3 From Hell

3 From Hell

The world of Rob Zombie is one in which screams are like needles that your unconscious will remember long after the movies have ended. Unhealable scars; madness because for seeing horror; knives so deep into bodies they puncture the security of images. His characters are wrong and impolite, soldiers of a convulsed and bent morality annihilated by abrupt violence.

And it’s been an odd path for Zombie, from chart-topping arena metalist to underground filmmaker plagued with bad notices and poor box office numbers. The latest is “3 from Hell,” his sequel to both his first movie “House of 1,000 Corpses” (2003) and 2005’s “The Devil’s Rejects,” about a kinfolk of country fried killers who delight in eldritch torment and consume their victims’ purity. At some point they are in prison then into a Mexican village.

It was not an auspicious return to the narrative that made him famous on celluloid. After Zombie wrote checks to twelve other horror auteurs on a lark because of the sudden success of Paranormal Activity, Jason Blum funded his 2012 “Lords of Salem” film, followed by Zombie’s having to crowdfund his carney horror “31,” which brings us to today three years later “3 from Hell” being released as part Fathom Event like a religious service or an opera performance shot whenever his cast of character actors had a spare minute.

In the very beginning we get Austin Stoker giving a cameo as newscaster reporting, Danny Trejo appears for moments only while Sid Haig, currently fighting for his life in an ICU after an accident, has barely ten minutes worth screen time. It’s been since House Of 1000 Corpses that there is not another Rob Zombie film more subversive in its logistics than its violence. Maybe this world doesn’t really want what Zombie has to give it in terms of his art, at least not with all the resources he can bring to bear; still they never keep him down. Every hobbling he receives from the world of film financing and distribution he makes into a kind of slick strength.

The sadistic trio moves from one film into another. In the previous chapter, ‘The Devil’s Rejects,’ the three were being hunted down by the police in a convertible while “Free Bird” played in the background. To make the latest installment of this series, Zombie must literally bring them back to life. A few years into his life sentence and Captain Spaulding (Haig) dies of illness, but he does so after delivering one of Zombie’s best monologues ever. Otis (Bill Moseley) is planning an escape route and has included cousin Winslow Foxworth Coltrane (Richard Brake, our Timothy Carey).

Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) is shaking up her wing of the prison in high style. There is no way that this butch guard (Dee Wallace) will let go of Baby until she breaks her spirit. The warden of a jail that holds rejects such as them Jeff Daniel Phillips who just loves being a weasel starts sweating after Otis’ break out because he knows that Baby will be taken away again by him and it’s just how it goes.

When he comes home from work one night to see Otis holding his wife hostage with Foxy, he knows they’re about to hit rock bottom. He’ll need to let free Baby if he hopes to escape alive; then it becomes only question of how are these three fugitives going to hide having committed so many murders with most wanted posters worldwide?

„3 from Hell,” is a lot like several other movies all rolled into one beginning as a 70’s cable movie news cycle where Zombie catches us up on things so far. Then it transforms itself into Susan Hayward women-in-prison flick with Dee Wallace taking on rare villain role relishing every evil moment she gets. Soon thereafter baby punches her breaking her nose then spends time behind gauze with one side looking similar too Jack Nicholson’s face bandage in ‘Chinatown’ with other side being glassed over and her eyes peering through.

This section of the movie seems to be modeled after Fight For Your Life, a very rare video nasty by Robert Endelson. Brake and Moseley get into character as they hold hostage the warden’s friends and family. The film takes on an entirely different tone once the three are on the run, transforming from Zombie’s version of Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” into a cover of Walter Hill’s “Extreme Prejudice.”

Each of these sections is too brief, as though Zombie had crafted some kind of stylistic collection ahead of time then filled in the why later. He must have been dizzy with excitement trying out so many different moods and styles here, powered only by the sadistic glee his cast brings to their roles!

Zombie movies are like somewhere a zoo of face-actors, for example one-made by Quinn Martin or Irwin Allen. As one should expect, the leads are great, but everybody filling the smaller parts put their hearts into it. Wallace, Haig, Phillips, Stoker are fantastic as well as Emilio Rivera, Pancho Moler, Kevin Jackson and Richard Edson.

The feeling you tend to get when watching Zombie’s films is that they are family reunion with actors such as Moseley, Brake and Philips appearing often with an expectation to be cast in roles replete with substance. The movie “3 from Hell” is about all depravity all the time and its cast knows just how much pathos to bring to their portrayals of the worst people ever.

Zombie never minces his words about what he wants us to think about his violence; however in this film his most heartless killers become the heroes. It’s no longer “31” where powdered brained aristocrats pitted 9-to-5ers against each other till death do them apart. This means that it must have been easy for Zombie to find himself among sociopaths he knew before. Indeed ‘3 from Hell’ are evil but everyone else is so much more worse than them.

Otis and company look around themselves only to see greedy wardens, tough on prisoners’ prison guards, opportunistic scumbags, hair trigger hillbillies, ravenous perverts and those who treat feuds as if they were personalities. Meanwhile Otis, Baby, and Foxy begin looking better compared to their purely hedonistic impulses.

Their behaviors suddenly make sense now whereas earlier they seemed monstrous. When there exist people ready jail you just to appeal some admiring public why wouldn’t you want lash out without any fear of reprisal? In retrospect though it turns out that a cavity was left open where once sat a working moral compass for 100 minutes.

But let’s talk about the unexpected wins of “3 from Hell.” At least from footage of his carnies sitting agreeably for the first ten minutes of 31, to Laurie Strode and her friends and family hanging out in the margins of Zombie’s Halloween movies. This is the Howard Hawks version of Rob Zombie where it is nice to hang out with his bloodthirsty creations. For example, there’s a montage showing all three reveling at a bar that employs visual theory he picked up making his videos and concert film called “The Zombie Horror Picture Show.”

Zombie has gotten old enough to realize he wants less provocation and more desire for never-ending existence in a textural fetishism. “3 from Hell” has moments that are gut wrenching but fans who have followed him through many falls will recognize this as possibly Zombie’s most sincere and laid back nightmare yet.

The wounds are still deep, the screams still linger, but for the first time, it’s an uncomplicated pleasure to live in his jagged compositions, basking in the chummy rapport of monsters. After almost two decades, Zombie’s hell on earth is finally better than where we live today.

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