After this week, we’re 66.7% of the way through this October’s spoopy theme, Rob Zombie’s Spookshow, here at B-Movie Enema!

I ain’t gonna lie… We kind of peaked last week with Rob Zombie’s best film of them all, The Devil’s Rejects. I mean, not only is it a well-crafted, very viscerally terrifying film, but it kind of was the pinnacle of Zombie doing his 70s retro grindhouse thing. Where are you gonna go from there? Well, today, in the year of our Dark Lord 2026, we know where he went. We’ll talk about that starting next weekend. But he kept rolling with this retro grindhouse, throwback to 1970s exploitation horror, probably well past its prime.

Certainly, by 2016, it seemed reviewers were kind of done with it. This week, we’re looking at one of his films that I have not actually watched, 31. In fact, to date, this is the only Rob Zombie movie I haven’t seen. I largely didn’t see 31 because I heard not-so-great things about it. Despite getting some pretty cruddy reviews, it still holds around 47% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s actually not as bad as you might think based on the talk around it.

So the idea for 31 came around after years of speculation that Zombie would be doing either a third film in his popular House of 1000 Corpses/The Devil’s Rejects series, this time focusing heavily on Sid Haig’s Captain Spaulding, or he would do his third Halloween movie. Another thought was that Zombie would make a movie featuring real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy. I think the movie simply being called 31, a number very heavily associated with the Halloween holiday, it makes sense fans speculated another Michael Myers outing. But, no…

Instead, Zombie decided to go a more original route. The movie’s title was less a reference to Halloween and more a reference to the plot. In 31, five strangers are chosen to play a gruesome game called “31.” Speaking of gruesome games, Zombie stated that, over the years, the game of making movies had changed and shifted in the landscape, so this led him to decide to help raise funds for the movie through a couple of crowdfunding campaigns to complete the movie.

The movie cost about $1.5 million. The low budget helped Zombie lean in on the “nasty, gritty, guerrilla-style approach to filmmaking.” The movie was going to look like the low budget exploitation flicks from the era that Zombie revered so heavily. In fact, Zombie and reviewers that paid praise to the film both said the same thing about this fast and loose style of filmmaking. They stated that this movie wants to be an exploitation quickie. It’s not trying to be a “better,” “slicker” type of thriller. It knows what it wants, and, for better or worse, some places like Bloody Disgusting and Shock Till You Drop were pleased with the results. Bloody Disgusting even compared the film to something like The Running Man.

So… Yeah… The Running Man? Fangoria telling me there will be sex, blood, gore, and, of course, Rob Zombie-character-style profanity? Well, I’m in the fourth fuckin’ week of Rob Zombie’s Spookshow, so I’m pretty sure I’m well acclimated now for all this! Let’s get this fuckin’ party fuckin’ started!

After an incredibly accurate, while still pretty bleak, quote from Franz Kafka about the first bit of understanding existence is the wish to die, we’re introduced to Richard Brake’s “Doom Head” character. He looks right down the lens of the camera to say hi to us and tell us who he is. He gets paid a lot to do some pretty nasty shit to people. He wants us to get one thing straight… He ain’t no fuckin’ clown. He might wear the grease paint and have a painted smile on his face, but he isn’t there to entertain and illicit laughter from his captive audience. He’s there to end his victims’ miserable lives.

He’s telling this to a guy named Pastor Victor (played by Daniel Roebuck), who Doom Head has tied to a chair. Doom Head tells Victor that cockroaches can live for a while after their heads are separated from their bodies. In fact, they can live for up to 168 hours without their noggins! Doom Head kills Pastor Victor with a dull axe.

It’s Halloween 1976, and the main story and cast are introduced. We are going to be following a group of carnival workers. We have Sheri Moon Zombie playing Charly. Jeff Daniel Phillips is Roscoe Pepper. Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs is Panda Thomas. Meg Foster plays Venus Virgo. Lastly, there’s Kevin Jackson as Levon Wally. They are a pretty tight-knit group. At the very least, they seem like they have fun livin’ the carny life.

