MOVIE REVIEW: 3 FROM HELL

From Rob Zombie comes the third and final film in the Firefly Trilogy and I find that this is a good thing!

This series was kicked off with the film House of 1000 Corpses and followed up by The Devil’s Rejects and both of those films are superior in their own unique ways to this final effort. Zombie is clearly a fan of the grindhouse style of sleazy 70s films full of gratuitous violence, sex and heaps of gore and there’s nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately this last film just feels like its treading over the same ground without adding anything new to the story line. House for instance was drenched in atmosphere, character and Argento style lighting. While the premise was nothing new Zombie definitely stamped his film debut with the aesthetics that he had practiced as a director of his own music videos. He has evident skill behind the camera and really understands shot composition and lighting. The pacing of that film was also on point even if a number of the performances were somewhat cheesy in keeping with the spirit of exploitation cinema.

Rejects on the other hand was a brutal and unflinching look into the family dynamics of the Firefly’s and their murderous urges. Gone was the pomp and circumstance of House, replaced instead by an almost unflinching exposition of the horror of the killer family, this time set in the bright light of dead instead of the stormy night of the previous film. It was also iteratively strengthened by giving the family an active antagonist in the form of William Forsythe as a lawman seeking revenge. Unfortunately, this time Zombie fails to advance the story or two do anything new or creative with it.

The film advances ten years forward with the villains incarcerated and sadly Sid Haig was too ill to film much and so was written out of the film. Replaced by Richard Brake (the standout killer from Zombie’s film 31) as Foxy Coultrane, yet another Firefly relation. Brake’s dialogue all feels like things that were meant to be said by Capt Spaulding which just made me miss Haig all the more. Dialogue is an issue with Zombie, while he can write some decent pieces here and there (check out his Lords of Salem) his default to trash cinema speak feels exactly like what it is, and homage to the era it was inspired by. Similarly the plot just kinda builds to nothing really. While the first film set the stage and the second film created depth the third film just kind of meanders pointlessly. It feels like the franchise and the director just ran out of steam here. Early on it felt like it was building to something similar to the film Natural Born Killers crossed with the exploits of the Manson family. The warden of their prison is set up as a potential antagonist along with Dee Wallace as one of the guards but all of this is dealt with by the second act. This leaves the group with nothing to really do except kill time until a new antagonist is introduced late in the third act. It just feels like a forced conclusion, an attempt to jam a western showdown into a film that hasn’t earned this sort of thing. As a result the payoff is far weaker than in Rejects final scene. The series worked much better as a twofer than as a trilogy which wrapped up the story in the only way it could end.

The acting is ok, the gang delivers their trashy dialogue as trashily as possible. Otis is often the most interesting of the crew having grown into something of a philosopher (of a homicidal sort). Nihilism is his religion and murder is his merriment. Fuzzy just seems to be along for the hell of it and Baby is well annoying. She has been the least engaging character of the series. Her antics and voice just grate on the nerves. I’ve seen Sheri Zombie do better work in Lords of Salem and Halloween so I’m glad to see this character getting retired finally, there is just nothing interesting about Baby.