The point being, we have one device, applied haphazardly across the film's running time: there's no pattern, no consistent meaning, not even a consistent point of view, in how that device is used. At least twice, they function as routine cross-cutting - as much as the tinting and scratches can be "routine". At least once, it seems like the cutaway is pointing towards a character's daydreams. But sometimes, they run in parallel: one of the psychopaths describes something, and we see exactly what they're describing. And what these fragments are doing - well, what are they doing? Often, they seem to be serving as counterpoint: we'll hear one of the movie's psychopathic villains talking (there are a great many of them), and we'll see their inner personality acting in in slavering rage. It's basically like getting some ancient, yellowed stock footage spliced into the middle of the action, as though fragments of film from the actual 1970s were ripping their way through the movie's constructed 1970s. For example, the cutaways: something that happens very often in the film is that the action will be interrupted by a cut to a short sequence, or even just a single shot, generally heavily tinted and filmed on what appears to be scratched, battered film stock (it could also be that the scratches were added later). The thing is, all of Zombie's choices don't build on each other, or even feel like they come from the same impulse. If anything, Zombie seems to be hellbent on breaking every rule he can think of, and he can think of quite a few.
Oh, choices are being made, no doubt about it - this is the polar opposite of what you get from a director who's just coasting along, taking the past of least resistance and following the rules in the most boring possible way.
This does not seem to have been the case with House of 1000 Corpses. Having then considered those possibilities, the filmmakers conclude that one of them will be uniquely well-suited to triggering a particular response in the viewer, and choose it. There's a reason that we call the various stylistic flourishes present in movies "choices": we take it to be the case that the filmmakers have considered various possible approaches to every moment in a script, whether that be camera position, visual design, cutting, line delivery, or any of the many other things that go into cinema. It is also, much less adorably, messy as hell.
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And he's also enthusiastic for cinema in general: House of 1000 Corpses is full of shocking cuts, split-screens, filters, and camera angles that all sum to suggest somebody who is just way too fucking excited to be on set, telling actors what to do, torn between the desire to fuss over every single composition for hours on end, and the desire to hurry up and get to the next shot, which will be even cooler than this one. These are sometimes presented in the form of excerpts from one of those beloved, tacky old local station horror series, the kind hosted by the weatherman from the evening news program - another thing Zombie is obviously enthusiastic for. Much of that enthusiasm is for the entire corpus of horror cinema it's a fairly direct love letter to a few films in particular, mostly The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and Motel Hell, and there are clips from I'm not sure how many black-and-white films dating back to the '30s.
It is the work of an unmitigated enthusiast.
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It is entirely possible that no first-time film director of the 21st Century to date was so transparently ecstatic to be making a movie as Rob Zombie was with 2003's House of 1000 Corpses.
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