PREVIEW
HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES
Starring Sid Haig, Karen Black and Bill Moseley
Written and directed by Rob Zombie
Opens Friday, April 18
Uptown Screen
Heavy metal icon and avowed film nut Rob Zombie's directorial debut, House of 1,000 Corpses, finally hits theatres this week after a three-year delay. It only made sense to send Fast Forward’s own movie gourmand, the Video Vulture, to interview him.
Video Vulture: I first heard about your movie, House of 1,000 Corpses, a few years ago, and it's finally getting released now. Why the long wait?
Rob Zombie: I made the movie with Universal Pictures; shot it on the Universal backlot. They all loved it except Stacy Schneider, who's the chairman of Universal Studios. When she saw it, she was just so freaked out by the content and tone of the picture that she just, you know... they wouldn't release it.
"And then from Universal it bounced over to MGM for a short while, but then something happened over there. It wasn't really anything to do with the content of the movie, it was just something else that took place. Then Lion's Gate stepped in and took it. Universal really used to be the House of Horror... now they're definitely not. I don't know what they are anymore.
Were you forced to make any cuts to the original film?
The only cuts I had to make along the way were just to satisfy the MPAA. Nobody would release it unless it was R-rated, so any cutting was for that reason. There's still a lot of violence in the movie, but not as much as there was. Some of the scenes of torture and murder went on a lot longer. A couple of things that went missing will reappear on the director's cut DVD.
What do you think about the horror movie situation in general these days?
It's kind of suffering, I suppose. There are always good films that pop up, of course, but in general the system of distribution has dried up. Classic films like Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre came to prominence in drive-in theatres. That's all gone. Now you're just dealing with giant multiplexes, and most of them won't show any NC-17 movies.
All these films we've been talking about... even Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, are all unrated pictures. None of these places would ever show an unrated picture now! The new trend is to make horror movies that are PG-13 so that you can get them into more theatres, market them to kids, advertise them during the day, and so on.
There used to be a time when you made movies for adults, and expected adults would see them. Now you pretend to be making movies for adults, but you're really just worried about getting kids into the theatre. Taking the violence and horror out of horror movies is like taking the sex out of porno movies. I mean, without that element, what are we talking about?
Any advice for wannabe film directors out there?
The only thing I can say is just don't quit. Many, many times over the last three years, it seemed like "just give it up, it's not going to happen," but you've just got to keep going and blindly push ahead. The movie came out (in the U.S.) last weekend, and it did amazing box office – it kicked total ass. Everyone said "just give up, dump it to video," but I didn't want to do that. |
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