#ho1kc

[charleslee-valentine]

Firefly family name etymology:

It’s no secret their names are chosen from stories, a coverup of sorts, but the family does have real names as well, at least for the most part, with the exception of Otis. That’s because he chose his own name, giving it at least some significance still.

We’ll start with him, since he’s the oldest of the Firefly children. The name Otis means ‘leisure.’ He’s a man who doesn’t feel threatened by much. Even when shit starts to hit the fan in the second two films, he remains joking, cocky, and proud. Leisure is in his relaxed bones, even when he’s furious and scolding and violent. Even in the way he stands, with his shoulders sagged and his crotch forward, is a leisurely poster.

The second child is RJ. Full name Rufus Junior. More complicated because of its simplicity, the meaning of his name is ‘reddened.’ While there’s no personality connections there, it can possibly offer insight on his killings. Blood is red and the Firefly family home is deeply soaked in blood. It’s assumed they’ve been killing for the entirety of the children’s lives, though that’s somewhat unclear. However if Rufus got his hands ‘reddened’ when he was young (accounting for the secondary meaning of junior) then it does imply that the family allows their small children to kill as well. A minor detail, but considering the shared insight on the whole family, shows RJ being dedicated to them first and foremost.

Next is Baby. Of course this, along with Angel Baby, are her nicknames. Her true name is Vera Ellen. Together, the double name has the meanings ‘true’ and ‘brilliant.’ She was her parents pride and joy and was named ‘truly brilliant’ after the way she shined to them. However I see it as a signal that she isn’t just a pretty, happy face too. She's also as intelligent as others in the family, despite her mental health and delusions. Thus it serves as a warning not to underestimate her. She’s every bit as cunning as her brothers, in on all the plans, with twice the protection because she’s her Mama and Daddy’s little star.

As for the Firefly parents themselves, there’s Mama. Her real name is Gloria, which means ‘honor.’ Befitting of the common matriarch in the family, everything they do is to her liking. Even Otis comes down to supper and brings Wolf because he knows that would make her happy. After her death, they raise hell and fight to survive and honor her. They made a promise to her, and to the other family they lost, to not go down without a fight. All those bullets they took was to honor her. Her name represents the symbol she presents to the rest of her family.

Except Earl, who we don’t see her interact with. Because of what he did he’s been exiled from the Firefly family, but it’s worth noting that his name can mean ‘lion.’ It would seem the man had a bad temperament to do what he did, and likely without much warning. He pounced and struck and Tiny was hurt, so Earl was no longer part of the family. In that sense, it reflects his nature as a dangerous animal, a monster to them.

His replacement as consistent patriarch and father to Baby is Spaulding. While his nicknames include Captain Spaulding and Cutter, his government name is Johnny Lee Johns. Combining the meanings of Johnny ‘graced by god’ and Lee ‘poet,’ he’s symbolically been gifted his ability to wax poetic and monologue. Spaulding spends his very last moments of life ranting and monologuing in that disturbing and cruel way the Firefly family does. To us, it doesn’t seem like poetry, but his wisdom to the family is important. His poeticism isn’t his word choice, it’s the way he can use words to crush a victim’s spirit, or to scare and unsettle them right into the arms of his waiting family members down the road to be hunted.

