With his directorial debut, Rob Zombie has created a smart slasher satire with “House Of 1000 Corpses”. Zombie clearly loves the horror movie genre and here, he gives us a very funny take on the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” movies. This film is like if Quentin Tarantino (“Pulp Fiction”) directed a slasher flick.

Two young couples visit a novelty horror establishment. The clown faced Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig “Kill Bill: Vol. 2”) guides them on an amusement ride. After getting hooked on the story of a killer that was supposedly hanged nearby, the couples end up at a house occupied by a family of cannibalistic serial killers. It’s not long before they are taken as prisoners.

Many of the characters are named after Groucho Marx characters including Spaulding from “Animal Crackers” and Rufus Firefly (Robert Allen Mukes) from “Duck Soup”. The Captain Spaulding character is a unique character for a horror film and he is absolutely great. It’s a shame he is not in that much of the movie. The other weirdos are pretty fun. The teens are surprisingly interesting for a horror film but that’s possibly because the film is so comedic. The dialog for the characters is really good.

“House Of 1000 Corpses” may look like “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” but this film is intelligent and funny. Some of the humour is actually quite subtle (check out all the crazy t-shirts the characters wear) so I can see how a lot of people could easily mistake this for another dumb celebration in gore. The tone of this film reminded me of “Evil Dead II” and what Zombie has managed to do is create a film that works as both a horror movie and a parody of the genre. This is a creative and enjoyable movie that has its faults but deserves to be checked out.