Inside The House That ZOMBIE Built! An In Depth Interview With Rob Zombie On The Lion's Gate DVD Release Of House Of 1000 Corpses! ~By: Terry and Tiffany DuFoe~ "House Of 1000 Corpses" is rocker Rob Zombie's dark and demented journey into '70s horror exploitation. The home release hit the streets August 12th, from Lion's Gate Entertainment. This marked Zombie's (robzombie.com) theatrical debut and will undoubtedly be a springboard for Sheri Moon's (sherimoon.com) career. Rob Zombie's first attempt at film died a painful death when he wrote a script for "The Crow: Salvation" & was soon fired due to disagreements with the producers. Fast forward to present day..."House of 1000 Corpses" has certainly met with mixed audience reactions but has pulled a genre following that deserved a much anticipated movie sequel. This sequel is now in the works with the original zany cast of Zombie's hillbilly hell-raisers! Meanwhile Rob's wife, (They married on Halloween!) Sheri Moon has completed the Tobe Hooper remake of the '70s cult classic, "The Toolbox Murders". If anything, "House Of 1000 Corpses" is old school horror from a true genre fan raised on B-films with the likes of Lugosi, Karloff, Price, Cushing, Rathbone, & Lee, who he calls the classic six. You will soon realize he sounds a lot like the typical Videoscope reader & for an added bonus he even hates CGI effects. The DVD release of "House Of 1000 Corpses" features new technology from an original idea by Zombie where the menu uses a patented MOJO DVD NAVIGATION icon that moves in full color and three dimensions in a rotating and playful fashion. The interactive menu sidebar is neighbored on screen with newly shot footage of Sid Haig ("Spider Baby") and Bill Moseley ("Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2") and of course sexy spouse Sheri Moon. Zombie told us this unique groundbreaking technology was included as a way to see more of the trailer trash titans in order to appease requests from hardcore fans. However, be forewarned as the House DVD crazies are now talking directly to you the viewer! They will tell you what to click on & what to choose and you can assure if you DARE to linger on a menu for very long you will be INSULTED in a manner that only un-McDonald like clown Captain Spaulding can deliver! In short yes, they will rip you a new ... hole! The DVD menu is all most as much fun as the improvised scenes hidden in the DVD where "House Of 1000 Corpses" Easter eggs can be found if you know WHERE to find them! In our interview Rob Zombie tells us how the movie idea was born from a controversial haunted maze he built for a Universal Halloween attraction & the personal hell he endured producing the film with distractions from back lot tours driving by the set! The house used in the film is from "The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas" & was converted to the "House Of 1000 Corpses" as Universal tour guides drove by repeatedly announcing this fact spoiling numerous scenes! DVD commentary reveals that catering was ironically located at the Norman Bates "Psycho" house but only in Videoscope is it revealed that before Lion's Gate (lionsgatefilms.com) picked up the film, MGM planned to release the project based on the success of "Jeepers Creepers", but later threw Rob Zombie out of their offices, killing their release due to a controversial statement they claim Rob made. MGM denies this but Rob claims it is true! He told us he never tells this story but needed our readers to know that Universal wasn't the ONLY studio to shiver in the shadows of the HOUSE that Rob built. Terry: Needless to say, we just totally loved the film. Rob: Oh really? Oh, right on. Terry: The film was fantastic! Rob: Thanks! Terry: And it is ok that we take pictures during the interview? Rob: Yeah, sure. Terry: It's up to you. Rob: Yeah, I don't care. If you need them, take them. That's cool. Terry: Ok, we're rolling. Rob: Is this a good enough distance? Terry: Yeah, it's fine. I just wanted to find out about who some of your favorite horror stars are, living or dead? Rob: Pretty much they're all dead, unfortunately, but there's sort of the classic six that I love: Lugosi, Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and Basil Rathbone. Terry: Fantastic people. I had the honor of meeting Vincent myself. Rob: Really? Terry: Yeah. If they were still alive, which one of those people would you like to have in your future films? Rob: Well Christopher Lee, obviously, is still alive and I actually met with him one time many years ago. It was right before the 'rebirth of Christopher Lee' where he's in like every major film, and it was when I was sort of connected to the ill-fated "Crow" project. I went to London to meet with Christopher Lee about being in it. So, that was pretty amazing. Terry: Yeah. So, what would you say would be some of your very favorite horror films? Rob: For me, it's anything with those guys obviously. All the classic '30s Universal stuff and then all Hammer stuff. Then I sort of jump ahead to super exploitative '70s stuff. I sort of lost interest in the '80s a little bit. (Chuckles.) It seemed like it was all for kids. Terry: Your vision is so much of what everyone calls the definitive nightmare. What scares you personally? Rob: I don't mean this in some tough guy way, but not a lot of things scare me. So, that was one of the trickiest about making a movie because no matter what we did... and the cast of this film are so bizarre as actual people like Karen Black and Sid Haig and Bill Moseley. I mean this in the best way possible, but they're all such a bunch of kooks. When we were making the movie it always almost started turning into a comedy just because the more violent it got, the more weird it got, the more funny it seemed to all of us. Terry: Right. Rob: But really, I mean, the only thing that bothers me is sharks. (Laughs.) Terry: Yes, especially anymore. (Chuckles.) Where'd you get the idea for the script of "House of 1,000 Corpses"? Rob: It kind of came about in a weird sort of a way. I was working at Universal Studios. Three years ago they were doing Halloween Horror Nights. Terry: Right. Rob: They called me to build this haunted maze thing, and Clive Barker was doing one, and they had a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" one... Terry: Yeah, we've seen it. We were in it. Rob: Yeah! Ok. The second year they asked me to do another one and I was like "Oh, shit, I don't know. I've got to think of an idea real quick." I thought of "House of 1,000 Corpses"! "Yeah, that sounds like a really scary haunted house." Then as soon as I thought of the title, I sort of thought of the script. Terry: There's been a lot of things said about the falling out with Universal. Can you tell us the real story about what happened there? Rob: The real story is not.. there was never a real story in that sense. There was sort of what I figured was the real story, and what people were saying and this and that, but I think the reality of it is the timing was horrible. You know, for the film, and for everything. I remember thinking this too because I always thought the film was a weird movie for Universal in the first place. As we were filming it the cast and other people were like, "I can't believe they're making this movie. This seems really strange for them." When we were editing it, it was during the presidential election and Joe Lieberman was really crusading against Hollywood. He was on the cover of "The Hollywood Reporter" and "Variety" everyday about cleaning up Hollywood and marketing violent films toward children. We were editing and I was like, "This is not sitting well with this film." Then we had our ill-fated test screening the same day that Stacy Schneider, Chairman of Universal, came back from Washington after having to testify with the other studio heads in front of Congress about this sort of thing. She came back, and then she saw the film, and she's like, "There's no way... there's no way I'm putting this movie out." and she was very cool, I never had a problem with her. We never had a falling out in any personal way. I think she thought being who I am and the type of movie, that it was very much a movie that was going to have a... you know, kids would want to see it. Terry: Mmmhmm. Rob: And that she didn't want to be responsible for because just before then, I knew things were... I never tell anyone this story, but I'll tell you the thing that really red-flagged it for me. We had built that second year haunted maze called "House of 1,000 Corpses" to tie in with the movie. You know,"Come walk through