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Bizarre, garishly colourful and occasionally inventive horror flick in the style of gore-meister Herschell Gordon Lewis – not for the squeamish (and this is the expurgated version).

House of 1000 Corpses is a bizarre horror flick by director Rob Zombie that owes a debt to the work of cult director Herschell Gordon Lewis, (the self-styled ‘Wizard of Gore’), particularly the films Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs. Sadly, the original version was deemed “too dark and disturbing” for a mainstream release, though an unexpurgated DVD is apparently in the works.

Terrorised By Psychopaths…As Ever The plot is your basic ‘two couples run out of gas and get terrorised by a group of psychopaths’ type of thing, though unfortunately the best character, Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) is barely in it. Still, it does have 70s star Karen Black (as Mother Firefly) and that’s always a good thing.

The colours are garish and everyone seems to shriek their lines so eventually it all becomes a bit relentless but it starts brilliantly and there are some clever touches - in particular the echoing between Spaulding’s “Murder Ride” at the beginning (a typical, non-scary Ghost Train sort of thing with doors that bang open and skeletons that ‘fall’ onto you) and the ‘real-life’ Corridor Of Terror at the end (also complete with banging doors and skeletons but this time terrifying).

In short, this is something of a curiosity – worth seeing if you’re a fan of cult horror movies and certainly different from the usual Hollywood trash, but unfortunately not exactly satisfying. An interesting failure.