The final member of the family, at least in order of introduction, is Foxy. He’s Otis’ half-brother, so he has his own surname that he doesn’t share with anybody else. His name obviously is not a Marx character like the rest of the family’s nicknames as well. Foxy is just the shorthand of his middle name, Foxworth, full name Winslow Foxworth Coltrane. Winslow means ‘grave’ or ‘burial.’ His rescue of his brother, and thus his entrance into the story, is necessary because of death. Cutter is dead, Mama is dead, RJ and Tiny are dead, and Otis and Baby likely aren’t long behind. Foxy is a figure of the family, who is only essential in the loss of life, so his name is significant in marking him with that death. Foxworth can mean ‘homestead’ which only adds to the tragic meaning there. His family is dead, his home gone and burnt to the ground, and he wasn’t there to see it or defend them too. The death of all those family members and the loss of his home is the reason for his determination to save his remaining two siblings, and be included in the family. Baby and Otis don’t consider him part of that fight, but he’s just as wounded by it. Coltrane is symbolic of ‘wild energy.’ The result of the above trauma for him is his manic attitude. Even as calm and flat affected as he can seem, he turns cruel and sadistic when push comes to shove. All of the Firefly family can fit into that trope, of completely unhinged assholes, but Foxy wears the specific name that says it’s a part of him. Showing that he is a memeber of the family regardless of his prison stint that had him separated from the rest.

Firefly, of course, is a name chosen from characters and likely not their legal name, but it’s the one they use. The little insect fireflies symbolize ‘hope.’ The family reminds each other to be hopeful, because they see themselves as untouchable. Nobody can stop them, it seems at least, and Baby has to be reminded of that when she’s in Mexico grieving her Mama and Daddy. The love they have and the hope they share exists despite their evil and destructive nature, showing that they are a family unit deep down. Afterall, the point of these three films was to show what happens when the killers have support and love and family behind them for once, and how less likely their victims are in such a case to survive.

#firefly trilogy #house of 1000 corpses #hotc #ho1kc #the devils rejects #three from hell #3 from hell #3fh #otis driftwood #otis b driftwood #rufus jr firefly #rj firefly #baby firefly #vera ellen firefly #mama firefly #mother firefly #gloria firefly #captain spaulding #johnny lee johns #foxy coltrane #winslow foxworth coltrane

[knightsickness]

you didn’t say if criston had seen house of 1000 corpses

criston hasnt seen ho1kc but not for the reason youd think he doesnt have any religious or moral objection to the content. he sees larys in a directed by robb zombie shirt and kind of scoffs and larys needles him like oh was it too much for you catholic baby? and hes like no its too derivative of texas chainsaw massacre. and larys is like so youve seen it? and hes like no i read the synopsis and larys is like how could you know you dont like it if you havent seen it thats ridiculous. and cristons like im allowed to have opinions and larys is like ‘too derivative’ nobodys saying midsommar is too derivative of wicker man. and cristons like i wouldnt know i dont watch woman directors and larys is like ari aster isnt a woman and cristons like shes not? this conversation takes place in cristons car he has a blue lives matter air freshener

#asoiaf #a song of ice and fire #hotd #house of the dragon #criston cole #larys strong #robb zombie is a joke do not call me a fake fan

[hungry-hobbits]

wow, ok, unfollowing now. was a big fan of his fried chicken and murder ride, had no idea he was using them to lure unsuspecting people to the house of his eccentric murder family.

#house of 1000 corpses #captain spaulding #ho1kc #this was getting some attention on twitter so you can have it here too ur welcome

[bozojesus]

   so i finally watched 3 from h.ell and...

   i really liked it actually 

  i missed cutter terribly, of course, but not to the point where it ruined the movie. they do kind of rush through the segment about his execution at the beginning, but there’s a scene where otis & baby talk about him during the third act that was very sweet and actually made me tear up. it’s obvious that the characters haven’t forgotten him; he’s just a very painful subject and that’s understandable, considering how much he meant to them. otis in particular sounded ready to cry when talking about him. shocker, right?

