As befits a movie directed by a musician (of sorts), H1KC looks and moves like a mid-'80s music video; its rapid-fire editing and surreal imagery also give it more than the occasional resemblance to "Natural Born Killers." H1KC also makes odd and occasionally surprising use of music: I certainly hadn't expected to hear from Betty Boop, and the movie does for "Brick House" what "Reservoir Dogs" did for "Stuck in the Middle with You."
The movie's nightmare landscape is littered with corrupted Americana: an evil clown, a TV horror host, a cross-country road trip, powerful handguns, urban legends, roadside kitsch, old movies, classic cars, fried chicken, and of course, loud rock and roll. And the center of the action is an American family (an insane one) gathered at their remote country home for a holiday celebration (Halloween, of course). (Several of the family members, as well as the evil clown, are named for characters once played by Groucho Marx. Compare, in "Mother's Day," the two insane sons named Ike and Adlai.)
This place swallows up everyone: cheerleaders, police, relatives of missing persons. How is it, one may ask, that such a crop (if "1,000 Corpses" is to be taken literally) can be amassed--such a huge field of white crosses planted--without anyone's having figured out that this vortex of missing persons is the end of the line? How is it that such ostentatious activities as huge nighttime bonfires have gone unnoticed, by both locals and investigators, for what must be years? How, indeed, do two such dorks as our "heroes" have girlfriends at all, much less cute and shapely ones? But these are questions that apply to the daylit world of logic. They don't cross over into the world of absurd nightmare, of live burial, of a tunnel lined with skeletons, of an evil doctor creating a superhuman army of the insane.
Like Captain Spaulding's roadside museum of madmen and murder, H1KC is itself a museum of horror cliches. Its sheer energy, fast pace, and high-spirited nastiness make it work to the extent that it does. It's beside the point to say that it's derivative, predictable, or overpoweringly unpleasant. Of course it is. So what's your point?
Bottom line: I liked it better than I expected. It's the most harrowing Halloween since Laurie Strode was a teenager.