the sets!" and it was all built. At the last second they made us change the name. "Don't call it 'House of 1,000 Corpses'! I don't need some kid walking into this thing in front of a giant sign saying 'House of 1,000 Corpses based on an R-rated movie'." So, we changed it to "The Great American Nightmare" like the day before, but the ads had already gone out. You know, you're standing in line watching scenes from the movie, it's all the characters in the maze, but that was when I was like, "Oh boy." I knew trouble was brewing when that happened. Terry: Yeah. Did Universal read the script before you filmed it? Rob: Oh yeah. Universal is on top of everything in the sense that they read the script. They probably knew the script better than I did. They saw every daily. Sometimes the saw the dailies before I did. They'd ship them right off to the executives before I could even get a chance to look at them. We filmed 60% of the movie on the Universal back lot because that house is "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" house. Some people think it was a case of we snuck off somewhere and made some crazy movie and screwed them, but that's not what happened. Terry: Yeah. I understand you did a lot of the filming in Palmdale. That's where we come from. Rob: Oh yeah? Yeah, a lot of it in Palmdale. Terry: It's pretty rough up there with the heat and the cold nights and the winds. Rob: Yeah, I know! Captain Spaulding's Museum was in Palmdale and that was a nightmare because during the day it's boiling hot and at night it was freezing. Terry: But I also hear it was rough on the Universal lot too because the tour was interfering? Rob: Yeah. I'm not exactly sure, but I think they're sort of two different companies: the movie company and the company that actually owns the theme park. They're sort of two separate divisions and one will not shut down for the other. "So, you're not going to divert the tram while we're filming?" They're like, "OH, not a chance!" Terry: Wow. Rob: The best thing we could try to get them to do, and they never actually did it, was "Well, can you at least turn the sound down on the Jaws ride a little bit?" Because it was ruining every single take! And I swear to God in some takes.. there's a scene where Tom Towles who plays Wydell is going into the house and without the birds and the sound effects, you can actually hear the Jaws ride in the background. Terry: Really? Rob: (Chuckles.) Terry: Did they actually drive the tram right by where you were shooting? Rob: Yeah! Terry: They did?! Rob: Eventually we built a fence so that there was nothing interesting to look at. Well, we had to build a fence too because whenever we did our turn arounds you'd just see the tram going by. So we built this fence. It's sort of this fake thing because they'd stop the tram, and not only would they stop it, but they'd stop it and go, "Right there they're filming..." and they'd start announcing what we were doing and ruin the take! Terry: (Chuckles.) That's very strange because we've been on that tour many times and we've actually seem them divert the tram around shooting but they didn't for you. Rob: Really? Maybe if it's something important like an episode of "MacGyver" or something, but they weren't diverting anything for us. Terry: I think it was some Ewan McGregor movie or some crap like that. Rob: No, it was bad! I'm sure if it's like "The Grinch", you know? But for us, no. I think they were diverting them towards us actually! Terry: Did you have pretty free reign when you were making the film or was Universal's big execs there checking things out everyday? Rob: Well, they were. It was sort of like two things. It's sort of a weird way that they function. I don't know if they always function like this, but everyday... well, not everyday but almost every day or many many times I'd have to go into a big huge conference room with tables 40 feet long, there's 25 people sitting around it, everyone's got their notes, and blah blah blah, and they'd come down to the set. They were pretty omnipresent, more or less but the things that they were hyper-focused on were the things that I wasn't that worried about. Like with casting, they didn't care about anybody except the people that were playing the four normal kids. That's the only thing they cared about like, "That was the stars of our film. The rest we don't care about." So I'd go, "Alright, I want Sid Haig." They'd go, "Yeah whatever, we don't care." (Chuckles.) Terry: In your audio commentary on the DVD, you had said something about how Universal had a hand in getting rid of some of the editing people? Is that right? Rob: Yeah, yeah. They do this weird thing which everybody knows, it's nothing new, but we had a test screening and they made us do a test screening. They will screen the films in the most rough condition. There was no music. It was on video. It was a video output from the avid so the quality was.. you could barely even make it out. The quality was so bad. There was no sound effects and we weren't done editing. So, you're showing something that's not even a rough assembly and after that they were like, "Oh, we've got to get rid of the editor! The movie moves too slow... or something." Terry: How did Lion's Gate get the picture? Rob: Lion's Gate was kind of a weird thing because we had shopped it around to a bunch of people. The shopping of this movie was a nightmare because Universal was still connected to the film. It wasn't like a lot of people thought, "Well, you own it. Why don't you go do what you want with it?" That wasn't the case. It was still Universal owned property and they had to be bought out and all this stuff, and you know, it was expensive to do. Somewhere along the line I thought we had screened it for Lion's Gate and they had passed, and that had never happened. They'd never seen it and then a couple of months before the movie came out or something... six months or so, I can't remember... we ran into somebody and were talking to somebody and they're all, "Oh, the president of Lion's Gate says he really wants to see the film." We were like, "Didn't he pass on the film?" It was through some fuck up that they'd never seen it, and as soon as they saw it they were like, "Oh, we want it. We'll take it right now." Terry: So what do you think it is about Lion's Gate that they seem to have, excuse my French but, more balls then the others? Rob: I don't know. It's great because they just don't... I don't know. It's weird because it's not like you go in there and they're all these maniacs who don't care. They're still these normal guys running a company but I guess they still have sort of an independent spirit where they're into it, which is nice. It's really refreshing. Terry: So, you really understand about Universal's position? You're not bitter or anything? Rob: No, I mean, I get it. I don't have any bitterness towards Universal because things always happen for a reason, and without Universal the film wouldn't exist. Terry: Yeah, well you're actually on a Universal record label aren't you? Rob: Yeah, so it's really strange at the same time. Terry: You're in kind of a strange position there. Rob: Yeah, and it's just the way it turned out. But, they made the film. It wouldn't exist without them. They didn't put it out. Whatever. There was a lot of hell after that, but there's no bitterness. Terry: Now am I right in knowing that you're married to Sheri Moon? Rob: Yeah. Terry: I'd like to have your comments, not as a husband, but as a director on her performance. That was her first film right? Rob: Yeah! That was her first film. First speaking on camera ever for anything. I thought it was great. I thought she was amazing. Terry: I thought she was fantastic! Rob: I think people maybe were nervous. "Oh, she never did anything before. Oh, but of course he wants to put his... at that point she was my girlfriend... wants to put his girlfriend in the movie." But it wasn't like that. I really always felt like she could do it and I always felt that it was right. