Rob Zombie has had a really weird career. House of 1000 Corpses is basically a trippy music video with lots of 70's throwbacks. Devil's Rejects takes the characters and gives us a Godfather esque look at the Firefly family as Zombie's best film. The Halloween movies are his desire to make Michael Myers into a Universal Monster with his knack for hillbilly exploitation. Lords of Salem may be his second best work as a love letter to slow burn Italian Cinema such as Dario Argento films. His next film was supposed to be a hockey film based on the Broadstreet Bullies. A team of the leagues foulest and meanest hockey players ever assembled. This seemed to be a match made in heaven. But with the politics of doing a studio film and one with such rich established history already in place, the film stood in development hell for years. Out of that frustration and anger was born a passive aggressive joke. On a phone call Zombie stated that in five minutes over the phone he could come up with an easy ready to make film faster than the production of Broadstreet Bullies. A bunch of people are captured and hunted down in a murder maze on Halloween night. This was the point where Zombie gave up his hockey movie, said the hell with it and fleshed out the ideas of 31. A simple idea that can easily be made quickly and by his own admission the type of film people expect of him to make. It's definitely the culmination of all his work combined into a simple, bloody, vulgar, exploitative narrative that would even make William Lustig blush. 
Roscoe, Venus, Panda, Charly and Levon are traveling carnies on their way to another town to try out new swindles and attractions on Halloween. On their way on the road at night there are a ton of scarecrows blocking the road and after getting out to remove them they are attacked, bound and gagged. They are strung up in a facility where a man and two women dressed up in Victorian clothing and makeup announce that they are the five contestants of their annual 31 game. Each is assigned a number and given their odds at survival then introduced to Sick-Head, the first of many murderous clowns that will be chasing them through the extensive maze they are released into. They have 13 hours to survive and escape the maze, each with money riding on them and their odds of survival. 
This was Zombie's first crowd funded film and the shortest shooting schedule he's ever had with only twenty days, but for any and all naysayers of his you have to hand it to the man he can definitely shoot the hell out of some action and compose some very tense and thrilling shots. Our protagonists however are a little lackluster as at points they are overtly stereotypical Rob Zombie characters. We meet them in their van smoking dope, swearing way more than any film I've ever seen by Zombie and every other line of dialogue is about sex. Everybody is a dirty greased up hillbilly or covered in dirt and the nudity is pretty profuse. Hearing Meg Foster sing a song about getting money by getting wet is especially weird to hear. None of them are really likeable in the beginning of the film, but I did quite enjoy Panda, mostly because his Rastafarian accent and jokes reminded me of Terry Alexander from Day of the Dead and he's the only one not acting like a complete jackass. Once these characters are in the murder maze though is where they really get to shine and they actually show bits of human decency. We see some really dramatic and humanizing scenes when one of their own dies and the rest are left to deal with the situation at hand. The first death in particular is so well reacted to by the other actors I felt their emotions and even shed a tear myself. They each begin to come into their own especially Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs aka Freddy Boom Boom Washington from Welcome Back Kotter and Meg Foster aka Evil Lyn from Masters of the Universe herself! They play Panda and Venus who once they all shake off the initial nerves of the first clown stalking them they go straight into action figuring out plans and acquiring weapons to defend themselves. 
While our heroes may be a little lackluster Zombie proves once again he excels at making villains. The film opens with Richard Brake's Doom-Head walking toward the camera covered in blood and sweat, all shot in black and white. He looks into the camera and delivers a chilling speech on why he is there and what is going to happen to the victim he is speaking to. Zombie may have thought of this film quickly and wanted more action spectacle than character piece but he had Doom-Head quoting generals of war and speaking with very poised and precise intellectual colloquialisms. It was so strange to see this Rob Zombie looking character have this much depth and thought to his dialogue that didn't totally rely on profanity. The funny thing is there are many scenes where he speaks like a cliche Zombie character and then once he puts on the clown makeup, some of which is made from his own blood, he turns into this crazed yet brilliant psycho that is unlike anything or anyone we've seen. The rest of the Heads are pretty fun too. Sick-Head is a little person, dressed as a Nazi but is also Hispanic. He runs around with his SS knives ready to slice up his victims while swearing at them in Spanish and if you speak it some of the lines are pretty insane. Other than Doom-Head he was probably the best one as he takes a good chunk of the film torturing our heroes. 
There's also the brothers Psycho-Head and Schizo-Head who are like a combination of Leatherface and Chop Top but way more vulgar and sexually charged. Psycho-Head is played by Lew Temple from Devil's Rejects who was shot in the throat by Otis in that film. It was interesting to see him go from helpless victim in that film to the level of insanity he is here where at one point he is being sliced open and screaming that he can never die while trying to kill Panda. Death-Head and Sex-Head were the first characters I had ever seen as Zombie had put out concept art of them for his Kickstarter and the artwork was pretty impressive which made me wonder who they could get to play these two characters. Here we get big ass Franz from the Big Lebowski and E.G. Daily. Franz or Torsten Vogues, I had last seen in Adam Sandler's Funny People as Sandler's Doctor, who was very polite and calm. Here he is a brutish lumoxing, brick sh*thouse wearing a tutu and singing in German about how he's going to sexually assault the girls. His face is scarred and utterly terrifying. E.G. Daily for those of you that don't know has a long singing career from the eighties and has starred in many films including Pee-Wee's Big Adventure as Dottie. I have had and always will have a huge crush on her, but not only do we see her early in the film as a dirty slutty strange character but once she becomes Sex-Head she is given one of the most creepy scenes in the film. Dressed in white makeup, duct tape on her nipples, blue hair and armed with a blade she stabs at one of our heroes over and over again with a light fixture flashing a horrid blue light upon her unblinking eyes and face that will terrify me forever. 
Our protagonists are at first just there to be butchered until we get into the thick of the film when we start to maybe care about them. Our villains are insane and made me uncomfortable throughout the whole film eliciting feelings of disgust and dread. All this is amplified by Zombie's pacing and ability to compose dark looming shots. He has the intensity of action sequences found in Devil's Rejects along with its freeze frame scene changes, the over the top bloody brutality of his Halloween films and his slow burn villainous dialogue he first utilized in Lords of Salem. It's the perfect amalgam of what he wants to make and he masters it. This film will easily put a lot of people off and it will probably be the most brutal thing you see this year with it almost being an NC-17 film. But it's ridiculous action based fun that you could see in a seedy grindhouse theater in the 70's. I would say this is a perfect film if not for the poorly written introduction of our "heroes" which is just hard on even my ears. Four murderous clowns out of five!