   that said !! cutter very very clearly lives on through baby. i really loved how she was developed in this one and she stole every scene she was in. i thought sheri’s acting was solid throughout the movie - even when she was going really over-the-top during the first forty or so minutes, i still bought it, and while baby remains a terrible person, i thought 3FH humanized her a lot more than TDR did. most of her kills are pretty quick ( though she still relishes in them, of course ) rather than the drawn out sadism & mental torture from the first two movies. her emotional journey reminded me so strongly of her dad’s in the sense she has this aimlessness about her, like she no longer knows what to do with herself or what her place is or what she wants. she even goes so far as to question otis about why they even do what they do, which leads to otis questioning their lifestyle himself to some degree. maybe i’m reading into it wrong, or maybe other fans will read his reaction differently, but his response to baby almost seemed like one of resignation. death, violence & destruction is what they’re used to. it’s simply what they’re meant to do - what else is there for them? i’ve always believed that’s a thought that had already crossed cutter’s mind - that he is simply meant to destroy, so he might as well continue to destroy. it was interesting to see otis & baby starting to get to that point now that they’re older. kind of feels like everything’s coming full circle, in that sense.

   as for otis himself, it really seemed like he was just kind of ?? going through the motions. don’t get me wrong, he’s still a sick, thoroughly evil man, but he lacks a lot of the relish he used to have. this time around it felt more like he was following a routine than carrying out these horrendous deeds because he believed them to be his not-so-divine purpose ( or whatever the hell goes on in his head ). he still goes on his usual misanthropic rants, but does he actually believe them anymore, or is he just saying them because that’s what’s expected of him at this point? it’s hard to discern.

   ri.chard brake did a really nice job as foxy. he was appropriately gross & despicable when the movie called for it while still having a certain charm about him. there were moments where i shuddered at his behaviour; other times i found him very endearing and Almost Sweet ( you can definitely tell he was meant to be cutter’s replacement because that was essentially cutter’s role in the last one ). he isn’t as fleshed-out as he could’ve been, no, but for a last-minute addition to the cast? he’s totally fine. he isn’t grating at all. i liked him! i’d be really okay with seeing him again and while no one can replace cutter, i think foxy’s presence helps fill what would’ve been a very sad & lonely void. he and baby basically take turns acting as the comedy relief of the movie with the occasional sarcastic jab from otis. i thought it worked well.

   as for the other characters... sebastian was adorable. by far my favourite new addition to the squad. he played a huge role in the humanization of baby and it was so, so nice to see a character in this series who’s a genuinely kind person and not a total piece of shit. i really hope rob will write more characters like him in future movies because i think he underestimates how important it is to have them around in media like the firefly family series. they keep things from getting too bleak. warden harper’s wife judy was great, but really under-utilized. i thought the guard greta’s storyline had potential but it sadly didn’t go anywhere, which is a shame. warden harper himself is appropriately scummy, but i felt rob... could’ve went a little further with him? i felt he should’ve gone all-out and really made us hate the guy, if that was supposed to be his purpose. i feel like the home invasion scene should’ve been Earned. that was by far my least favourite sequence of the movie and it just dragged on and on and on. 

   i also would’ve liked rob to have explored the concept of sensationalized serial killers in the media more and why this is a bad thing. it seemed like the opening of the movie was setting that up, but like greta and harper’s arcs, it just... did not go anywhere. i was really hoping we’d see how fame impacted otis, baby & cutter, and how their sensationalization affected pop culture in general, since they’ve been in the public eye for over a decade... but nope. we have some scenes where baby maniacally gushes over her supposed stardom, otis grouching about how they have to be careful in the public eye and a pretty funny joke from foxy where he tries to insist he’s the most recognizable of the bunch, but that’s about it.

   and like... could we not have had at least some reactions from them to 80s pop culture? the movie didn’t have to revolve around that, but it’s like... these guys are so heavily ingrained in 70s aesthetic & they’ve been locked up for 10 years, pretty much shut off from the rest of the world. you’d think we’d at least get some quips from otis about how music has gone down the shitter or something like that, but nope! nothing like that either. i suppose that’s something that’s gonna have to be saved for future 3FH threads instead.

