It is Halloween, 1976. Classic rock like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kiss, and Aerosmith blasts from a radio in the background while ridiculous caricatures of 'filthy trailer trash' kill indiscriminately. There is glamorized, stylistic, and nasty behavior alongside the wild, dizzyingly surreal, and psychedelic images of naked, dead, carved-up female bodies litter the landscape. Sadistic people do horrific and terrifying things, and the ever-present feeling of taboo violence and sex hangs in the air. Oh, and there are clowns, evil, sleazy, horrifying clowns, murderous clowns everywhere.

Welcome to the wild mind of horror and exploitation master Rob Zombie, who began as a musician and directed many of his own great music videos (including Dragula, with 150 million views on YouTube), before moving on to writing and directing several controversial films. Rob Zombie puts the auteur in 'provocateur,' with his obvious love of grindhouse films and dirty 70s aesthetic. His love for that era's horror and exploitation films like The Last House on the Left and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (evident in his use of 70s actors like Bill Moseley and Sid Haig) is absolutely infectious. He is as prolific in music as he is in film, and in 2021 he dropped his latest piece of grindhouse vinyl, The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy.

With his twisted vision and niche perspective, audiences either love or despise his films, but nothing in between. Despite his gruesome and disturbing films, his relationship with animal rights activist Sheri Moon Zombie (Rob Zombie wife and muse) is endearing and inspiring; they dated for nine years before marrying in 2002, and have been (and worked) together ever since. They are currently working on the highly-anticipated Munsters movie. Here are the seven Rob Zombie movies so far, ranked.

7 The Lords of Salem

Rob Zombie's Lords of Salem
Anchor Bay Films

The interesting psychological thriller, The Lords of Salem takes place in historic Salem, Massachusetts, not too far from Rob Zombie’s hometown of Haverhill, MA where he grew up with his young brother Spyder, lead singer of the alternative metal band Powerman 5000. Sheri Moon Zombie plays a radio DJ, alongside Rob Zombie regular, Jeff Daniel Phillips (Halloween II, 31, Three From Hell). After she plays a strange record from a band called The Lords of Salem, who are connected to real witches from centuries ago, things start to go horribly wrong as she begins to lose her mind, in a Polanski sort of way.

Related: Sheri Moon Zombie Talks The Lords of Salem Blu-ray [Exclusive]

6 31

31
Saban Films

Rob Zombie’s 31 is one hell of a film with one hell of a performance from Richard Brake, a Rob Zombie regular who has appeared in Three From Hell and Halloween II. The film opens with a brilliantly demented and terrifying monologue from Doom Head (Brake) delivered to a man he is about to kill in an unspeakable way. Sheri Moon Zombie, who played a completely evil and psychotic character in the House of 1,000 Corpses trilogy, here actually plays a victim, one of five members of a traveling show abducted by an evil and quite odd Malcolm McDowell, and pitted against various monstrosities like a sadistic Nazi little person and a bunch of clowns with chainsaws. They have one day to survive the steady stream of psycho killers unleashed by McDowell. The frustratingly ambiguous ending will make you want to know what really happens in the final showdown and how it plays out

5 Three From Hell

3 From Hell
Lionsgate

Three From Hell is the last film in the Firefly Family trilogy, and it is a doozy, with Sheri Moon Zombie and Bill Moseley back as a brother-and-sister gang from hell, here teamed up with Rob Zombie favorite Richard Brake, who plays one of Otis’ brothers and is a new addition to the Firefly family. Three From Hell is as brutal, sadistic, and uncompromising as the other Firefly Family films, and is dominated by the amazing performances of the three leads, who really get to shine and let loose amidst (and perhaps because of) the nihilism of the picture.

4 Halloween

Halloween 2007
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

In remaking John Carpenter’s classic, groundbreaking Halloween, writer/director Rob Zombie added his own unique tastes and love of sleaze to a franchise which had gotten seriously stale and predictable. Horror fans rightfully complain about remakes, so it makes sense that many of them (including John Carpenter himself, who once called Zombie a "piece of sh*t") disliked this one; Zombie doesn't seem to care, standing by his work. However, some in the horror community celebrated the Rob Zombie Halloween as both a loyal tribute to Carpenter’s original film, and a largely new film with its own eccentric and often humorous components.

