Directed by: Rob Zombie
Notable cast: Sherri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Sid Haig,
Richard Brake
3 From Hell is a movie that requires some context to
fully understand, so it’s necessary to briefly summarize how we got here first.
Rob Zombie’s first movie, House of 1000 Corpses, tells us of the Firefly
clan, a family of Texas psychopaths who trap tourists searching for the local
spooky legend, an ex-Nazi scientist named Dr. Satan. In 1978, seven months after
the killings depicted in the first filmSheriff Quincy Wydell leads a raid on
the Firefly house. This kicks off the second film, The Devil’s Rejects,
and the ensuing firefight kills most of the serial killing family and leads to
the capture of the family matriarch who’s subsequently tortured to death by
Wydell. Two members escape and act as our effective franchise protagonists. The
first is Otis Driftwood, played by Bill Moseley (who’s own genre star-making performance
in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 made him a natural fit in Zombie’s TCM
inspired world) who is a murderer, rapist, and self-aggrandizing taxidermist with
a nihilist streak. The other is Baby, played by the director’s wife, Sherri
Moon Zombie in her signature role, who is a deranged, dangerous, childish, and
a game playing killer with a tenuous grip on reality at best. The two are joined
eventually by Captain Spaulding (Haig), an evil clown and purveyor of “The
Museum of Monsters and Madmen”, who sent victims to the Firefly’s by spreading
the legend of Dr. Satan and, as we also find out, is Baby’s father. After The
Devil’s Rejects (a self-branded moniker) are finally captured and confronted by
Sheriff Wydell, they escape again just to drive straight into a wall of police,
and the firefight (set, reasonably on the nose, to ‘Freebird’) ends the
violent, terrible lives of the three human monsters. It’s a neat, perfect
capper to what is a horrid, unblinking examination of the human capacity for
evil. There are no heroes in this story, only bad people and worse people, and
most couldn’t imagine we would ever revisit anyone from the family.
And that brings us to now, nearly 15 years later. I went
into 3 From Hell with nothing but apprehension. The Devil’s
Rejects felt so real and visceral, like something that actually could’ve
happened in a more exploitation film version of our real world, so I had no
idea how Zombie planned to get the Rejects out of dying in the finale of the
last film. As it turns out? He does it by simply by asking you to take a leap
of logic. They each took around 20 bullets, survived, and were immediately
imprisoned for life/death sentences. Frankly, this is a big ask, but it’s just
feasible enough that if you’re willing to play along then the movie cruises
along fine from there.
Spaulding, aka Cutter, is then put to death making Sid
Haig’s presence in this film largely a cameo. As a brief aside, Sid Haig was
recovering from major surgery and was unable to film this movie as written.
There are complaints I will have going forward that indirectly relate to this, as
one can only review the movie they saw, not the movie they want, but for what
it’s worth? I do believe there would’ve been a tangible improvement to this movie
if Haig had been able to reprise his role in a fuller sense. Regardless, soon
after Otis finds himself on a chain gang (with genre mainstay Danny Trejo!),
and is freed by long lost Firefly brother “Foxy” Coltrane (character actor Richard
Brake, in his second major ride with Zombie, after 2016’s thoroughly
forgettable 31), murdering all the guards, and other convicts (Trejo,
no!!) on the way out.
Foxy and Otis decide to free Baby, who is having a rough
prison existence. Having gone from slightly unhinged to full-on psychotic in
the ten years she’s been in prison, we see her attack a prison guard during a parole
hearing, and we see that same prison guard set Baby up to be murdered by other
inmates in a basement. It doesn’t work out well, as the guard finds Baby sitting
atop the other inmates’ corpses. Otis and Foxy kidnap the warden’s family and
compel him to bring Baby to them, after which the three escape and spend the
rest of the film in hiding. There is a lot of stylistic hyper-reality at play
in this movie, from the curly-mustachioed floral-shirted prison warden to a
group of Lucha masked assassins (wearing El Superbeasto styled Lucha
masks, tying Zombie’s filmic ‘look’ together) call The Black Satans. The idea of
serial killers knife fighting business-suited luchadores does thread a weirdly
specific needle with me, but depending on your personal taste, the mileage may
vary.
Sherri Moon Zombie and Bill Moseley have very little trouble
slipping back into Otis and Baby, appropriately, and watching them at their
worst is a true highlight of this movie. There is a long sequence in The
Devil’s Rejects concerning these two holding a traveling band hostage in
their hotel room and 3 From Hell doubles down on this concept with the
hostage situation in the warden’s home. There is some of the usual Zombie
weirdness in the form of a suddenly appearing party clown (an out of nowhere
Clint Howard), but the sequence overall is cruel, mean spirited, and uncomfortable.
It’s exactly what I’d have wanted out of a Devil’s Rejects sequel and
largely the first half of this movie delivers. If you’re willing to accept the
initial conceit of the three surviving the second movie, anyway. Unfortunately,
I don’t want to give the impression that this is a recommendation because, for
everything I did like about 3 From Hell, there was a bevy of problems.
Firstly, again not the movie’s fault, but the losing Cutter
is a big blow to the movie. There are not a lot of characters who could
believably put Otis Driftwood in his place and offer him any kind of
resistance, physically or verbally, and Spaulding replacement Foxy “The
Midnight Werewolf” is not up to the task. Setting aside my personal dislike for
the “long lost family member” trope, Foxy, as written, comes off as Otis-lite. The same disregard for human life, but ever so slightly more affable. He’s the kind
of guy who has a long conversation about wanting to give up the murdering life
and start directing porn. There isn’t much in the way of tension between the
three killers, and the relationships just don’t feel right. They’ve had to
retcon these characters slightly, again, to make them fit the mold this movie
needs them to fit in for the plot to move. Or, to put it more frankly, Otis and
Baby don’t get along well and should be constantly fighting with each other
without Cutter there to set them both straight. Then there is the bigger issue,
that all horror franchises go through eventually, which is the deification of
the killers.
If you’re a fan of Zombie’s work, 3 From Hell is
definitely worth checking out on rental or VOD, as there is some good
stuff in here. But the average moviegoer would probably do well to avoid this
and even the aforementioned fan would enjoy this more with severely mitigated
expectations. I really wanted to love this, but as it stands it’s merely
alright.
Written By Sean Caylor
3 From Hell Full free movie
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