The Sinister Urge: Seven Top Rob Zombie Horror Movies

House of 1000 Corpses is Rob Zombie's first film as a feature film director. It stars Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon, Rainn Wilson, Walton Goggins and Karen Black. It is a black horror comedy and the first of his films that tells the story of the Firefly family, but definitely not the last. Zombie has worked with genre greats like Sid Haig, Karen Black, and Bill Moseley from the start, and his ability to attract great talent to his films is one of the lesser-known aspects of his work as a director.

The second film that Rob Zombie wrote and directed, The Devil's Rejects, continues the story of the Firefly Family: Captain Spaulding, Mother Firefly, Grandpa Hugo, Tiny, Baby, and the adopted son Otis. It stars Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon Zombie, Ken Foree, Matthew McGrory, and William Forsythe. The names of the Firefly family's male members come from movies made with The Marx Brothers. Some of the other actors in the film are Danny Trejo, Michael Berryman, P. J. Soles, Mary Woronov, and Kane Hodder, all well-known stars in scary movies. The film follows the first movie's hyperviolent style. Read more: Review: The Devil's Rejects.

Rob Zombie's next movie is his remake of John Carpenter's horror classic Halloween. The film was commercially successful but was not critically successful. Zombie wrote and directed the film with a cast stacked with genre stalwarts and newcomers: Malcolm McDowell, Sheri Moon Zombie, Tyler Mane, Scout Taylor-Compton, Brad Dourif, Danielle Harris, and William Forsythe. The film brings dreamlike imagery to Zombie's work, when Deborah Myers (Sheri Moon Zombie) is a wild-eyed presence, robed in white, leading a white horse, that he would use again in later films and adds genre actors like Udo Kier, Danny Trejo, Bill Moseley, Dee Wallace, Ken Foree, Sybil Danning, Sid Haig, and Adrienne Barbeau, some of whom Zombie had worked with before and others that he would continue to work with in the future to the film. Read more: Review: Halloween (2007).

In Zombie's sequel to his remake of the original film, the tenth Halloween movie in the film's franchise, the connection between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, brother and sister, is explored further, as are the actions of Doctor Loomis. The principal cast of Malcolm McDowell, Tyler Mane, Sheri Moon Zombie, Brad Dourif, Danielle Harris, and Scout Taylor-Compton return with the additions of Margot Kidder, Mark Boone Junior, Octavia Spencer, Jeff Daniel Phillips, and Weird Al Yankovic. Another notable addition to the cast is Richard Brake, the Welsh actor known for starring in Mandy as The Chemist. Brake would return in Zombie's later films as one of the most compelling and newer actors in Zombie's repertory group. While Halloween II did not enjoy the commercial success of the first film, if you've ever had the desire to see Brad Dourif and Malcolm McDowell face off in an intense scene, this movie is for you.

The Lords of Salem is a departure from Zombie's other films since it is a supernatural horror film about a DJ who becomes the center of a plot hatched by Satan worshippers in Salem, Massachusetts, to bring the antichrist to Earth. The film stars Sheri Moon Zombie, Bruce Davison, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Ken Foree, Patricia Quinn, Dee Wallace, María Conchita Alonso, Judy Geeson, and Meg Foster as the main cast. It is centered around Sheri Moon Zombie's character, Heidi LaRoc, and has genre actors like Camille Keaton, Barbara Crampton, Lisa Marie, and Clint Howard as part of the cast. This film brought the symbolic and surreal imagery that started coming out during the Halloween films to the forefront and is a cult favorite among Zombie fans. Read more: Q&A: Bruce Davison On Rob Zombie’s The Lords of Salem.

31 is another film not part of another franchise and is an original idea from writer and director Rob Zombie. A group of carnival workers is captured by a group of aristocrats who condemn them to a game called 31, in which five killers called Heads, Sick-Head, Psycho-Head, Schizo-Head, Death-Head, and Sex-Head, pursue them, and they must try to survive twelve hours trapped in a maze with the Heads. It stars Sheri Moon Zombie, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Meg Foster, Kevin Jackson, Richard Brake, Jane Carr, Judy Geeson, and Malcolm McDowell. Unlike the Firefly series, a significant difference in the film is that the audience's sympathies are meant to be with the carnies rather than the killers. Sheri Moon Zombie's Charly faces off against Richard Brake's Doom Head, a sadistic sixth killer brought in at the last minute by the aristocrats when the group is much more resilient than their usual victims. Brake's Doom Head is a chilling force in the film.

3 from Hell picks up the story of the Firefly family from where it was left at the end of The Devil's Rejects. After Otis, Baby, and Captain Spaulding drive into the police ambush at the end of the film, it is revealed that somehow they survived the shootout and have all been taken to prison. The film stars Sheri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Dee Wallace, Emilio Rivera, Clint Howard, Danny Trejo, and Barry Bostwick as the Narrator. Sid Haig has a much smaller role in the film because of his health problems at the time of filming, and Richard Brake was introduced as the brother of Otis Driftwood, Winslow Foxworth 'Foxy' Coltrane.