3 From Hell (2019)

Rob Zombie’s “3 From Hell” (2019) was quite anticipated by his fans. I was quite curious to see how Zombie would present what seemed to be a final chapter for the Fireflies. Sid Haig’s ailing health and eventual death was quite a drag because it left Zombie with the unfortunate position of only providing the fans of his Captain Spaulding one brief dialogue scene before the character was executed after serving some of a death sentence. All three, despite the barrage of bullets that peppered them in their convertible at the end of “The Devil’s Rejects” (2005) managed to hang on and survive. The film finds preposterous ways to free Otis Driftwood and Baby from prison. Somehow Otis manages to get on an outside work project and the warden (Jeff Phillip Daniels) just eventually unlocks and later releases Baby. The film is basically two chapters or parts. Otis and Baby getting assistance from half brother, Winslow Foxworth Coltrane (Richard Drake), so they can escape to freedom and the trio’s eventual entrance into Mexico, winding up in a small town, encountering the vengeance seeking brother (Emilio Rivera) of a murdered convict (Danny Trejo, in a cameo). Otis had a beef with Trejo’s Rondo, for some reason, and made sure  to put a bullet in his head, recorded on camera, as a documentary crew was studying the prison program okayed by Phillips’ Warden Virgil Harper. Harper gains notoriety for his prison containing Baby in a cell. Dee Wallace is a lesbian warden with a complicated lust/hate relationship with Baby, the two often provoking each other. Zombie’s film felt like a fan service offering to those that love his Firefly characters. He lets Sheri Moon completely go as crazy as she wants, no restraints applied at all. Moseley gets so much time to kill, mock, chew scenery, snarl, and banter back and forth with Drake that I have a hard time thinking Otis fans won’t get a kick out of this film.  There are no other serious characters in the film that even compete for entertainment time in this film. Drake fits right at home with the two of them, though. Baby is so far gone, she’s often spinning around in hops and skips, her wicked grins and teethy smiles emitting a glow that worries Otis…she’s changed, he tells Coltrane. The first chapter has Otis and Coltrane killing a pack of hunters hoping to get a payday for their recovery to the police (the woman has her face skinned, left to bleed from where the flesh once was), eventually holding the warden’s wife (one of the members of the parole board and his wife, as well) hostage in order for him to release Baby. There is quite a bit of time spent in the jail as Dee Wallace’s guard wishes to teach Baby a lesson and Baby (obviously) getting revenge. I don’t know why the warden expected Otis and Coltrane to just let them live, so that bit of thinking by Virgil was perplexing. I mean just as Baby is reunited with Otis, the Firefly clan turns on them. There are bullets to heads and repeated knife stabs to mutilated torsos. I’m pretty sure Otis will be a meme machine for Zombie’s fans, using little zingers he offers to amuse themselves. The second chapter has Baby befriending Pancho Moler…Moler, in the Mexican town he lives, is often treated as the same as a dog due to his size and height. In one of those unexpected twists, Baby and Moler’s Sebastian hit it off, with Sebastian even helping the Firefly clan as Rivera’s Aquarius plots to send Luchador masked machine gunmen after Otis and Coltrane for Rondo’s death. Credit to Sylvia Jefferies for her total nude run as Baby pursued her, unable to defend herself after being held hostage and terrorized for hours…she runs out in a neighborhood yard, is tackled, and butchered with a very large knife with Baby waving to an elderly woman sitting in her lawn chair in her yard! I felt the film will be seen favorably by Zombie fans specifically while many others will view the whole experience as Firefly overexposure. And I never really understood what the point was, if there was any. It just kind of felt like Zombie couldn’t make the hockey movie he wanted so a third highly improbable Firefly film was the answer. I guess I personally felt you have really already seen this in the previous two films of the series. The hostage situation that ends in all held captive tormented and killed, the Fireflies in the van afterward arguing about nothing in particular strictly for comedy relief, the revenge plot against them that fails miserably despite every reason to be successful. I just didn’t think anything about the film was warranted. It was basically a gift to Zombie’s fans so in that regard it will probably be received quite warmly. It is indeed once again a celebration of excess, outlaw mentality, and visceral behavior…and those who are responsible for it are presented as heroes, beloved by the director and his fans despite being horrible human beings with no redeeming values whatsoever. And that’s the point…they know who they are, not pretending to be anything else but torturing, vulgar, deviant psychos seemingly always victorious over those with a rightful claim to execute them heinously. And once again Zombie provides them with a positive conclusion, photographed with great music, presented as icons of the road, raising hell, leaving a trail of bodies, without a care in the world. The wind in their hair, a smile on their face, life fully ahead…despite constant severe injury that would kill most people. And the liberties Zombie takes to keep them alive cracked me up. It was really some serious creative license. 2.5/5