A dark, violent horror in the vein of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Natural Born Killers, with all the disturbed and original characters of a Tarantino movie. But with the dubious distinction of each weirdo possessing a sadistic streak that delights in pain and degradation.
It’s hard to enjoy this movie. It’s downright nasty in places, violent and gory as hell and patched with a gallows’s humour that takes a certain type of twisted mind to appreciate. But somehow, I was enthralled. The violence, the originality, the bizarre cast of characters; you know you may be watching a horror movie just a little ahead of it’s time. A Texas Chainsaw Massacre of the 21st century.
We are introduced to the Firefly family at the start of the movie as a police raid commences on their farmhouse; in an area where 75 people have gone missing, and obviously, not in a nice way.
As you might have guessed, this is no ordinary family. They don their massive suits of metal plate and fire back on the police with automatic weapons amid the filth and littered corpses of their homestead.
What ensues is a road trip of nightmare proportions. They hack and slash their way across the state of Texas; first encountering a band in a hotel room where they carry out, with sadistic glee, some of the wildest and evil murders in movie history. Human skin masks, a collision with a truck that explodes into flying gore, knife to the heart, gunshot to the head, skull collapsing beatings, sexual assault with a gun barrel; it’s all here. With cringing, frightening, realism.
Hunting the Firefly family down is a task force headed by Sheriff Wydelle, portrayed by the marvelous, underrated, William Forsythe. Wydelle has a bone to pick with the Firefly clan as they murdered his brother and is on a no-holds-barred mission to hunt them down. He even hires two bounty hunters in the form of the pocked, tattooed Danny Trejo (Machete) and the disguised ex-wrestler, Diamond Dallas Page. He only asks to leave the screwball family alive along enough so he can piss on them.
Also hats off to horror king, Sid Haig, for his Captain Spaulding, head of the Firefly clan. His face alone is enough of nightmares with its bristly beard, smeared clown makeup and teeth that would promote the use of dentistry worldwide. He plays the role with such overwhelming jubilance so convincingly; it’s hard to not imagine a Captain Spaulding existing out there somewhere.
Crucifixions, pictures stapled to skin, axe murders, mutants; is there anything not freakishly left uncovered in this movie?
File it under foul mouthed, gory, dirty, electrifying, sometimes funny, no holds barred horror. Rob Zombie had directed a masterpiece. A masterpiece in what is the question.
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