The first half of the film follows a young Michael Myers, who is bullied in school and has 'white trash' parents, including an abusive father played by an over-the-top William Forsythe (The Devil’s Rejects), and a kind stripper for a mother, played by Sheri Moon Zombie. In a viciously cruel and sadistic act, young Michael bludgeons a bully to death with a bat. Even though we are made to hate the bully, we are also made to feel for his abject fear and pain as he pleads for his life in vain. Michael shows no mercy, indicative of his frequent association with the embodiment of evil, and the savagely brutal scene sets the stage for the rest of the film as it flashed forward 15 years. Most of the actors are Rob Zombie regulars, similar to how Zombie brings his regular vision to the Halloween movies and subverts it in his own way.

Related: Sheri Moon Shares Update on Rob Zombie's The Munsters

3 The Devil’s Rejects

The Devil's Rejects
Lionsgate 

The Devil’s Rejects is a sequel to House of 1,000 Corpses and was followed up by Three From Hell. Karen Black is replaced by Leslie Easterbrook for the role of Mama Firefly, and while Easterbrook gives a great performance, Karen Black is sorely missed. This is probably the most sadistic and cruel Rob Zombie film, with a lot of influence from the notorious The Last House on the Left, such as when Sherri Moon Zombie makes one family member assault another family member just for the privilege to use the bathroom. The violence of the film, particularly the scenes in and around the hotel, are horrific and disturbing, but so original and unpredictable that it's gruesomely hard to take your eyes off it, like watching a bloody train wreck. It is incredibly powerful cinema, both evocative and provocative.

Sheri Moon Zombie and Bill Moseley are brother and sister, and the two are terrifying and funny, depending on the scene. Along with the father Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig from Spider-Baby, the last film from Lon Chaney, Jr.), the three are an unstoppable force of mayhem and destruction. William Forsythe is absolutely demonic as the vengeance minded police officer, a drunken and homicidal lunatic who hunts down the Firefly family for personal reasons. The Devil's Rejects is devilish, indeed.

2 Halloween II

Rob Zombie's Halloween II
Dimension Films

Halloween II is a unique film, written by Rob Zombie as a sequel to his own Halloween remake. It’s full of violence and incredible action, as the evil Michael Myers goes on a berserk killing spree, ultimately targeting his older sister, the only surviving member of his family. Tons of great character actors populate this Rob Zombie movie which is actually superior to the first one, (and Zombie agrees). Brad Dourif and Malcolm McDowell really shine in this movie, with McDowell having transformed into a publicity-seeking sleazeball, as opposed to the more caring doctor he was in Halloween. The White Horse symbolism is interesting, and the dream sequences with Sheri Moon Zombie are surreal, haunting, and beautiful. Halloween II is a surprisingly great modern slasher film, full of blood and scares.

Related: The Munsters Celebrated by Reboot Director Rob Zombie as 'Greatest Show Ever'

1 House of 1,000 Corpses

House of 1,000 Corpses
Lions Gate Films

House of 1,000 Corpses is quite simply, one of the best and most surprising cult horror films ever made, a sleazy, gory, nasty, surreal, psychedelic, and original masterpiece. Rob Zombie is a man who loves films, especially sleazy grindhouse exploitation and horror films from the 1970s, and pays tribute to those films and borrows from them, just like Quentin Tarantino. House of 1,000 Corpses wears its influences on its sleeves for everyone to see. Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon Zombie, and Karen Black play members of the Firefly Family, a group of vicious Charles Manson-quoting murderers. The film is modeled after that surreal masterpiece of terrifying horror cinema, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Dr. Satan’s elaborate underground dungeon madhouse even seems directly inspired by the one in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

There are many, many other influences which film fans will love spotting, such as the ending of the film, influenced by the classic ending of Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th. Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute from The Office) is transformed in a completely morbid and macabre way into a monster known as Fish-Boy in a nod to Creature From the Black Lagoon; one woman is forced to kiss Otis Driftwood while he is wearing her murdered father’s carved-off face in reference to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Thus, House of 1,000 Corpses is a film for horror lovers, and will not disappoint fans of exploitation grindhouse horrors and 1970s cinema. A truly unique and original experience, featuring many stylistic touches like split screens and freeze frames and extreme close-ups, the Rob Zombie movie is a modern classic of extreme horror.