   the dialogue wasn’t awful but some of the callbacks were a little Too obvious for my taste. i liked the subtle ones, like where baby tells otis she has a “better idea” at the end when deciding what to do with aquarius and how otis is actually accepting her plan ( as opposed to otis’ “better idea” angering cutter in TDR ), and how otis tries to hype baby up with the “fucked up shit” line. but some of other stuff otis said? like the boogeyman shit at the beginning and the “murder factory” line when he’s killing harper? nah, that felt a bit forced and kind of uncreative on rob’s end. i think he could’ve done a bit better with that.

   overall, i thought the first forty minutes were a bit of a drag, but when the characters get to mexico things really kicked off and i found myself enjoying it and getting really into it. it’s definitely not TDR or Ho1KC, but it’s a fun ride in its own right. the one thing i do think it did better than TDR was - again - giving the characters some depth & dimension. we actually got to see emotional reactions from them & they’re given some quiet moments where they could just talk to each other and have fun outside of the disgusting torture shit ( which, thank god, this movie doesn’t linger on quite as much as the last one imo ). that’s something i felt like TDR lacked & i’m glad rob did that portion right this time around. 

   while it’s a flawed movie and the absence of my beloved clown is definitely felt, i really don’t think 3FH is this abysmal piece of shit that some people are making it out to be. i don’t think it’ll hold the same special place in my heart that the first two do, but i liked it. i’m very glad to have finally seen it and i’m hoping it’ll spark some new life into the fandom. you best believe i’ll be writing up cutter several 3FH verses in the future & am super eager to use this film as a basis of doing new stuff for him. 

#▐ ☠ sᴘᴏᴏᴋsʜᴏᴡ ʙᴀʙʏ ( OOC. ) #3 from hell spoilers / #like. heavy spoilers so don't read this if you don't want the whole thing given away #it's late so i'm probably heading to bed soon but if anyone wants to hmu on discord or IM tomorrow to talk about it? hell yeah #might stream it over the weekend who knows!

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/2/2018: THE DEVIL’S REJECTS

The core ethos of Rob Zombie’s movies, if you can say that there is one, is individuality: a certain don’t-give-a-fuckness, a matter of being yourself at all costs, even if that means cutting holes in your pants for your ass to hang out of, not brushing your teeth, and murdering people who piss you off. In the spirit of that level of realness, I must confess that, even though I don’t have a lot of desire to defend it, a part of me really wants to like this messy, self-satisfied movie. Unfortunately, I can’t come clean about why, but that’s because I don’t really know.

It’s worth mentioning that THE DEVIL’S REJECTS is Rob Zombie’s sequel to his first feature, the incomprehensible HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES. This is worth mentioning precisely because it’s worth forgetting. The latter disaster, which to be fair Zombie was forced to make up on the spot in an impromptu pitch meeting, and which was plagued with production problems, amounts to a loose collection of pornographically violent cartoons, motivated by nothing other than the director’s love for his own ideas.  It isn’t easy to take, but at least they are his own ideas. Whether or not I find it entertaining, I can find my way to appreciating a filmmaker just mashing up his personal fetishes, when so many movies are boringly predicated on one person’s condescending projection of what all of OUR fetishes are. Ultimately, Ho1KC’s lack of structure and...maybe I wanna say, point...makes all this fantasizing pretty irrelevant to anyone other than the fantasizer. Mercifully, THE DEVIL’S REJECTS finds Zombie squeezing a more carefully curated selection of his obsessions into a plot, with some character arcs and everything.