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think it would work. Yeah, I just thought she was totally a natural at it. Terry: Was it easy for you to direct your wife, more so than somebody who wasn't related to you? Rob: The way I approached it, it wasn't easier and it wasn't harder. I looked at it like she was an actress in the movie and my job as a director is to direct each person. Every single actor needs a different way to be handled. I can't talk to Karen Black the way I can talk to Sid. I can't talk to Chris Hardwick the same way I can talk to Bill Moseley. I can't talk to Sheri the same way I can talk to Matthew McGrory. They're all different so it wasn't like all the actors function this way and she functions this way. They're all so different that it was just part of the deal. Terry: Did you have any conversations with her where you said, "Well, I'm the director and if I have to get harsh with you please understand, and it doesn't come home"? Rob: No, it was never like that. I never got harsh with anybody. I never had to because... I didn't. You can just sense how people are and I never thought that that was a way to make things happen. I don't know. Maybe some directors think, "Oh, if I scream at people and freak them out, they'll get it right." Terry: Some directors are crazy! Rob: But, it never really was like that. A couple of times when I thought something wasn't going well I would be real straight and go, "Look, everything you guys are doing right now is horrible. You're totally unfocused and it just seems like you're fucking around." Then everyone would sort of clear their head and get together. I always heard... I don't even know if this is true, but there's this Japanese thing that they always say that you disgrace yourself by yelling at someone who's in a position below you, and I always think that that's kind of weird. I just seems like some weird insecurity thing if you just start screaming at people. Terry: One more question about Sheri. I read on the internet, and I know a lot of rumors live on the internet, but is she going to be doing a remake of "The Toolbox Murders"? Rob: Yeah, that's already finished. Terry: Fantastic! Rob: They wrapped that about three weeks ago. Terry: Directed by Tobe Hooper? Rob: Tobe Hooper directed it and they shot it at the Ambassador Hotel. It looks really cool. I was down on the set for about three days or so because I wanted to watch Tobe work and watch the whole thing. Terry: Tobe's one of your favorites right? Rob: Yeah. I mean, it was just fun to be there. It looked great. It looked like something that was really cool with what was going on. Terry: Now, you played Dr. Wolfenstein's assistant in your film "House of 1,000 Corpses" in a very brief cameo. Rob: Yeah. Terry: I understand there was a slight accident that almost happened where the head of the hammer came off? Rob: No, it DID come off! And of course, our prop guys were a little dangerous to say the least, so it was a real sledge hammer and the end wasn't attached. I'm slamming it down and it just came flying off. It went flying right towards camera, but nobody got hurt as far as I can remember. (Chuckles.) Terry: There wasn't any real accidents on the set then? Rob: No, not really. No, nothing really. Nobody got hurt. There was certainly enough moments that were making me nervous because the guys who were in charge of doing the squib work and packing them, they kept going, "What do you want here? A little one or you want total peckinpaw?" "I want this to be as bloody as you can make it." So, they'd do it and it'd look like 'bloop'! One drop would come out. They kept packing it and I was like, "Oh my god, they're going to blow the back of Walton's head off! You can just see it now!" Terry: (Laughs.) Rob: And the same with Tom Towles. I was like, "The end!" but nothing happened at all. Terry: What did you think about getting Sid Haig for Captain Spaulding? Rob: I thought it was great. I love Sid! Terry: He's a legend. Rob: Sid's one of those funny people though. Certain actor's have always popped out in my mind and Sid always has. I'm pretty sure the first time I saw him was on "Jason of Star Command" as a kid when he played Dragos. Then from there on I'd always notice him. You'd turn on "The Fall Guy" and there he is, or "Six Million Dollar Man" and there he is. He was on every frickin' TV show and then obviously all the other great movies he's made. I just always loved him. Terry: I take it you've seen "Spider Baby"? Rob: Yeah, of course "Spider Baby" and he's just so funny in all that stuff like "Black Mama, White Mama" and "Foxy Brown". Terry: We'd like to have you tell everybody about the great menu feature on the DVD release. Rob: Yeah, the menu feature was something that I wanted to do because we didn't have a lot of extra stuff. I think a lot of people now are getting... not spoiled, but jaded. They just expect that "Well, of course there's going to be 8 HOURS of extra features!" You know? Terry: (Laughs.) Yeah. Rob: They think every DVD's going to be like "Lord of the Rings" but we didn't have a lot of stuff. Unfortunately some of the cool stuff we had, and I'm still trying to find it so if we ever do an unrated cut I'll put it on there, got lost in moving from Universal to MGM to Lion's Gate. So things just got lost. People would lose their jobs and move and three years and no one gives a shit, and boxes get unlabeled. So, we had all this really cool stuff like make-up tests of Sid Haig with different clown make-up that didn't look as good. Can't find any of it though. So, what I thought was what we'll do is we'll get the actor's back and we'll do these menus that just go on forever. Terry: So it was your idea then? Rob: Yeah and I thought it'd be so funny for Sid to just... you know, it gets uncomfortable after a while to just watch him do everything in real time. Eat a donut and read a magazine. Terry: And if you don't move on in the menu he insults you? Rob: Yeah, and he gets more and more angry. Then there's Otis telling all the stories. That was just an extra added thing because I thought behind the scenes stuff is cool and that's all great but that gets to seem all the same after a while. But I saying, "As a fan, what would I like to see?" I would like to see more of these characters and the biggest thing that everyone said to me is, "Boy, I wish there was more Sid in the movie!" So, I thought, well here's a way to have more Sid sort of in the movie. Terry: I take it that those segments were filmed after the movie? Rob: Yeah, it was filmed afterwards. Terry: I think I found an Easter egg last night while watching the DVD. Rob: (Laughs.) Terry: Is there just one? Rob: There's a couple on there. No, there's three or four. Terry: Can you tell people how to find them or is it a secret? Rob: It's not a secret, I just don't really remember. Terry: Yeah. Rob: It was one of those things where the guy goes, "Yeah, you go to the..." There's something where I think you go to the second scene selection menu and click left, down, right.... I don't remember. They're there though. Terry: The one I found was the three characters of Baby Firefly, Otis, and Captain Spaulding and they were dancing in front of a green screen. Rob: Yeah. Terry: Do you recall what the other Easter eggs are? Rob: It was more goofy stuff like that. We just ran out of time because it was kind of a screw up with the releasing of the DVD but that's why it was just on a green screen. There's one of them square dancing and there's something else with them all eating dinner and another one with them doing... I forget. There's all kinds of stuff. Basically just them being weird. Terry: Ad libbed I take it? Rob: Yeah, most of it's pretty much ad libbed. The stuff that's on the menus was scripted but that stuff's ad libbed pretty much. Terry: So, would you say you're pretty happy with how it turned out including the packaging and the feel of the commercially released DVD? Rob: Yeah, I'm really happy with it. To me, I really dig the features. To me something like "Tiny Fucked a Stump" is absolutely... Terry: (Laughs.) Rob: It's absolutely hilarious! Some people are like, "What is that useless piece of shit feature?" But to me, I find it absolutely hilarious and that's what I would want to see as a fan. Sometimes you get these DVDs and they have so much stuff, and it's just like I don't want to hear the art director rambling on for three hours. It just gets boring. I just like the actors acting weird. I've been trying to find more stuff so like I said if there's ever another DVD I've found a lot more funny, weird rehearsals and out takes and stuff, but it's all deep in the files of Universal. Terry: What about gimmicks like William Castle used back in the day? Would you ever get into that, maybe using 3-D or electrifying the theatre seats? Rob: Well at one point I wanted to do this and I couldn't get anyone on board. When I signed onto Lion's Gate, one of my ideas was I wanted to stop the movie at the end and... this is totally a William Castle thing.. let the audience vote whether Denise lives or dies. Captain Spaulding comes on screen and polls the audience as to