What names come to mind when you think of horror movie families? Do the Odet’s from Wrong Turn come to mind? Or how about the mutant family of cannibals from The Hills Have Eyes? Depending on which canon you follow, Michael and Laurie have a fun brother/sister love/hate relationship. Families have long dominated horror storytelling and have provided entertaining results. But you can’t talk about horror families without discussing the most brutal, gruesome, and detestable family of all: The Firefly family.
Who Are the Firefly Family?
Spanning two countries, the Firefly family would leave thousands dead in their path, with no regard. Before we can get into this fictitious family of freaks, we should reintroduce ourselves, first. Our three main players are Captain Spaulding/Cutter (Sid Haig), Captain Spaulding’s daughter Vera-Ellen “Baby” Firefly (Sheri Moon Zombie), and Baby’s adopted brother Otis B. Driftwood (Bill Mosely). In the periphery, we have the matriarch of this whole thang, Mother Firefly (Karen Black/Leslie Easterbrook), the enigmatically messy eater Grandpa Hugo (Dennis Fimple), Baby’s biological brother Rufus “R.J.” Firefly (Robert Allen Mukes/Tyler Mane), Baby’s half brother Tiny (Matthew McGrory), Captain Spaulding’s adopted brother Charlie Altamont (Ken Foree), Rufus and Tiny’s father Earl “The Professor” Firefly and, finally, the retconned half brother of Baby and Otis, Winslow “Foxy” Coltrane (Richard Brake). Also, I’m not sure if we want to count Dr. Satan (Walter Phelan) as a family member, but we’ll throw him on the list just to be safe.
We are introduced to the Fireflies in Rob Zombie’s impressive feature film debut, House of 1000 Corpses. While Zombie may not have spearheaded the music-video-feeling editing style of the mid-aughts, he damn near perfected it. Audiences were shocked and amused at the garishly gory exploitation flick that somehow managed to end up in mainstream theater chains. Zombie’s gory exploitation flick would ease audiences into meeting this ferocious family. House would find itself using humor and a surprising amount of lightheartedness to create a sort of natural order. While straying a bit from the beaten path, it still stuck to a pretty typical formula for movies of its ilk.
In House of 1000 Corpses, Captain Spaulding wittingly gets a group of friends, who are writing a book on roadside attractions, to look for the tree where Dr. Satan was hanged. The friends go off to find the tree but are met by Baby who is hitchhiking in the rain. They pick her up and are quickly met with a blown-out tire. Rufus eventually picks up all five travelers and takes them back to the Firefly compound.
The Fireflies are in their element in House. They are the masters of their domain, and they make damn good use of it. On top of the four new travelers, Otis happens to have a few kidnapped cheerleaders upstairs. House is a perfect introduction to these characters. You get to see this family just doing their weird Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 thing. It’s like watching a shark play with its food. The unhinged manic energy of Baby is frighteningly sadistic, while the pale white skin of Otis, mixed with his dirty mangy hair, is enough to strike fear in the bravest of people. Seriously, just imagine. You pick up a hitchhiker, immediately have car trouble, her 6’10” brother comes and tows your car, takes you back to their literal house of horrors, and forces you to sit through this nightmare of a dinner? I’m ending it right there.
Who Is Dr. Satan, and Is He Real?
The whole Dr. Satan angle of this film is odd and really messes with the entire vibe of what the film had going for itself. There’s debate within the trilogy’s community about canon and story continuity. Some fans deny the events of 3 From Hell and its place in the Firefly story. So, if all canonicity is up for debate, I’ll take Dr. Satan out of my version of the story. Jokes aside, the final 20-ish minutes of the film take a darkly drastic turn from the hokey horror we’ve seen thus far.
One of the more exciting things about the franchise was how Rob Zombie tested the waters with his storytelling. House of 1000 Corpses is the only film of the three that really splits focus away from the Fireflies. It has a dual focus on the friends and the family. Zombie must have realized that people enjoyed watching the family’s points of view on their endeavors more than the victims. And in a way, this makes the second film more brutal. We don’t get the liberty of trying to grow with a group of empathetic protagonists who were thrust into a world of nightmare fuel.
By changing the focus from the victims to the perpetrators, in The Devil’s Rejects, you begin to feel empathetic for the bad guys. You can’t help but care for Baby, Otis, and Captain Spaulding. The moment you realize Charlie turned on them, or watch Sheriff John Quincey Wydell (William Forsythe) nearly conquer the Fireflies, you feel for them.
