House of 1000 Corpses

House of 1000 Corpses follows two young couples driving through rural Texas in search of local serial-killer legends. At a roadside attraction run by the unsettling Captain Spaulding, they hear the story of a killer known as Doctor Satan. When their car breaks down in a storm, they take shelter in an isolated house occupied by an eccentric family, and their trip turns into a fight to survive.

The film marks Rob Zombie's directorial debut, and he also wrote the screenplay. It sits at the start of a run of horror features that continues through The Devil's Rejects, Halloween, Halloween II, The Lords of Salem, 31, 3 from Hell and The Munsters. Sid Haig plays Captain Spaulding, with Bill Moseley as Otis B. Driftwood, Sheri Moon Zombie as Baby Firefly and Karen Black as Mother Firefly; Erin Daniels and Chris Hardwick also appear. Andy Gould produced, and the large credited cast and crew reflect the scale of the production.

Made for about 7 million dollars, the film took roughly 18 million worldwide, a solid return for a debut horror release. On IMDb it holds 6 out of 10 from around 100,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.2 out of 10 from a much smaller electorate of about 1,800. Those audience scores sit well above the critics' rating of 3.8 out of 10 from 87 reviews, a gap typical of cult horror.