Behind the Couch

A group of carnival sideshow workers are abducted and forced to fight for their lives against a gang of killer clowns as mysterious, bewigged oligarchs in aristocratic period garb wager bets on who will survive. 31 is a film about violence as entertainment and death as spectacle. It’s a film about the depths of human depravity. It’s also about survival and the things rational, sane and civilised people will do when they are backed into a corner and forced to fight for their lives. While it riffs on the likes of similarly themed films such as The Most Dangerous Game (1932), The Running Man (1987) and Death Race (1975), it is all, obviously, presented in Rob Zombie’s inimitable and furiously violent style. Like so much of Zombie’s film work, 31 has strong echoes of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), though more so of its sequel (1986), both stylistically and in its fiendishly warped sense of humour. Film scholar Robin Wood once said The Texas Chain Saw Massa...

2013 Dir. Rob Zombie Former addict Heidi (Sherri Moon Zombie) works as a rock DJ at the local radio station in Salem, Massachusetts. When she receives a wooden box containing a vinyl record, ‘A gift from the Lords’, she assumes it’s a PR stunt by a band and gives it a spin. Upon hearing the strange, haunting music, Satanic Panic ensues and she begins to experience vivid hallucinations and bizarre flashbacks to her town's violent, blood-soiled past. Is Heidi going mad, or are the “Lords of Salem” returning for revenge on modern-day Salem? A daring filmmaker with a unique and singular vision, Rob Zombie has never been one to shy away from controversy or despairingly dark subject matter. The Devil’s Rejects focused on the murderous redneck antagonists of House of 1,000 Corpses , essentially rendering them the protagonists and even attempting to humanise them. His remake of John Carpenter’s classic slasher Halloween focused on the back-story and psychology of serial killer Mi...

Dir. Rob Zombie A year later, and a traumatised Laurie still struggles to come to terms with the bloodbath that resulted when her psychotic brother Michael Myers escaped from an asylum and came to find her, killing everyone who got in his way. Her worst fears are soon realised when Myers, who has been in hiding ever since, returns on Halloween night to finish what he started a year ago… I first wrote about Rob Zombie’s follow-up to his remake of Halloween when it came out in 2009. You can read that review here . After burning out while making Halloween , Zombie was initially hesitant to helm the sequel. After thinking about it though, and recognising the chance to continue with the story, he decided to film the follow up, imbuing it with the same squalid, dingy and bleak tone as its predecessor. My thoughts on the film haven’t really changed. I still think it is a flawed, but beautifully filmed work. I appreciate that the focus is on Laurie and her struggle to repair her life...

Dir. Rob Zombie After massacring his family on Halloween, disturbed 10 year old Michael Myers is committed to a mental institution. 17 years later, he violently escapes and heads back home to Haddonfield to find his baby sister Laurie, brutally murdering anyone who crosses his path. In November 2005, Halloween producer Moustapha Akkad and his daughter, Rima Akkad Monla, were killed at a wedding party when Al-Qaeda bombed the Grand Hyatt in Amman, Jordan. As the champion of the series since its inception, his tragic death was a blow for the future of the franchise. This, coupled with Dimension Film execs realising (maybe) the error of their ways with Halloween Resurrection , looked set to see the end of the Halloween films. However, following a trend of remaking old horror films from the Seventies and Eighties such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas, Dawn of the Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, The Amityville Horror and When A Stranger Calls , producers recognised that H...

Dir. Rob Zombie One year on from her ultra-violent and blood-drenched encounter with her psychotic brother Michael Myers, and Laurie Strode is still trying to come to terms with the trauma. With her brother’s body still missing and All Hallows Eve just around the corner, Laurie soon realises that the terror she experienced the previous year was just the beginning. Like the tagline states, and because slasher villains are just too darn lucrative to kill off: Family is forever. We learn that, unsurprisingly, the supposedly dead Michael Myers has actually been living a hermetic existence in the countryside, and as the anniversary of the massacre approaches, he returns to Haddonfield once more to ‘reunite’ his dysfunctional family. With his remake of Halloween , Rob Zombie attempted to explore the man behind the mask - Michael Myers. Delving into Myers’ troubled childhood and dysfunctional family Zombie attempted to address the issues that made Myers the relentless killing machine he ...