Honestly, I keep chuckling a bit during this early scene with this group because I’m stuck picturing Herman Munster while Jeff Daniel Phillips uses his, at times, squeaky voice to tell his annoying girlfriend to shut the fuck up while he’s trying to explain his new attraction idea to Meg Foster. Phillips is very much looking the part of a Rob Zombie character, but he sounds like, well… Herman Munster. And I find it pretty dang funny.

The group stops off for gas. There we see Lucky Leo, played by Tracey Walter. I have a considerable amount of love for Tracey Walter, who has since retired after appearing in this movie. He was Bob the Goon in 1989’s Batman, one of the most significant movie-going experiences of my life. We also see E.G. Daily here. Daily also kind of has another soft spot in my heart. She was Dottie in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Not only was she an alum of a Tim Burton movie, but she was in The Devil’s Rejects as well, playing one of Ken Foree’s main girls at his brothel.

Aside from seeing Tim Burton movie people, we get the typical Rob Zombie shenanigans. Sheri Moon Zombie makes nice with Tracey Walter by way of doing over-the-top sexy things like rubbing her crotch and grinding against this poor old man who looks like he’s about to have a massive heart attack. Meg Foster teaches the younger talent with the crew a rhyme about sucky and fucky. Jeff Daniel Phillips is not-so-subtly flirting with E.G. Daily. So, yeah, typical Rob Zombie stuff, but that’s not the only typical Rob Zombie stuff. After they drive off, Halloween night falls.

As the group drives down the road, they run into a row of scarecrows that are blocking the road. They are jumped by a group of people dressed up like, um… Hamburglar clowns. No, I’m being serious. They have the white and black striped shirts, and they have clown makeup on. Hamburglar clowns.

They kill pretty much everyone outside our main cast of Charly, Roscoe, Venus, Panda, and Levon. They commandeer the group’s van to this large, almost cathedral-like building. There, they meet three older people dressed like French aristocrats. These people are Sister Dragon, Sister Serpent, and the leader of all these macabre happenings, Father Napoleon-Horatio-Silas Murder. Father Murder says they are here to play a game of 31.

Sister Dragon is played by Judy Geeson, who previously appeared in Zombie’s The Lords of Salem (a pretty good and moody little witch flick) as well as a Norman J. Warren flick, Inseminoid. Sister Serpent is Jane Carr. Father Napoleon-Horatio-Silas Murder is none other than Mr. Malcolm McDowell, who we’ll get a lot of next weekend.

Each of the contestants of 31 are assigned a number and odds for survival. Panda is #1, Venus is #2, Roscoe is #3, Levon is #4, and Charly is #5. They expect one of the men to survive and give Venus and Charly the longest odds of winning their game. But how’s the game played? Well, all the contestants have to do is survive 12 hours in this building that has a series of mazes, traps, and obstacles. Sounds easy, right? Not so fast there, Bucko.

You see, these twisted aristo-farts have five “Heads” that will chase after them. The first is “Sick Head.” He is a neo-Nazi little person. Who also speaks Spanish more than English.

31 begins. Each of the contestants is dumped into a different part of their building, and Sick Head is released to hunt them down. Now, they aren’t completely without a way to defend themselves. Pipes, bats, table legs with nails sticking out of them, crowbars, and machetes are available for the players to use.

Sick Head has a bit of an advantage. He knows the place better than the contestants. He also says that #4 always dies first. That does bode well for Levon. Charly has a really good idea. She finds the bathroom and hides in one of the stalls with a bat. However, Sick Head finds her pretty quickly. But toys with her by leaving the bathroom long enough for Levon to come to try to help her get away. Sick Head stabs Levon to death, and allows Charly to leave to hide again, so he can begin the hunt again.