The finale of House of 1000 Corpses finds the Firefly family dispatching Deputy George Wydell (Tom Towles) and Deputy Steve Nash (Walton Goggins), forcing them to leave their cushy domicile for a new life in a rundown ranch. The Devil’s Rejects opens with one hell of a shootout, ultimately leading to the demise of Rufus (Tyler Mane) and the capture of Mother Firefly (Leslie Easterbrook). Baby and Otis barely make it out through tunnels, which hold more kidnapped victims, and head out on the road.
The Devil’s Rejects Changes Things Up from House of 1000 Corpses
As stated, Rejects takes a whole different approach. Except for a handful of scenes, this film is nearly told from the entire perspective of one of the Fireflies. On top of Zombie’s shift in focus is a much darker film. Visually and in subject matter. House relied on frantic editing and jump cuts to the gore, while Rejects is more brutally straightforward. Nearly all jokes or jokey elements are removed from the second film, forcing audiences to endure the pain and torture at face value. It seems Zombie handled finances better for Rejects as it had the same budget that House did and looked a thousand times larger in scope. Though, House does take place, pretty much, in a singular location.
In The Devil’s Rejects, we meet a bevy of characters as the Fireflies try to escape the police. Even when trying to escape Johnny Law, these troublemakers can’t seem to keep a low profile. This leads them to a final tense showdown with Sheriff John Quincey Wydell that, as stated, has you rooting for the wrong people. Sheriff Wydell is blinded with rage from the death of his brother Deputy George Wydell, his quest for justice is justified. What isn’t justified is how he Death Wish’s this entire thing. If he had gone about this a more legal way, we wouldn’t be having this good/bad conversation.
The true emotional crux of The Devil’s Rejects, and what should have been the end of their journey, is the final scene. Beaten, bloodied, and bruised, Otis grips the steering wheel as they come to a stop on an empty highway. That is until the camera pulls back to reveal a complete police barricade. As the best part of Free Bird bellows from the speaker, Otis, Captain Spaulding, and Baby grip their guns for one final blaze of glory. Each party empties their entire clips on the other.
This scene alone cements The Devil’s Rejects as one of the greatest endings to a horror film of all time. We’ve spent two films getting to know these characters deeply. In the past two-ish hours, we’ve witnessed the [remaining] Fireflies conquer every obstacle put in their way. But at the end of the day, the long arm of the law comes down upon them. It’s poetic.
Aaaaaaaaaand then you have 3 From Hell.
Was 3 From Hell the Sequel Fans Asked For?
Let’s drop the curtain for a moment here. Many people have called me a horror apologist; I try to find the positives in a film. If a film is just flat-out bad, there’s no problem calling a spade a spade. For the longest time, The Devil’s Rejects was a specific comfort movie. I had a mini handheld DVD player that I would take on one occasion: my family’s trip to the beach. For the entirety of both six-hour car rides, I would watch The Devil’s Rejects. Three times there, three times back. I became heavily invested in the story of the Fireflies. Rumors about a third Firefly film would spread throughout my early teens/young adulthood.
“What harm could it do?” I questioned, “It couldn’t hurt the franchise that bad.”
What a sweet innocent dolt I was.
14 years after the final bullet ripped through Otis’ body, the final Firefly film was released to us. I was there, opening night, for the Fathom Events three-night engagement. Popcorn in hand, I giddily sat in anticipation. I was not too pleased.
We can rip the bandaid off quickly and say that I don’t hate the film. Even with the hindrance of the film’s incredibly small budget, 3 From Hell tries its hardest to entertain audiences and finally bring some form of closure to its story. The main issue is that if it had come out today, critics and audiences would harshly refer to the film as what happens when you make AI watch the first two films a hundred times and then write a new script. Not only does Zombie play it too safely, but he also falls back on adolescent humor, flat storytelling, and overdramatic caricatures of this family we’ve come to grow with over the past 20 years.
A New Addition to the Firefly Family
3 From Hell adds a new family member to the mix with the addition of Baby and Otis’ half-brother Winslow “Foxy” Coltrane. Richard Brake’s character was a last-minute addition to the script when Sid Haig’s health prevented him from a larger role. While Captain Spaulding was in no way the most vicious of the group, he was the most intimidating and imposing of all. Foxy is written to be the best part of Captain Spaulding, but it just doesn’t work for Brake. That’s no knock on Richard Brake as an actor, it’s just that the dynamic of Brakes’ character compared to the charisma Sid Haig brought to Spaulding makes things feel too off.
The biggest piece of criticism here is…how the HELL did they survive that shootout? Are they actually supernatural entities? There is no way they should have survived that.