Ok, so it’s not like a masterpiece of mythology or anything. In fact, the movie’s fatal flaw, in spite of all this new coherence, is that it’s still too hard to tell what the point is. THE DEVIL’S REJECTS rescues the three strongest characters from its predecessor--Otis and Baby of the savage Firefly Clan, and Captain Spaulding, an ambiguous character from the first movie who is outed here as Baby’s father--and makes them over for this new effort. Their transition from being so broad that they might as well be puppets in a children's show, into salt of the earth psychos who you can practically smell, is a natural consequence of the new environment in which DEVIL’S REJECTS finds them. In fact, this sequel is part of a totally different genre than the Ho1KC, which clumsily smooshes together THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and SPIDER BABY and THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. The new movie, however blood-drenched, sets out for something more like Sam Peckinpah territory. There’s a brief moment I like at the beginning of the movie, when Spaulding--or Cutter, as he’s more casually called here--peels out to go rescue Baby and Otis from the bloody police raid on the Firefly compound. You see the dusty, dilapidated shack where Cutter lives, fenced off from an apocalyptic-looking wasteland, and then as he swings out into the road, the rich green expanse of an industrial farm. The new world of the Fireflies is utterly mundane, even depressed, a place whose banality is shattered only by the random acts of violence perpetrated by our defacto heroes. 

It’s a big relief to not to have a bunch of shrill, spoiled teenagers squirming around, existing only as living opportunities for cartoon villains to demo their personalities. DEVIL’S REJECTS rejects this obligatory horror trope, in an important first step toward Rob Zombie finding his footing as a filmmaker. He not only positions the ostensible bad guys more clearly as heroes, which falls in line with his true feelings, but he populates his movies with grownups. This sounds simple, but in an entertainment landscape dominated by co-eds finding themselves, and 30-somethings acting to the best of their ability like co-eds finding themselves, it’s extremely inviting to see adults in all shapes and sizes with creased faces, aging flesh, and wiry muscles clinging to the bone against the ravages of gravity. Groovy young nubiles are seen only in battered photographs, usually beaten beyond recognition.

Therein lies the rub, though--in the movie’s ambiguous victimology. We know that the media-dubbed Devil’s Rejects are responsible for the torture, rape, murder, and necrophilic violation of a growing mass of apparent innocents in Ruggsville County. In the context of the movie, they do away with a handful of touring country signers, in order to force them to help unearth Otis’ buried arsenal, and to hide out in the group’s hotel room until Cutter catches up with them. Of course there’s plenty of sadistic thrills in the mix, but the question remains: What do the Devil’s Rejects usually do? What I mean is: The Sawyer clan only busts out the chainsaws for trespassers. Jason Voorhees kills violators of a set of stuffy social mores. Freddy Krueger kills primarily for revenge. In HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, the Firefly family seems to kill mainly to punish smug, judgmental tourists. But it’s hard to figure out what the Rejects really want in the present film, and this is pretty hard to ignore when they’re construed as outlaw folk heroes. With all their ferocious family loyalty, swagger and charisma (and what Rob Zombie takes to be sparkling banter, but is mainly just the word “fuck” repeatedly so often that it achieves a zen-like obliteration of meaning), it’s clear that we’re supposed to like these guys. But, if they just kill people for no reason most of the time, and I don’t even see enough of it to get a sense of how everything shook out, then I have to start thinking that maybe they’re just a bunch of assholes. Certainly when they’re degrading and torturing their victims to death at great length in a seedy hotel, the droning HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER-type music communicates to me that I’m supposed to think of this murder as a bad thing, a depressingly unnecessary tragedy perpetrated by...you know, a bunch of assholes. And you don’t go on to play “Freebird” over a majestic slow motion shootout for a bunch of assholes. Do you?

Obviously Rob Zombie is doing something right, because I’ve seen this movie several times before, and I have now written an amount of analysis of it that no normal person would ever want to read. But here I am, grappling with my feelings about the movie’s atmosphere, its look, its genre-bending story. Probably the safest thing for me to say now, in the continued spirit of the movie’s fierce individuality, is that I am actively looking forward to the next movie in the series, THREE FROM HELL. I’m ready to be disappointed, but I’m also ready for Zombie to continue to flesh out what it really means to be a Firefly. Fingers crossed that there turns out to be more of the latter than the former.

#blogtober #rob zombie #sherri moon zombie #sid haig #bill moseley #the devil's rejects #house of 1000 corpses #thriller #action #slasher #road movie #western #sheri moon zombie

[imjustboofy-blog]

#house of 1000 corpses #Horror #Horror Movies #HO1KC #Otis #the Boogeyman is real and you found him

[charleslee-valentine]

Otis and Foxy as kids fic. No ships, just an exploration of family dynamics!