The good news is that the little Nazi fucker is a loud hunter and likes to scream and yell at his prey. Also, Sheri Moon Zombie has a lot of volume to her voice. This allows everyone to find each other through her. Venus ends up hitting Sick Head in the head with her table leg with the nails sticking out. Charly then stabs the little guy to death and then bashses him to shit with her bat.

The aristo-craps bemoan how fast it took for the first kill to happen. They will have to see how the rest the night plays out as they release another “Head” into the game. The move into the third hour of the game, and Father Murder offers the contestants a dinner to refuel themselves. The remaining survivors bicker a tiny bit because Panda seems to be thinking more about eating than their friends’ death. Charly realizes there’s something under the table… A glass coffin with chopped up people who Father Murder cooked for them.

But now, it’s time to release the next two Heads, Psycho Head and Schizo Head, brothers who use chainsaws and are being released right into the room where the four remaining contestants are currently puking out the human remains they just ate. I like that Lew Temple is playing Psycho Head. And he makes fun of the contestants about killing a little person who is “only good for being shot out of a cannon.”

Our contestants are already over this hide-and-seek shit. Roscoe thinks they need to actually take the fight to anyone and everyone sent after them during this game. Once Charly agrees, they go on the hunt for Psycho Head and Schizo Head. They go into the brothers’ own personal room they stay in between games of 31 (I guess). There, they find a badly raped, beaten, and cut-up woman named Georgia Victor, Pastor Victor’s wife. Doom Head told the pastor that they’ve decided to keep his wife.

However, when Georgina says she heard them talking and knows how they can all escape, Venus wants to free the girl, despite everyone else wanting to leave immediately, fearing a trap. Roscoe in particular knows this is fishy, and he’s right. As they try to free the girl, the four contestants are trapped, separated in pairs. Each pair has to deal with one of the Heads. Charly and Panda take on Schizo Head while Venus and Roscoe are trapped with Psycho Head, who kills Georgina before turning his attention to the pair locked inside with him.

The contestants are surprisingly able to hold their own for a bit against the chainsaw-wielding Heads with not much more than using pipes and crowbars to sword fight against the chainsaws. A combination of Roscoe and Venus leads to Psycho Head being hurt and tripped onto his own chainsaw. Schizo Head is beheaded by Panda with his chainsaw. While Psycho Head’s chainsaw is disabled and useless, they at least now have Schizo Head’s chainsaw to add to their chances of survival.

Speaking of chances of survival, after Father Murder tells them what their new odds are of surviving, he tells them that “Sex and Death are on their way.”

Yup, that’s Sex Head and Death Head. Death Head is a giant German fella. Sex Head is a sexy little pixie clown. It’s actually E.G. Daily again. It did seem kind of odd earlier that she popped up to give Roscoe a little bit of a boner by being really flirty with him at the gas station, only for them to be captured by Hamburglar clowns later that night.

While Sex Head goes after Roscoe, who took some pretty nasty injuries from Psycho Head, Death Head battles the other three. Sex Head dishes out some more cuts and stabbings to Roscoe. The other three can barely hold off Death Head while Venus has a chainsaw. Before Sex Head can kill Roscoe, Charly arrives to capture her and use her against Death Head.

After Death Head dealt a pretty nasty blow to Panda, and is about to kill Venus when the gas ran out of the chainsaw, he’s distracted by Charly arriving with Sex Head at knifepoint. Using his own weapon, a bat with nails sticking out of it, against him, she kills Death Head while Panda dies. Venus caves in Death Head’s head and Charly slits Sex Head’s throat.

I kinda feel like we spent A LOT of time earlier in the movie with the little Nazi fella. That was like 20 minutes of them running from that guy, and they were all, like, twice his size. Sure, he was crazy, but he proved to be the toughest battle yet. Hours have passed, and they just dispensed with four other Heads, two of which wielded chainsaws, one is a giant scarred-up German guy who took on three people at once, and the other was a tart with knives who tried to kill the most injured one of the group of contestants. Those other four were dispatched in, oh, I dunno… like ten minutes?