3 From Hell finds Zombie’s newer style of filmmaking in full effect. We have a bit of the splatterpunk hellbilly style, the supernatural visions angle (a la Halloween 2), and his wannabe edgy stylings prominent in 31 and The Lords of Salem. Look, I like Rob Zombie films. I even enjoyed The Munsters. But his filmmaking style can be incredibly frustrating. It’s been said time and time again that the point of filmmaking is to grow and become better with each film. And I don’t fault Rob Zombie for continually trying new styles and vibes. It’s just that 3 From Hell takes the worst route of trying to tell an effective story.
The Fireflies are ruthless and aggravating throughout this entire series, there is no question about it. It’s not until 3 From Hell that I truly despised them for what they are. If you want to see the Fireflies transform into this repugnant group of abhorrent scumbags, then 3 From Hell is the perfect film. All humanity is gone from them in this film. The Devil’s Rejects works because you want to see them overcome Sheriff Wydell, you want to see them make their escape. By the end of 3 From Hell, you just want to see them in those three burning coffins and end this whole charade.
3 From Hell deemed it necessary to take the Fireflies to Mexico, which is fine. Who doesn’t mind a scene change? The only real piece of elevating action is their travels to Mexico. Up to this point in the film, Rob Zombie has pushed the envelope. He’s made us see what he wants us to see, and only that. In the third film, we get this mishmash of ideas that get us from point A to point Z, and that’s it. Does it matter that there is a bounty on their heads? Sure, I guess. That gives us a few minutes of action. But we shouldn’t just care about Aquarius (Emilio Rivera) because he’s Rondo’s (Danny Trejo) son and wants revenge because *checks notes* Rondo was hired to kill the Fireflies and *checks notes* failed to do his job.
Here’s a fun idea: the government has lost two of the most prominent fugitives in American history. They get word that they’ve escaped to Mexico. In an attempt to cover their tracks, the government hires a group of equally questionable hitmen and government contractors to go down to Mexico to kill the Fireflies. And here’s where it gets interesting. The Mexican government learns of the American government’s plans and sends their own hitmen in to kill the Fireflies. Now we have Mexico vs. The U.S. vs. the Fireflies!
Maybe 3 From Hell needs some more time to grow on audiences. Will it reach the fate of the plethora of mid-aughts films being reevaluated and deemed, “Not as bad as I remembered,”? When thinking of House of 1000 Corpses or The Devil’s Rejects, I think ‘event.’ These two films feel like events; they’re films you would go see with a group of friends at a midnight screening. 3 From Hell just feels like a forced entry to put a cap on a story that no one was asking for. And this is coming from someone who donated to the crowdfunding campaign. Wait, that means…I was the one asking for it.
Why Did We Get 3 From Hell?
3 From Hell exists for Rob Zombie to prove to studios that he is still in demand. The people want their Rob Zombie, and dammit they’re going to get their Zombie! Rob Zombie is one of the most fun and engaging rock musicians. Even in 2024, he co-headlines shows with Alice Cooper. Could it have been the lackluster performance of Halloween 2 at the box office? Sure, Halloween 2 is a complete disaster (even though it’s a guilty pleasure). But his first Halloween film surpassed expectations. Remember when the entire film got leaked online before the premiere? It still went on to gross 80 million dollars. Who else can pull numbers like that? (Fun fact: It held the title for the highest grossing movie to release Labor Day weekend for 14 years)
At what point did studios lose faith in Rob Zombie as a creator? Was it when he was unable to get back his budget on a Blumhouse film? Or was it the overall ridiculous tone of 31 that did him in? He rubbed someone the right way, figuratively, when he was able to secure sole writing/directing credits for Universal Pictures’ The Munsters. Which was so tonally different from the Rob Zombie we know, but shows his range and creativity. Could The Munsters have been the film to put Rob Zombie back into a studio directing chair?
Rob Zombie is at his best when he is given a majority of creative control. What makes Rob Zombie films work is his style. He is incredibly creative and has a unique outlook on the world. His encyclopedic knowledge of horror rivals Tarantino’s knowledge of cinema. But he needs a studio breathing down his back, someone to keep him in check with reality and expectations.
Okay, where were we? The Firefly family is a unique entry in horror history. From Texas to Mexico, they left a trail of thousands of broken bodies with a smile on their faces. Told over three films, of varying results, Rob Zombie took audiences for a ride they were not prepared for. A truly depraved tale of rampaging hellbillies, who would have thought it would have struck the right chord with horror audiences? Whatever Rob Zombie did in The Devil’s Rejects, he needs to bring back. As fans, we resonated with his hunger to make The Devil’s Rejects, and we want him to be that hungry again. (Figuratively.)