500: 3 From Hell

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00]: 207. Let's get to 3 From Hell, which is the third film in the Firefly trilogy. Besides

[00:00:09] [SPEAKER_00]: being done by Zombie, came out in 2019, stars essentially the same people, Sharon Moon Zombie,

[00:00:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Sid Haig, Richard Drake, Kevin Jackson, same old group. And the synopsis is after barely

[00:00:25] [SPEAKER_00]: surviving prison, the demented Firefly clan go on the run unleashing a whole new wave of murder,

[00:00:32] [SPEAKER_00]: madness and mayhem. So this one was a first time watch for me. I remember when it came out,

[00:00:40] [SPEAKER_00]: it got kind of mixed reviews and I just forgot about it. And then after having watched the

[00:00:46] [SPEAKER_00]: first two films, I was curious to see this one for sure. And to just put it out there,

[00:00:53] [SPEAKER_00]: at this point, this is definitely my least favorite Rob Zombie movie. And easily my least

[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_00]: favorite of the three, which that seems to be the popular opinion. I just feel like the main

[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_00]: issue with this one is that with House of a Thousand Corpses and Devil's Rejects,

[00:01:16] [SPEAKER_00]: stylistically those movies feel very, very different, even story wise, to a certain degree.

[00:01:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And in this one, it really just feels like a retread of the Devil's Rejects, but a lesser

[00:01:29] [SPEAKER_00]: version. As 31 was a, in some ways, a greatest hits of Rob Zombie, it feels like by the time

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I got to this one, I was just thinking, man, like I'm really ready to get through all these

[00:01:43] [SPEAKER_00]: movies. And it's not really a mark or a jab at Rob Zombie, I just feel like this one really

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_00]: was disappointing. And one of the worst things about it was I just found it to be fairly dull.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Like there is not a lot going on story wise. For one, the way in which they survived the

[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_00]: shooting, which you see at the end of Devil's Rejects makes no sense. There's not really an

[00:02:11] [SPEAKER_00]: explanation of that. And also it does kind of ruin the, not ruin Devil's Rejects, but ruins how

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_00]: cool and insane that ending is where they go out in a blaze of bullets and you're like,

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_00]: okay, cool. They had their escape, their freedom, they caused mayhem for a while,

[00:02:30] [SPEAKER_00]: but they met their demise. That's a perfect end to that film, as I said. But it is

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_00]: completely nonsensical that they just are up and about again, which it's called Three

[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_00]: from Hell, so maybe he's inferring that somehow they were resurrected. But there's

[00:02:49] [SPEAKER_00]: no real backstory, explanation, any of that to help me understand or get behind that.

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I do like the prison sequence and then the escape is good. But once it gets out

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_00]: into the countryside, just them causing mayhem, madness, it's very little to nothing new,

[00:03:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Rob Zombie style wise, narrative wise. Like I said, it being a retread of Devil's Rejects,

[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_00]: there's the greatest hits of that movie like the motel sequence, there's a brothel sequence,

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_00]: like it's all just, why are we seeing this? That was the whole, my inner mindset during

[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, why did you make this? What purpose are you serving? Because if you want to make

[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_00]: a third movie in this trilogy, that's fine even though it doesn't really work logically.

[00:03:47] [SPEAKER_00]: If you do it right, I'm fine with that, but I really feel like he lost himself in this

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_00]: or maybe he was catering to what he thought fans wanted or I don't know exactly. But

[00:04:00] [SPEAKER_00]: a few specifics. I did like, I mean a few positives here, the natural born killers

[00:04:07] [SPEAKER_00]: inspiration it seems to Oliver Stone, inspiration of using the news footage to tell the story at

[00:04:14] [SPEAKER_00]: least in the beginning and it's documentary style-esque. I like that. You could call

[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_00]: it a gimmick but I think it worked in the context of the movie. Sherry Moon Zombie is

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_00]: solid. Once again, she really gets to go all out in this, go crazy nuts especially in that

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_00]: second half which she does overall well I would say. Like maybe doesn't always have the

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_00]: knack for making all that seem authentic but she did so more often than not.

[00:04:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Other than that though it is way too long. I think it's the longest of the three. It's

[00:04:58] [SPEAKER_00]: you made this one the longest. Why? Oh and there's also one little note, I don't know if

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_00]: this is a widely known thing but the actor who played Captain Spalding, he's not in it that

[00:05:09] [SPEAKER_00]: much because he had very bad health problems around the time of making this and so he had

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_00]: to his role was cut way way down so they had to introduce a different character to fill that

[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_00]: spot. So he's only in it for a little bit which hey you can't do anything about that

[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_00]: but it's at least nice to see him for the time that he's there.

[00:05:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Overall I really don't have that much else to say about it. It is one that I might go back

[00:05:39] [SPEAKER_00]: and revisit at some point if I am watching the whole trilogy together but largely forgettable

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_00]: and I'm glad that as we'll get to it the Munsters, he took a break in the biggest like

[00:05:53] [SPEAKER_00]: 1980 way from this style of film and he says that he is done with the Firefly trilogy. Thank goodness

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_00]: because I can promise you there's nothing else there and I'm tired of, I don't mind that he's

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_00]: using the trope, the writing choice of playing the sympathy for the devil

[00:06:13] [SPEAKER_00]: vibe which is more much more successful in the first two whereas in this one it's really

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_00]: just here love these villains, love these killers and there's so little to nothing

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_00]: to actually try and get us to care that doesn't feel really really manipulative or

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_00]: just feels downright coarse and ugly for attempting that after all that they've done

[00:06:37] [SPEAKER_00]: in these three movies. So that one is a heavy two and a half out of five.