Either these carnies got real tough real fast, or this movie is just speeding to the ultimate battle between the remaining surviving contestants and Doom Head.

Anyway, they call in Doom Head, who happened to be fucking a woman played by Ginger Lynn. Despite her best attempts to keep him from answering the phone, he answers the call and tells her to beat cheeks. When Doom Head arrives, he’s told he’s got about four and a half hours to finish the game of 31. He feels pretty confident he can finish the job, telling one of the aristo-flaps’ Hamburglar clowns he could kill that guy’s whole family in that time.

Doom Head puts his game face on and psychs himself up to go to work by screaming at himself about not being crazy and punching himself in the face to bloody his own nose.I have to say, screaming at your reflection that you are not crazy is a pretty surefire way for people to think you’re crazy.

The endgame is upon us. While Roscoe rests and Venus has a nightmare-filled nap, Charly went looking for an exit. Venus, unwilling to let Charly wander alone, ends up getting trapped, stabbed, and killed by Doom Head. He stabs her even more because she asks him to spare her friends. He quickly reminds us all that he’s pretty goddamn nihilistic and has no respect for life.

With only three hours left, Roscoe and Charly are the only ones remaining, and the most deadly of all the Heads are hunting them. He crucifies the dead Venus for them to see and confronts Charly and Roscoe. He tells them that the doors to the outside world are now open. He invites them to wander around to seek the exits and lets them go… for now.

Roscoe figures a particular hatch they find has to be the way out. But in order to escape, they will have to descend a ladder, and he’s not in a condition to follow. He tells her to go while he tries to hold off Doom Head for as long as he can. How long that is turns out to be about 15 seconds. Doom head quickly kills Roscoe and follows after Charly.

Let that be your lesson, boys, that white-knighting a pretty blonde will likely get your shit stabbed the fuck out by a crazed Richard Brake.

That hatch proved to reveal the outside world to Charlie. She walks out of a drain tunnel into the bright morning sun of November 1st, 1976. She’s not free and clear yet. There’s still time for Doom Head to win the game. Charly stumbles to what appears to be an abandoned house. She discovers a mechanical puppet show playing in the empty house that was the same as the one Lucky Leo had at his gas station. This was all a setup. The moment they stopped at the gas station, they were targeted. As expected, Doom Head is there already waiting for her.

Doom Head taunts Charly before demanding that she look into the eyes of a “true champion” as he strangles her. Before passing the point of no return, he releases her. He pulls out a switchblade and asks if she would like to do this “Whitechapel style,” quoting Jack the Ripper as if he’s about to kill Mary Kelly. Before he delivers the killing stab, he’s told to put his weapons down.

Charly won 31. Father Murder says the unthinkable has occurred. Never before had someone won. He, Sister Dragon, and Sister Serpent get back into their everyday clothes and depart with the plan to do a new game of 31 next year. As Charly walks down the road, weary and bloodied, a van approaches from behind her. Doom Head steps out for them to finish their own personal game of death. The outcome is ultimately undecided.

31 is not exactly great, but it’s also not bad. I think it does have some stuff going for it. Richard Brake is excellent as Doom Head. His skinny, wiry frame, with that joker-like grin, makes him a terrifying figure. I don’t know if I went to a convention and saw him if I’d want to approach him after seeing this movie. I’m afraid he’d gut me like the piece of flabby shit I am. I like some of the concepts here. This is a Rob Zombie take on The Most Dangerous Game.

With that comes hunters and prey. Sherri Moon Zombie’s Charly is a standout because she’s the one who seems to know how to handle herself best from the start and kind of leads the group of contestants. The others look to her as a steady hand. Opposite her are the other two who survive the next longest, Roscoe and Venus. Roscoe’s faults are ideas but not really any follow-through, making him, at times, almost a liability, and definitely a liability when he gets injured. Venus has a motherly element to her. We saw her talking to the younger members of this crew of carnival performers early in the film, as if she were taking them under her wing. Later, she’s swayed by Georgina when it was obviously a trap (whether Georgina had anything to do with that or not).

