R.G. Male's Dark Corners: The White-Trash King

*** Disclaimer: The following in no way means to disparage the people of lower class income or who live in certain kinds of homes. It is specifically about the character of some people and speaks to the common and likely even stereotypical view of such groups of individuals. ***

Let’s talk about Rob Zombie again. Specifically I want to talk about how sometimes I jokingly refer to him as the White-Trash King. I mean no disrespect in this, in fact quite the opposite. If you want down and dirty, trailer trash--with or without the trailer--lowbrow, low rent, it must be both trying and fun to be around these people, kind of characters then Zombie is your man. I mean wow. I am in awe and more than a little jealous. I feel way too clean cut and, take your pick, suburban or rural to get the kind of grasp on these kinds of characters like Zombie does. You can have your opinion as to why he has this grasp, but that's none of my business, and I'm here about other things. Now, let me give you a little background and viewing history.

I've had an influx of Rob Zombie watching over the last couple of months. I had liked "House of 1000 Corpses" from the moment the end credits rolled despite some of its obvious flaws. It took me quite a while to get around to "The Devil's Rejects" and I was floored. It was amazing. What a huge leap forward in directing--and the other aspects of the filmmaking process were also up to that standard. Then we have Zombie's "Halloween" remake. I like it. I've only seen the director's cut--go unrated discs. It really puts me in mind of the original's director cut in that it seems to carry on quite a while. The thing is that it is interesting if you are in the mood. Since I recently saw Rejects I also finally got my hands on "Halloween II"--again director's cut and unrated. Let's start with the bad news--I'll be brief, the review will be elsewhere. It has it's problems--again that will be elsewhere (sorry).

Back to the characters. These trashy characters aren't just everything I described in the first paragraph. Those people aren't all that bad. There is a subset among them though, that you might say are equal in roughness, more kindly unpolishedness perhaps, morally as they are in the more obvious attributes. This more rotten core will stab you as soon as look at you, smack their kids and spouses around (yes, by no means limited to the trash demographic), and attack the authorities when they come to take away their right to be beaten. As with any group, the two kinds mix freely making it harder to spot the villains, and adding complexity to dealing with them for both the author and any characters from the outside. Now, with this look at these types of characters in hand, we can take a look at how they affect the horror in any given story or movie.

Mood: daring.
Music: Deep Unknown by Stratovarius and These Colours Don't Run by Iron Maiden.