whether or not she should live or die. But, they were like, "You know, we've got to release this film! Stop fucking around with it." So, I was like, "Alright." but I thought that that would be kind of funny. Terry: Frankly, I wanted all the kids to die. It turned out quite well! (Laughs.) Rob: (Laughs.) Yeah, they're all annoying right? That was a big thing at Universal. They kept wanting someone to live. Terry: Really? Rob: Yeah. Terry: Did you deliberately have all the bad people survive the movie because you knew there'd be a sequel? Rob: Not necessarily because I knew there'd be a sequel, but I just knew that... well, in a way yeah. I mean, I didn't want to kill Captain Spaulding off because, you know... The thing with the sequel is I'm not really a big fan of sequels, albeit for us to say because they're usually horrible. I mean, they usually ARE horrible. But, I figured just protecting myself against it, I knew if the movie was successful, they would want a sequel. And, if I didn't want to make it, they would get someone else to make it. That's just the way your contract reads. So, I thought well I want to leave it so that if there has to be one, there's somewhere to go with it and stuff. That's why I sort of kept all the characters alive, because I liked them. Terry: You brought up a good point there. For instance with "Nightmare on Elm Street", the legend Wes Craven who was the original writer / director did two of them and then he walked away and other people did it. Rob: Yeah. Terry: Would you walk away from what you created and let somebody else do it? Rob: Probably not because I've got my deal structured in a way where I'm protecting it. I own the sequel, and then I'll own the next one because I could never do that. It just seems weird to me. I guess some people don't care. Carpenter sort of did that with "Halloween" and moved on to other things, but I'd rather just not see anymore Captain Spaulding than see it turn into something that I hate. Terry: But I take it you are in works for a sequel? Rob: Yeah, big time. I'm just trying to finish up the script. Well, the script is pretty much finished. It's a lot more elaborate than the last movie so I'm trying to get a grip on myself at this point. Terry: Do you have a working title? Rob: No. Terry: "House of 1,002 Corpses" or? Rob: No, what I want to do is I'm going to give it a title. Terry: Yeah. Rob: Because, I hate that. What I figure is the way you have "Star Wars" and then you have "The Empire Strikes Back". That's what I want to do. Make it it's own real movie. Terry: In your film you went pretty far, not to me but there are some others who would cower down in their seats... Rob: Right. Terry: Is there anything that you would be afraid to do? Is there anything that you think would be too taboo in a film? Rob: Well, I never really think of things as too taboo, but there's just stuff that's like "Well, I don't really want to watch that." You know? Like, I don't want to watch Otis have sex with children or there's just certain things like that. That's just not my idea of entertainment. But as far as too taboo? Not really because usually it's the extremes that make things work whether it's a horror movie or like would "Something About Mary" be funnier if they decided to tone everything down that's funny in the movie? Terry: Well we first heard your song and there's mention of subjects like necrophilia, and while I noticed that it was in the film, it was very small. Rob: Yeah. Terry: So, where you a little leery of expanding on that? Rob: No, I just never really did. I'll probably expand on it maybe in the next one. (Laughs.) Terry: I don't want to sound like I like that! It's not like, "Oh, this guys' weird. He wants to see more!" (Laughs.) Rob: (Laughs.) Well, there's certain stuff that's kind of in there that's not really expanded upon. Like everybody thinks that, "Oh, Captain Spaulding's chicken is human parts!" but I always just thought of it as chicken! I never thought it was supposed to be human body parts. Terry: How much of the sequel can you actually tell us? I know it's not finished yet but is it pretty much the same theme of what happens further with the family? Rob: No, what it really is... all I can tell you really is the tables sort of turn and what I want to do is have the family and everything they do become discovered. The house gets raided by the police so it's sort of like they're on the run. So, it's not like more people come to the house. The whole thing is exposed and they're on the defensive through the whole movie. So, it's different. It's almost like a bloody road movie. Terry: It of course is not my opinion, but I've heard a few people say that you were ripping of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". What's your comment on that? Rob: Well I don't really see it that way. First of all, the first person I asked that of said, "What? That's retarded!" and was Tobe Hooper. Terry: There you go. Rob: He didn't see it that way, so that's kind of funny. I just thought four people, stranded, rain, go to scary house. It's the same premise for "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", for "The Old Dark House", for many movies. I just think that the people who shout that the most have very little horror movie knowledge and that's just their 'go to' reference, just like in music there's always the 'go to' reference. Terry: Well you have your people over here that say it's corny, and it's cliche... Rob: Yeah. Terry: And then you have your fans on the other side who say, "Well, he's doing a tribute to '70s exploitation and horror films." Rob: Well to me everything's a little bit of everything. The film breaks down in a funny way with different people, but what I like about it is it really divides people. That's what me and the cast would always talk about. We'd go, "We know that people are either going to love it or hate it." and that's how everything was. When I was a kid and I loved "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" or "The Last House on the Left", it wasn't like the whole neighborhood loved it! It was like you were the one fucking weird kid that loved it! It was always like that. There was always a weird dividing line. Terry: Would you say that you deliberately did certain things in certain ways to remind somebody of a classic film they knew? Rob: That's a weird thing because sometimes people go, "Oh, well that's obviously an homage to this." and I'll go, "Shit, that didn't even cross my mind." I think a lot of that has to do with when you do your first anything it's 30... whatever.. 5 years of your love of all these things that are in your head floating around and it finally all comes out, and it takes a minute. Just like a lot of bands' first records are very influenced by whatever bands they loved, until you get your grasp. There's stuff in there where people will go, "Oh, that's so 'Motel Hell'!" "Motel Hell"? I saw that movie when it came out and haven't thought of it since. Terry: That's what we were saying. Rob: Yeah! Terry: Yeah, a lot of people do that. Rob: Yeah. Maybe I'd watch that now and go, "Oh my god, I didn't even realize." but it's just one of those funny things like that. Terry: Yeah. Are you going to be going on tour soon, and if so, are you going to be using your tour to promote your films in any way? Rob: Actually, I'm not going to be going on tour. Terry: Oh, really? Rob: There's no plans for touring because the only plans there are is to start making the next movie. Touring plans are all on hold for quite a while. Terry: Would you be using any of Universal again because the house is there? Rob: Probably not, only because it's so expensive to shoot there that I could probably rebuild that house somewhere else cheaper than shooting there. Terry: Like Palmdale! (Laughs.) Rob: (Laughs.) Yeah, so it'd probably just be easier. Terry: Let me ask you this, after Universal was out of the picture, did they have any qualms or complaints about you having the Universal images in the film that you have in there? You have posters and film clips and such. Rob: No. Truthfully, I feel bad sometimes because it's like Universal has become some villain, but Universal was as cool as they could be with what was going on. They let us sell it. They let us move on and try to find different things. They could've easily said, "No, it's going in the vault. You'll never see it again. Thank you very much, goodbye." So, for a big company to play ball, whether that's because I'm still part of the company or not, but you know. I was reading that a lot of people seemed