Of the contestants, Charly, Roscoe, and Venus were head and shoulders above Panda and Levon, who, unfortunately, blend into one character with not much separating them from each other. The aristocratic characters running and gambling on the game of 31 are almost interesting, but ultimately come off feeling more like stunt casting for the sake of having some trippy upper-class business dealing with treating normies in dehumanizing ways. I see what it’s going for, but I would have loved a little more about what they are outside of the tips of the cap toward the French aristocratic attire and makeup and the occasional Satanic imagery of their, for lack of a better term, fortress.

The first five Heads were all perfectly fine in terms of exploitation concepts. Naturally, Rob Zombie is going to have a Nazi little person trying to kill everyone. The horny chainsaw brothers are kind of funny in how they act and speak, so that’s fine. Visually, Death Head and Sex Head are cute additions to the roster. The sixth head, Doom Head? Oh, he’s the star of the movie.

I can’t stress enough that if you have any inkling to possibly watch 31, you should do so for Richard Brake. It’s a horror version of the Joker. He’s a truly crazed and nihilistic slasher killer who wears grease paint and creates a clown’s smile by bashing himself in the nose until he makes himself bleed. It shows that Rob Zombie knows how to perfectly cast character actors to play very memorable roles and give it their all. Whether it’s Bill Moseley as Otis in House of 1000 Corpses or The Devil’s Rejects, or Daniel Roebuck as Grandpa in The Munsters, or Richard Brake in both this and The Munsters, he knows how to get the goods from these largely overlooked, but extremely skilled, actors.

I think there’s enough for me to think this is a serviceable horror film. If you could picture Rob Zombie making a Most Dangerous Game-style movie, this is exactly what I would easily envision in my brain bits. It’s a very marginal recommendation from me if you like exploitation horror and Rob Zombie’s movies on balance. It is derivative of movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and even his own movies like The Devil’s Rejects (clearly, I have to assume Doom Head and Otis Driftwood are related in some way). It’s easy to see that Tracey Walter’s little mechanical puppet show that appears in the early part of the movie is not something that wouldn’t come back up again later.

It also definitely makes you wonder why E.G. Daily shows up to flirt with Roscoe and then just… disappears. Once she returned as Sex Head, it was clear this was all part of the “audition” for 31. You’d have to expect that everything about that gas station is all connected to the game. So, that was maybe a little sloppy.

All in all… I liked this a little more than I expected. Again, it’s not blowing the doors off anything, even in Zombie’s directorial career. Still, The Devil’s Rejects and The Lords of Salem are both more interesting. They both have a great look to them, and I still think The Devil’s Rejects is more original in how it portrays who the protagonists are vs. who the antagonists are. I’ll go to my grave defending both of those movies as truly great films in the modern horror genre. Maybe someday, long after this month is over, I’ll bring The Lords of Salem here to B-Movie Enema.

But I can’t do it this month. That’s because everything I’ve done here this month is coming to a head next weekend… the head of William Shatner’s Captain Kirk. You had to know that if I was doing Rob Zombie’s Spookshow as my October 2026 theme month, that had to mean that I was going to get to his Halloween films. Yeah, of course I had to.

Yes, next week, return to B-Movie Enema for a double dose of Halloween celebration… Well, maybe not a celebration. Maybe it would be more of a dissection. Here at B-Movie Enema, we don’t just do the Friday before Halloween; we do a Halloween special review. So to wrap up Rob Zombie’s Spookshow, get your peepers ready. Next Friday is his 2007 reimagining of Halloween. Then, one day later, on the day itself, we’ll look at his truly trippy 2009 sequel Halloween II.

Giddy-the-fuck-up, everyone! Let’s travel to Haddonfield!