3 From Hell (2019)

3 From Hell (2019) (see below for trailer and preview images)

Directed and Written by
Rob Zombie
 
Starring: Sherri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, Richard Brake
 ​
Budget $3M                            Box Office $2.2M
 
IMDb 5.7/10               Rotten Tomatoes 52%            Metacritic NO DATA

I finally got to see this last night.  It was released September 16 of this year but, it didn’t spend a lot of time in theaters or that many theaters, for that matter.  I had been looking forward to this since I wrote my first post about it being in production in January of 2018.  It was well worth the wait.
 
I still have to say that out of all three films, House of 1000 Corpses will always be my favorite.  HOWEVER, 3 From Hell was a great third addition to what has now become a series I suppose, since there’s three films.  It’s not really a trilogy because the plot line doesn’t have some sort of weird twist back to the first film that brings it all together. 
 
Now, when I first saw that Rob Zombie was thinking about making this third film, my first reaction was, “Okay, how are they going to explain the fact that they were all shot to shit at the end of The Devil’s Rejects.”  Granted, we don’t ever see them actually dead.  We just see an intense shootout with the cops where they are pummeled by a hail of bullets as they drive head on into a police barricade.  Death is implied with the wounds we see them sustain.
 
But, that’s the thing about implications…they don’t actually define anything.  So, in the beginning of this third film, we find out that after they were turned into human swiss cheese, the cops took them into custody and rushed them all to the hospital where, slowly but surely, all three of them, Otis, Captain Spaulding and Baby, eventually healed and were put on trial.  And this trial is so…Manson-esque (yes, I just made that word up and no, I don’t care that it doesn’t really exist).  They get a couple of really good shots of Baby and Otis, each playing their own respective Manson Family type roles…Baby, the floating, mindless follower and Otis, the charismatic, psychotic looking and ranting leader.  
 
From this point on, the film is what one would expect and want from Rob Zombie.  However, while the first film, House of 1000 Corpses, focused on the violence and madness of the deranged Firefly family, the second film, The Devil’s Rejects, seemingly focused on the sexual depravity and violence of the Firefly clan.  In the first film, we get a lot of Otis’s ranting and raving about everything and nothing, while destroying multiple people in the process.  In the second film, the terrible trio are much more violent.  Almost everything violent in the second film has sexual connotations to it, while sex was more like a by-product of the violence in the first film.
 
In this third film, Zombie backs off of the sex as a main plot line and focuses more on just these three as people.  Demented and sad, but people nonetheless.  Also, in the third film we get introduced to another family member, Otis’s half-brother. 
 
Remember now, the trio are all in prison.  The half-brother is on the outside, so naturally, there is the issue of getting them out of prison.  This film moves more like a regular horror/thriller movie, rather than the wild-eyed back and forth of the first film.  I was surprised that this film was almost two hours but, at no time was I checking the counter to see how much time was left.  
 
I thought it was a good movie, a good final entry to the series.  At least I assume it’s the final film.  You never actually know with Rob Zombie, do ya?
 
Bill Moseley as Otis is, by far, one of my favorite horror characters ever.  And as I said in my review of House of 1000 Corpses, Sherri Moon Zombie’s little crazy china doll laugh is one of the most eerie things I have ever heard in a horror movie.  She does that a little bit in this film but, it’s almost like Baby’s grown up or something since her shootout with the police.  She has a different mania about her when she walks and talks, when she dances around, when she kills.  Otis hasn’t changed much at all which make it an entertaining thrill kill kind of movie to watch.  And the addition of the half-brother is a fabulous expansion on the family dynamic.
 
Any Rob Zombie film fan would like this and dare I say, love it?  I actually thought it was better than the second film but I don’t know if Zombie will ever top House of 1000 Corpses.  3 From Hell was a very close go at it though.  And I think they did a damn good job of bringing it all together.  Especially since there was such a long gap between the making of the second and third film.  This is one I’m glad I bought so I can watch it again.
 
RATINGS
4.5/5 Stars