disappointed that I didn't bag on Universal on the director's commentary, but nothing to say because things worked out. Terry: Unfortunately, a lot of people look at it that way though, that they were the bad guys. Rob: Yeah. Terry: Like the magazine, they did a little thing on it and they called it "Robbing Zombie". Rob: Oh yeah. (Laughs.) Terry: My editor's little play on words. (Chuckles.) Rob: Yeah, it's easy to do that, but it's so much more complicated then just this faceless entity is the villain. Terry: Why do you think other rock artists like yourself haven't gone into directing films like Alice Cooper, or you know, Dee Snider of "Twisted Sister" had kind of a failure with his film "Strangeland". Rob: I guess they just don't have any desire to. It's one thing to be a fan of something, and one thing to really want to do it. Terry: Would you say that the fact that you're a real true fan really helps you out in doing what you're doing with the films? Rob: Yeah. I think at first when the film came out, or when people heard about it, there was a certain prejudice like, "Who's this guy think he is? What's he doing? Shouldn't he stick to what he does?" but I'm not dabbling in this for fun. This is what I want to do. This is always what I've wanted to do. I've been trying for a long time to make this happen. It wasn't until now that it happened. It is an insane amount of work. You can't just do it like, "Oh, that might be fun one day." Terry: You were telling a story in your director's commentary on the DVD about the lady with the contacts who said that Bill Moseley had gone blind and all that... Rob: (Chuckles.) Yeah. Terry: You said that there were some other stories that you didn't want to tell. Are you ready to tell them yet? Rob: About that woman? Terry: Yes. We don't have to say her name. (Laughs.) Rob: I don't remember her name so I couldn't say it anyway. I.. shit, I don't remember. It was just this bizarre... like every once in a while on a film set you'll get a certain person who wants to direct all the attention to them. Terry: We understand all that because we're actually movie extras. So we know there's a lot of strange people in the biz. Rob: Ok. Yeah, and this woman somehow got it in her head that everything going on was about those contact lenses and was running around... I just couldn't believe it! Bill Moseley's standing there eating a sandwich and she's running around, "BILL MOSELEY HAS GONE BLIND! HE CAN'T SEE! We have to rush him to the hospital NOW!" I go, "Bill, are you ok?" and he goes, "What are you talking about?" And it's like, "Well, she just said you'd gone blind." Even he said, "She's out of her fucking mind. Can we fire her?" Terry: (Laughs.) And this was Dennis Fimple's last film? Rob: Yeah. Terry: Is that how you pronounce it? Fimple? Rob: Fimple, yeah. Terry: He passed away right? Rob: Yeah, that really sucked. Terry: He never got to see the film? Rob: No, he never did. I never really found out what happened to him; how he died, but he was great. He was funny because I had a little trouble casting his part. I had one person in mind. Frank Gorshin came in for that role. I thought he'd be great and he probably would be because I wanted someone who's crazy but really crotchety mean guy and he had that vibe. Terry: Especially now, he's very old. Rob: Yeah. (Chuckles.) I came in and met with him and I thought he was going to do it, but then he was sort of already committed to doing this one man George Burns thing that he does off Broadway. So he fell out and I was like, "Oh, great." We did this casting call of old guys. (Chuckles.) Terry: And Dennis' audition is on the DVD right? Rob: Right, but Dennis was funny because he didn't come in for that. When I watched all the guys that did, every single guy was completely recognizable, like the old man that was in "Old School". You'd recognize every single one of them, but they all seemed like really nice old men and the way that I tried to separate them was I go, "Let's have them tell the joke. Let's see if they can convincingly scream out pussy and all this." Every single one of these guys seemed SO embarrassed to say it. They were like... ugh.. uh... (makes uncomfortable movements). You could tell they were just oh... uh.. um. Then Dennis had come in to read for this nothing tiny role that was one line and I was like, "That's the guy!" He came in and read and that was just him anyway! That was how he was all the time, so he was it. Terry: Then there was someone else you mentioned in the director's commentary concerning the liquor store scene where you had to replace the actor who was cast as the original Goober because he got offended? Rob: Yeah, we had this other guy who was the first guy I cast and he was really weird. He was the exact opposite. He was real skinny and he had freaky hair, big giant glasses, and a big beard. He was just so bizarre and I was like, "That is so perfect for a guy who's working there." It was all done and then all of a sudden, "Yeah, this movie offends his religious beliefs. He can't do it." Terry: What kind of a movie did he think it was?! Rob: What kind of religious beliefs does he have!?! (Laughs.) Terry: (Laughs.) Rob: So, at last minute, Joe (Dobbs III) who played Goober was sort of like runner-up so we called him. Terry: I heard that there was so improvisation on the set too? Rob: Sort of. It was sort of rehearsed improving. There's always that moment when you can't quite see how things are going to play and everyone's standing there and you go, "OK!" I did a lot of rehearsing at my house with the cast, just to get them in the groove. Mostly the four kids because those were the ones that I thought would get eaten alive by the rest of them in a way because they're normal and everyone's just so crazy, and I rehearsed with Sid and Michael (Pollard) a lot. Terry: It's very cool that you actually did some of the filming in your house with a camcorder which gave it that home movie like look. Rob: Yeah. Terry: Yeah, that's very old school Ed Wood technique. Rob: That was always the point where you felt like you were really having fun. It really felt like we're definitely making Tim Burton's idea of what an Ed Wood movie would be. It just felt like, "What am I surrounded with?" You're surrounded by nothing but freaks. Everyone's like 9 feet tall, and everyone's crazy! It was fun though. Terry: Do you ever have anybody that says that you're too old school, that you should be more with CGI and that? Rob: No. In fact, it's funny. I thought that people would think that way but it always seems to be that everyone says the exact opposite. Everybody I know is like, "I fucking hate CGI effects in horror movies." Terry: Oh yeah! Rob: But films break down into different groups. I notice just talking to kids, it depends on your age. If you grew up with '70s films then you have a real different idea of what horror is than kids who's first horror movie was "Friday the 13th Part 4". They just see it differently. The '70s stuff is so bizarre, and the more bizarre the better. Then those movies were so formula. Terry: They had to have something to counteract the disco music. Rob: Yeah, totally. (Laughs.) It seems like younger kids aren't as willing to go along for the ride sometimes, but then there are a lot of really young fans who seem to really love it, so it's not really an age thing. Terry: You said something at the very end of the DVD commentary about what you called "House of 1,000 Problems"... Rob: (Laughs.) Terry: ...and you said something about your legal department and how they're still working overtime. Is that right? Was that kind of a Freudian slip? Rob: Probably not, I just don't remember what I was talking about. Doing that audio commentary is weird. Terry: It's got to be really hard by yourself. Rob: You're just like sitting in a room talking, "Blah, blah, blah." Terry: It was in several takes too I noticed, right? Rob: I did two takes because just sometimes you go, "Wait, I think I repeated that." I still haven't listened to it so I don't even know how they cut it together. I was just so sick of listening to myself talk that I don't even want to hear it back. Terry: And you actually have "House of 1,000 Corpses" action figures? Rob: Yeah! Terry: Where do you get these? Rob: Well, they didn't come out yet. They'll hit stores in October, but they're really funny. Terry: Toys-R-Us? (Chuckles.) Rob: If they'll carry them! I know that Spencer's or Hot Topic or Music Land will. We premiered them at the San Diego Comic Con about a month ago and actually they're on the cover of this Action Figure