3 FROM HELL

CONTAINS SPOILERS, VULGARITY AND MODERATE DESPAIR

Is it really surprising that 3 From Hell is an intolerable bore? The third part in Rob Zombie's trilogy after the tedious House Of 1000 Corpses and the crushingly repugnant The Devil's Rejects turns out to just more of the same: a Mom's Basement Manson wank fantasy that, at fifty five years old, Zombie really should have grown out of my now. It's every bit as obnoxious as the first two - possibly made slightly worse by the fact that Zombie has clearly realised he's got nothing else to do but get the band back together Ten Years Later to just dance the same steps again, to relive the past glories that weren't glorious then and certainly aren't now.

3 From Hell's main riff is on Mickey and Mallory Knox as the Natural Born Arseholes end up in jail having miraculously all survived the bullet frenzy at the end of Rejects. Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley) escapes and, with the help of a previously unmentioned brother Winslow Foxworth Coltrane (Richard Brake), plan to spring Baby Firefly (Sheri Moon Zombie) and go back to doing what they usually do - meaningless slaughter of pretty much everyone they meet.

Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) is only in it briefly because Haig was too ill to do the whole film - you could wonder why most of the Family are named after Groucho Marx characters when the new brother Coltrane sounds like a yuppie dickhead from a mid-80s Bratpack comedy, but that would suggest a level of interest that the film doesn't justify. Zombie's weird belief that these worthless vermin are cool, exciting and funny characters whose adventures make for cool, exciting and funny movies (despite the evidence to the contrary in the first two films) remains unfounded. They're not folk heroes, they're not rebels, they're not colourfully crazy, they're not fascinating in any way and the less time I have to spend with them, the better.

So why bite into the rotting apple again? Zombie's other, non-Firefly movies have largely been terrible - 31 is awful, Halloween II is awful, Halloween is mostly awful except for the bits where he's pretending to be John Carpenter - and it's not as if the third part in the trilogy was going to suddenly skew into different and more rewarding territory. But there's always the possibility, there's always the hope. Lurking in the shrieking, nihilistic nonsense of Zombie's back catalogue is The Lords Of Salem which isn't great but it is different, odd and suggests that he might be capable of something better. 3 From Hell, however, suggests more clearly that he isn't, and most likely never will be again. Garbage throughout.

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