#otis driftwood #otis b driftwood #foxy coltrane #winslow foxworth coltrane #house of 1000 corpses #3 from hell #ho1kc #ho1000c #3fh #my writing #my fic

[hungry-hobbits]

@henrylevesconte and i watched 2 of the 3 house of 1000 corpses movies last night and seeing walton goggins get owned was great

#idk why everyone thinks devils rejects is better than ho1kc #though i really like the way spaulding and baby interact as father and daughter #theyre so fucking cute togehter

[bozojesus]

   you know... the more i think about 3FH the more it feels like kind of a “bonus” movie rather than being an official part of the original series.

   with the first two, everything kind of... fits into place? feels Right?? even though rob made Ho1kC without any plans for a sequel, i bought everything that happened in TDR. the reveal that cutter is baby’s dad felt like a total eureka moment, not an asspull, for example. because his character and connection to the family is so ambiguous in the first one, rob’s decision to make cutter the patriarch of the fireflies just made Sense. it gave him motivation to be involved with the story and with the family.

   everything in 3FH just feels so... rushed? sloppy? last minute? i understand that rob might have had a very different vision of the movie when sid was fully involved, and that he was more or less left to scramble and string things together when sid was forced to back out. i understand that. i sympathize with that. but my god, it really shows in the finished product.

   i like foxy a lot but the idea that otis had this brother that we never knew about feels like something straight out of fanfiction. it also kind of... takes something away from his characterization in the first two, imo, because his entire deal was that he was a complete loner & never had a family until he met the fireflies. that meant something. i kind of wish they just kept foxy a friend of otis’ and not a family member, or maybe a relative on baby’s side. his appearance still would’ve been a bit random, but that angle feels a bit more believable.

   i also hate that we saw such a sloppy retread of wydell’s character in aquarius. the reason why wydell worked is because he was a fully developed character who the audience got to know pretty well, and who played a key role in the story. i bought him as george’s brother. i liked the concept of a firefly victim having a relative seeking revenge on their behalf and the fireflies being forced to suffer the consequences of their actions that way.

   with aquarius everything felt so... strung together. like, rondo Just So Happened to be doing labour at the same time as otis? he Just So Happened to have a son in mexico where the remaining trio Just So Happened to go? it was really fucking contrived. i didn’t feel anything for aquarius the way i did for wydell because aquarius wasn’t really... an actual character. he was a plot device to give the fireflies someone to fight against and it really showed. with wydell, i felt sympathy and horror and disgust. with aquarius, i didn’t feel much of anything.

   i already talked about some of the dialogue feeling like a “greatest hits collection” in my initial reaction to the movie so i don’t wanna repeat all that but yeah. still think it was cringey and lazy. really feel like if 3FH had been made 10 years ago it would’ve been a much different, much better film. rob either should have left the franchise alone or should have jumped on the sequel concept a lot sooner, because sid and bill Did try to warn him not to wait until they were too old and look what happened.

   “but carling, you said you really liked it!” i really liked Aspects of it and I enjoyed the last Hour of the movie. i don’t hate this movie or think it’s a badly made or badly acted film. i deeply appreciate it for helping rekindle my love of captain spaulding and of the series. but it’s definitely messy and as a big fan of the first two, and someone who pretty much grew up with these movies, i can’t help but point these things out and feel kind of bothered by them. not to the point of hating the movie or wishing it was never made, but definitely looking at it like :/ to some extent.

#▐ ☠ sᴘᴏᴏᴋsʜᴏᴡ ʙᴀʙʏ ( ooc. ) #3 from hell spoilers / #you know how some movies just... capture lightning in a bottle so to speak #they achieved that with 1 & 2 but. not with 3 unfortunately