Digest magazine. So, we're on the cover this month. They're pretty funny. The Halloween masks... I just got the finished masks yesterday. There's a Dr. Satan mask, a Captain Spaulding mask, and sort of like the zombie that's on the poster mask, or whatever he is.. rotting guy mask. Terry: Let me ask you a really stupid question. I like to ask silly questions... Rob: (Chuckles.) Terry: What do you think would happen if your action figures met Barbie and Ken? Rob: Well, I think Ken would be dead and Otis would fuck Barbie. (Laughs.) Terry: (Laughs.) So, would you say that now that Lion's Gate is your studio for doing the sequel, are they giving you real free reign with everything? Do they have standards as far as "you can't do this, and you can't do that"? Rob: We haven't encountered anything like that yet. When they acquired the film, I was so sick of dealing with it that I said, "Look, this is the film." Basically like, "I'm not changing anything." And they were like, "We're not asking you to change anything." The biggest problem all along, which is an entire story itself, is just getting an R-rating. Nobody would release it any other way, even Lion's Gate. Terry: I would think your fans would expect an R-rating, wouldn't they? Rob: Yeah, but I think a lot of fans think, "Why didn't you release it unrated or NC-17?" but, those days are over! That means, ok, if you live in New York and LA, then you're all set, but for the rest of you, you're screwed. That was the only thing Lion's Gate demanded, but funny enough the one good thing of MGM, when we were working with MGM before that fell apart was... Terry: Oh, so you were working with MGM too? Rob: Yeah, they say that we weren't. They always say that, "Oh, that never happened." but we went from Universal to MGM. Right after we got dumped by Universal, MGM saw the picture and went, "Oh we love it. We want to put it out." They had just had success with the first "Jeepers Creepers" so they were in a horror movie mind-set. Terry: You're movie was way better than "Jeepers Creepers"! (Chuckles.) Rob: (Chuckles.) But, they were cool though. We were editing the film because we still had an NC-17 at that point and they go, "Just get an R. That's all we're saying." So, but then that thing happened where I made some smart ass comment and they kicked us out. They deny it, but it's all true. Terry: You don't remember what you said? Rob: No, I remember exactly what I said. Terry: Go ahead, say it. Rob: I was on the set of "Daredevil" and I went down there because MTV had sent me down to the set of "Daredevil" as this correspondent. "Go interview Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner and all these people." So, I was down there and I'm miked and on camera, but you forget. I was talking to Ben Affleck and he asked me, "Why did Universal drop your movie?" I go, "Well, because they said it was 'morally corrupt'." but I said, "It's all good now. MGM is putting it out." He goes, "Well, what does MGM think?" I go, "I don't know, I guess they don't have any morals. They don't care." Terry: (Laughs.) Rob: Just joking around, like I said it to you, but what happened is somebody overheard it and put it on the MTV web site. Then within 24 hours it went from the MTV web site to page two of "Variety", with a nice picture of me going "MGM Has No Morals Says Rob Zombie!" That morning, just 24 hours later, I get a call from the editor. I hadn't even gotten to the editing room yet! It was like 9 o'clock in the morning. He calls me and goes, "I just got a phone call saying 'Get your shit out of there NOW!'" Terry: Wow. Rob: I was like, "What?!" Then two seconds my manager calls and goes, "I don't know what you fucking said, but this deal is fucked!" It took a week before someone from MGM would even take our phone calls. I said, "Look, I didn't say it like that. It was taken out of context. I was joking." They're like, "We don't care." and that was the end of that deal. Now if someone asks them, they're like, "Oh, we never got past the negotiating stage." They tell that story, but I don't know why they don't just want to be truthful. We were in there editing. They paid all the bills. As with Universal, there's always people that are like, "Fuck man, we really wanted to do this movie!" There was a lot of people at Universal too that after we got dropped, we talked to later and they were like, "Fuck, this sucks. We really wanted to work on this film." They were all excited. Someone at MGM helped us. They still helped us get the R-rating, even though we had officially been kicked out of there. Terry: Well, it really surprises me because I don't want to embarass you, you're a very humble man, but you're really big in the rock world and just to have your name attached to something alone I would think would cause them to kiss your ass a little more. Rob: Well, it's funny. Yes and no because studios (especially at that moment) they don't want the controversy. It's different. Record labels can kind of deal with controversy more, but studios don't want it because they're these big, giant corporations more so, owned by giant water companies and general electric. They don't want that type of weird publicity. They just don't want to deal with it. Terry: Is your budget going to be bigger for the sequel? Rob: It'll be bigger and I think that the money will go a lot further because I think there was a lot of money wasted on this first one. Terry: Well you had said that in the commentary in reference to how you had like two cars and 75 drivers. What's going on here, you know? Rob: Yeah, well just because shooting on the Universal back lot was really expensive. That was probably costing us $200,000 a day if we didn't do anything except eat lunch. So just things like that. Like I said, we could've rebuilt the house somewhere else cheaper. Terry: Can Lion's Gate copy that design knowing that that's their "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" design? Rob: I don't know. I haven't really gotten that far with it yet, but we've got some new producers on the film that I'm working with and they've already said, "Look, if you give us the exact same budget, we can make it go twice as far." Terry: Sheri commented she didn't like the stabbing scene. Is it just because she doesn't like violence or does she not like horror? Rob: She likes horror movies, but she doesn't like violence. She's really anti-violence. Well, most girls are. That's like a boy thing. But whenever she's watching a movie... she doesn't like real violence, you know? Terry: Yeah. Let me ask you this. In the scene where Sheri had her bare behind close up on the screen... Rob: Yeah? Terry: Did that bother you, as her husband, having everybody looking at her? Rob: No, movies are a weird thing. It just becomes... stuff that would seem weird in real life becomes... I don't know. It's hard to explain. You enter sort of an alternate universe. Terry: I understand you have a DVD coming out of your music and concert footage? Rob: Yeah. Terry: Want to talk about that? Rob: Yeah, September 23rd I'm putting out sort of a career retrospective record and it comes with a DVD, so it's like 19 songs and 10 on the DVD and a 38 page book that comes with it and this whole sort of thing. Terry: A boxed set. Rob: Yeah, I just thought it was a good time. It's been almost 20 years and I thought it was a good time to sum it all up. Terry: Has it really been that long? 20 years? Wow. Rob: Yeah, 20, right. Not sum it all up because I'm quitting or something, but just it seems like a lot of times, after a certain amount of time, you get kids and fans are confused. They're like, "Is that the same guy that was in that band? And is he..." It's like, why don't I just put it all together and make it easy to understand. Terry: How's the Guitar Center promotion coming? Rob: I don't know what the hell that's all about. (Laughs.) Terry: (Laughs.) Really? I thought you would know! Rob: I'm not sure what that's all about. I hope it's going well. (Chuckles.) Terry: Is it really true that you were production assistant on "Peewee's Playhouse"? Rob: Yeah. Terry: My God! (Laughs.) What a stretch from that to what you're doing now! Rob: (Laughs.) I know. That was about 1984, I think, if I'm not mistaken. Terry: Wow. Rob: It was the first season of "PeeWee's Playhouse" because the first season they shot in New York. Then Paul Ruebens I think sued this company that I worked for called Broadcast Arts and moved the show to LA, but the first season was in New York, and that's when I worked on it. Terry: Are you going to have a bigger role in the next "House of 1,000 Corpses" film? Rob: No, I won't have anything. Terry: Why not? Rob: Because I think it takes you out of the movie. Terry: Really? Rob: First of all... Terry: Even Hitchcock made cameos in all his films. Rob: Yeah, that's cool because he thought of it, and he did that, but I don't think every director needs to suddenly stick his face in the movie. I don't mind when people do it. I love when you see Scorsese. Scorsese's always good in little roles he does, but it's not necessary for me to be in it. Terry: Would you rather be doing what you're doing today, or back in the olden days when James Whale was directing for Universal in the golden age of Hollywood? Rob: Well, I don't know. It's hard to say. It seems like the best days would've been the '70s. It seems like those were very studio days. It just seems like there was this time period. Whenever I talk to somebody about it like John Carpenter or Tobe Hooper, it just seems like for a brief moment in the '70s everybody went crazy. It was the time to be doing things. Terry: So, the '70s was definitely your favorite time period then? Rob: Yeah, without a doubt. Terry: You were what, maybe 10 in the '70s? Rob: Well yeah... in '76 I was in the 5th grade. I can always remember because they made us pose with the liberty bell because it was the bicentennial so I can always figure it out from there. But yeah, just seeing all those movies... It was like every time you went to the movies it seemed like a life altering event. You'd go see "Jaws", and "Star Wars", and "Close Encounters". It was like, "Oh my god, every movie gets better than the next!" I never feel like that anymore. Terry: What do you think it takes for a horror film, especially one like yours, to suck people in to the point where you really care about the characters? For example, where we saw your film, people were rooting and so forth... Rob: (Laughs.) Terry: (Laughs.) It had an interesting effect because we watched it in Palmdale, California and first of all it was hysterical because they showed it at one theatre, once a week, at like 11 at night... Rob: Once a week! (Laughs.) Well, that's kind of cool! Terry: ...AND you had to go up to the box office because they would not put it on the marquee. So you had to know about it, like it was some secret society meeting or something. Rob: (Laughs.) Could they make it more difficult? Terry: (Laughs.) Once inside the theatre, we were cheering, but most of the people acted like they felt very dirty being there. Rob: That's good. I like that. I always said that from day one. It seems like those movies would make you leave the theater feeling dirty, and sometimes guilty for enjoying it that much. That was like with "Texas Chainsaw Massacre". I was rooting for Leatherface over the dead. I don't know why. There's no reason to hate 'Sally', but you know. That's what I think makes a good horror movie, and that's why I sort of lost interest after a while with new ones because they seem to focus in the wrong direction. It was always, "Oh, well the movie's called "Frankenstein" because it's about Frankenstein, or "King Kong" because it was about King Kong." It was always about the villain, the bad people. That's what it was. But then it became all about fresh faced, young kids from television shows and some killer way in the background we don't even care about. That was just like, "What is this?" I always felt like when I was watching "I Know What You Did Last Summer"... or something, I felt like I was watching a big budget version of Nancy Drew / Hardy Boys mystery. Terry: Yeah! Rob: It's like a teen thriller, not some disgusting horror movie. Terry: We noticed that a lot of the theme of the film was anti-establishment, such as kill the cheerleaders and... Rob: (Laughs.) Yeah... Terry: (Laughs.) Yeah my daughter personally wanted to thank you for that! Rob: (Laughs.) Yeah, Otis has got a lot of bones to pick with people. Terry: So, what encouraged you to include that theme of "kill the cheerleaders and the popular people"? Rob: Because I think that that's the way people are like, for the most part. I mean, that's how I grew up thinking. I think people that like horror movies for the most part are like that. They weren't for everybody, you know? You just always sided with the monster. Terry: Were you pretty much of an outsider in school? You weren't on the prom committee or anything? (Chuckles.) Rob: No, I didn't do anything. I have a feeling I'm one of those kids that everyone probably goes, "He went to our school? I don't even remember that guy." (Laughs.) I didn't do ANYTHING. I was just like, "I don't want to do anything, except go home and watch TV." I didn't join any clubs. I didn't want to do anything. I had two friends who were weird like me and we'd just go, "Let's go home and watch 'The Omega Men' again." Terry: Yeah. Were there any scenes that were cut out of the theatrically released version of the film that you can tell us about? I know there had to be stuff cut out. You said some of it was lost, but... Rob: Well, there was a lot of weird side track stuff that got cut out. There was Jeanne Carmen, who was a character that got 100% cut out. I mean Jeanne was the actress, not the character. The kids when they were travelling across country, they were visiting all these things to write their book on, but I showed them at these various locations. I had this weird Skunk Ape sub-plot that was running through the movie, but I just thought it became confusing for people. I have a real scatter brained mind, the way I think, and sometimes I feel like, "Does this make sense? It makes sense to me, but does this make any sense to anyone else?" Terry: Would you say that you had so much footage that you cut out of the film that maybe it might have been a two and a half hour movie if you had left it all in? Rob: Well, yeah, because there was a lot of stuff that I cut out just because. It was always hard. That's the hard thing about editing. I thought the scene worked and I thought it was good, but it just wasn't necessary. When I watched the movie with an audience I felt like... the weird dilemma I had was like there was more scenes with the cops. I thought that they were really good together and I thought, "Oh, the more you like them and the more human they are, the more horrible it is to watch them die." but, I always thought the title of the movie worked against it in certain ways because people were waiting for it to happen. Everyone's like, "Well, there wasn't enough character development." but when it's in there they're like, "Oh, well we just want to see them die! Come on, hurry up and kill somebody!" So, it becomes this weird balancing act of, "Well, how much time do I want to invest in a character you figure is going to die?" I don't know. So, there's a lot of stuff. Plus, there's a lot of violent stuff left out too. Especially the ending of the movie which just ends on her eye when she's laying on the table completely dissected with her organs hanging out, and her heart pumping in her hand, and all this stuff, but couldn't show any of that! (Laughs.) Terry: (Laughs.) I take it Dr. Satan is a member of the family then? Rob: Possibly. Terry: Possibly? You don't know yet? Rob: Well, you know, that's what the sequel's for. (Laughs.) Terry: And Sid (Captain Spaulding) could possibly be a member of the family? Rob: We don't know. Terry: We don't know yet? Rob: (Laughs.) Terry: I understand that Michael J. Pollard was what you referred to as "all over the script". What did you mean by that? Did he skip off his lines frequently or something? Rob: I love him. I've always been a big fan of his, kind of like Sid. I was always the type of kid that would watch a movie like "Bonnie & Clyde" and completely hyper-focus on Michael J. Pollard and ignore Warren Beatty. I would always focus on the weird character actors. He's great, and I think that he works, but he is all over the place. (Chuckles.) That's why sometimes that scene would crack me up because the look on Sid's face is just genuine like, "Ok! Not following the script are we? I'll just try to play along!" Terry: I really appreciated that you had the homage to the horror hosts and also the nudie cutie / stag films. That was great. Rob: Yeah. I love the horror hosts. Terry: Did you watch some when you were a kid? Rob: Yeah, it was never as popular where I lived. I remember when Elvira first came on the air, and I remember when I moved to New York seeing Zacherly. There was one other one called Morgus or something that was on TV that I remember watching. Terry: Ghoulardi. Rob: Yeah, I