Horror movies in the late ’90s and early 2000s were often defined by their teenage protagonists, genre-defining leads like Sidney Prescott from Scream. Rob Zombie’s “Firefly” trilogy flipped that precedent on its head and paved the way for movies like Saw to enter the mainstream.
Rob Zombie’s directorial debut came with House of 1000 Corpses, a violent carnival ride of a film that features the likes of Rainn Wilson long before he starred in The Office.
The first film in the trilogy follows a group of four young adults traveling across the country, writing reviews of local roadside attractions, with the end goal of getting to the home of Denise Willis’s father’s house for Halloween. One of these sideshows is Captain Spaulding’s Museum of Monsters and Madmen, a gas station best known for its “Murder Ride” and fried chicken.
The crew gets sidetracked and decides to investigate the legend of Doctor Satan, a decision that places them in the clutches of the Firefly family.
House is the most unrealistic of the trilogy, specifically in the third act when Denise and Jerry are lowered into the ground to find The Professor and Doctor Satan himself.
In the rest of the trilogy, though, these two villains are entirely ignored in favor of making the franchise more realistic.
The Devil’s Rejects refocuses the franchise, turning the two major antagonists from House into the protagonists. Otis Driftwood and Baby Firefly escape a police raid on their ranch after the cops finally catch on to the family’s evil deeds.
Captain Spaulding also makes a return, now definitively tied to the family as it is revealed he is the father of Baby. The three go on a road trip to escape the cops. The late Sid Haig delivers an incredible performance in this movie.
Rejects is the most acclaimed film of the trilogy and takes a more realistic and violent approach than the House of a Thousand Corpses. The main antagonist of this film is Sheriff John Wydell, the brother of a dead police officer from the first movie, who seeks justice against the family.
3 from Hell is the final movie of this trilogy, but the movie itself never truly needed to be made. The ending of Devil’s Rejects provides a far better ending to the franchise than this third movie does.
The plot focuses on Otis, Baby, and their new half-brother Foxy Coltrane, who joins the duo in a road trip to Mexico after helping them escape Death Row. The film takes a harsh tone shift when they arrive there, abandoning the care they took in the first two films not to glamorize the violence that takes place on screen.
Somehow, in this movie, the trio act like action heroes, defeating the Black Satan gang that wants vengeance for the death of the bounty hunter Rondo.