remember him but he was more in Cleveland or Chicago or something. But yeah, I wanted to incorporate all of that because I just was creating this fake world where like, "Well, you know, all these killers. They love horror movies and..." Just a world of everything I love and I think that a lot of people don't get it though. "Oh, well it's not realistic." Terry: It's a movie! Rob: So, watch the fucking news! I just wanted it to be an alternate reality that you get sucked into with this weird life. I find scenes like where Otis and Grandpa are watching TV... Terry: Arguing about "The Munsters"... (Laughs.) Rob: ...are some of my favorite scenes! I think some people just want to see like, "Gouge someone's eye out for five minutes!" Eh, that's boring. I like weird character moments with these characters, and you don't get a lot of that because usually the bad characters in movies now are so secondary that they don't get to do anything. They don't get to interact and they don't get to be the stars of the movies. Terry: Do you foresee this becoming the next "Rocky Horror" where it's got midnight showings, and people dressing up to go see the film? Rob: Probably not, only because it seems like that doesn't exist anymore. Terry: Yeah, it's sad. Rob: I think this movie and other movies perhaps could have that potential, but I just think those days are gone. It even killed it for me in a sense when I was a kid. I would always go see "Rocky Horror" at midnight, until I got a copy of it. Then I never went again. (Laughs.) I was like, "I've got it in my house!" I think that's the thing. Who's going to go to the movies once you own the DVD unless we do some special unrated screening somewhere? That sort of thing is just a thing of the past. Terry: Yeah. I also liked how you included the serial killers theme with Ed Gein and all them. You actually recreated the Ed Gein crime scene, right? Rob: Yeah, that was fun. Terry: Rather than using stock footage... Rob: We had some stock footage but there's really not much footage of him. There's like one thing of him being led into a police car and he's covering his face, and I was like, "Well, that's not that scary." The funny thing is, there's certain people... I've read some reviews and they think so much of the movie is stock footage and they slag it. Yeah, Ed Gein had a camera crew while he was dismembering people in his barn! Could we think about this for a second? Terry: (Laughs.) I got a kick out of your commentary where you said you had a problem with some strange extras who kept looking into the camera? Rob: (Laughs.) Yeah, well we're trying to film Dr. Satan's thing and we've got all these extras that were just... You kind of pick them out from photos, "That guy looks weird. That guy looks weird." and they show up and they're just... obviously extras are just normal people but... Terry: I wouldn't call them normal. Rob: Yeah, but we had like a weirdo Russian lady who doesn't speak English, who seems to have no concept of what a movie is. I don't know how she got the job, and the camera goes by and we're like, "Stop looking into the lens!" and she's like "Hmmm?" (and looks straight ahead into lens). Then none of us spoke Russian. Terry: (Laughs.) It's amazing. They weren't from Central Casting? Rob: They WERE! Terry: They should know what to do. Rob: Yeah. They don't. It's amazing. Terry: We're from Central Casting and we know what to do! (Laughs.) Rob: (Laughs.) It was amazing! I mean, some of them knew, but there was always the occasional person and it was just like, "What is this guy doing?! Why does he keep looking in the camera?" Eventually after a while we started trading out the extras with set people that were working because we knew, "You'll know what to do!" and they'd just do it. A lot of people played multiple roles, just for that reason. (Laughs.) Terry: A lot of times that's for budget reasons too, right? Rob: Yeah, like Bill Moseley plays three different roles in the film. Terry: Is everybody signed on the for the sequel, other than the ones that were killed off? Rob: Everybody is signed on in spirit. We haven't signed contracts or anything, but we've discussed it. The funny thing about this movie is everyone's like, "Oh, you make a movie and it splits up and you never talk to the people again." but we all became good friends because we're all so like minded. Bill Moseley lives a couple of blocks from my house. Sid lives in Simi Valley, but I talk to him all the time and we're all buddies. I think that's why the next one will be so good, because we'll pick it up and go as opposed to starting over. Also, the second movie we're going to make very different because the biggest thing I was afraid of... I didn't say this before, but the reason I think most sequels suck is because we don't want all of these characters to become so lovable that they're just campy. Terry: Yeah, like how Godzilla started out scary and turned into this cartoon. Rob: Right. The first "Godzilla" was fucking freaky when you were a kid, and by the end it's just like a Roadrunner cartoon. I don't want Captain Spaulding to suddenly become like, "I'm here to say my funny one liner." I want to darken all the characters and de-camp it. I was never trying to make it campy in the first place because I think that'll suck all the life out of them. Nobody will be funny. It'll just be the same... like Freddy Krueger's scary, then he just sort of becomes like, "Now I saw that thing that we know." You know? Terry: Freddy Krueger was better when he didn't talk. Rob: Yeah, now he's just trying to be funny. Terry: So, I know you're doing this sequel, but later on will you be doing different stories? Rob: Yeah, the sequel wasn't really what my next film was. I wrote another script in between, but it's hard to get movies made obviously, so if someone's going to green light a movie you'd be pretty silly to go, "Oh, no. I'm gonna have to pass." because you may be sitting there for the rest of your life waiting for the next one. I like the idea of continuing on the adventures of these characters because I do really like these characters. I thought, well, sequels seem to work now because they make them faster. You didn't wait 5 years to make part two of "Lord of the Rings". All the actors look the same. They all seem the same. It's all in the same spirit, but if I called up Sid Haig in 7 years and go, "Want to make this movie again?" the vibe would be lost. So, I think it's all still there. Terry: One last question, do you think it's mostly horror fans who see your films or do you think sci-fi fans see it also? Did you mean to kind of make a comment against sci-fi fans in the movie, because the sci-fi fan was all nerdy and 'let's kill him off'! Rob: I wasn't really making a comment because I always look at horror and sci-fi as the same thing. Terry: It is. It's very similar. Rob: When I was a kid I loved "King Kong" as much as I loved "The Day the Earth Stood Still", and "War of the Worlds" and "Frankenstein". It was all the same to me. Sci-fi sort of started sucking when... I mean, I love "Star Wars", but "Star Wars" started that bad trend. Sci-fi went away and just became action movies in space, so I sort of lost interested because everything was like "Total Recall"... just dopey! But, I just think of it all as the same thing. I don't know why we decided to make Bill a sci-fi fan. (Laughs.) Terry: (Laughs.) He was great. Rob: He's funny. He was good. Terry: The next movie is going to be more violent too, right? Rob: Yeah, I want to make it more violent, but more... really... not that I wasn't trying to do this with the other one, but... One of the scenes I find most disturbing, and it's not in the movie too much, and... there's only one time it seemed disturbing when we were filming the movie and it was when Bill Moseley has the cheerleader sort of tied to the bed and he's carving on her back. That was the only time that it felt like, "Whoa, what are we doing here?" It's because it was an enclosed set. It was just the actors and me and I was filming it. Terry: And when YOU feel uncomfortable... (Laughs.) Rob: (Laughs.) Well, it just seemed real. There was nothing to make it seem like a movie happening. So, that sort of vibe is good. Terry: I bet you were glad to say cut. You were probably afraid that he was going to forget that he was an actor and do something serious. (Chuckles.) Rob: (Laughs.) Even Bill after I said cut got up and was like, "Whoa, I felt kinda weird about that one! I don't know if I want my kids seeing that." (Laughs.) Terry: (Laughs.) Very good. Thank you so much. Rob: Sure.