By Ted Geoghegan
Musician Rob Zombie’s voyage through dark art has taken him from frontman of the band White Zombie to a massively successful solo career, but it wasn’t until 1999, when he was asked to create a massive haunted house for Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights, that the next chapter in his life would quickly take shape.
Universal wanted a haunted house designed by Zombie and influenced by his iconic, hard-hitting music. The result was a gory, trippy journey through a rural gas station, its grotesque “Murder Ride”, and a neighboring farmhouse populated with all manner of lunatics. It was entitled “Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses.”
As horror-loving themepark patrons rejoiced, Universal, eager to keep their relationship with Zombie going, asked if he’d like to direct a film for them. As it turns out, the shock rocker was most certainly interested, and pitched the studio a feature film version of the ride, using the same title. The studio was so thrilled by Zombie’s twelve-page treatment, they immediately greenlit the project and had it filming on their backlot two months later.
The film version of his acclaimed Universal experience expanded on the idea of a lonely country gas station, its distressing proprietor dressed in clown garb and supremely eager to send unsuspecting guests through his homemade carnival ride based on infamous serial killers — including local legend “Dr. Satan”… who, working deep below a neighboring farmhouse, turns out to be much more real than anyone expects.
The film, budgeted by Universal at a modest seven million dollars, would cast relative newcomers Erin Daniels (The L Word), Nerdist creator Chris Hardwick, Rainn Wilson (The Office), and Jennifer Jostyn (Deep Impact) as its ill-fated travelers, facing off against the maniacal Firefly clan, portrayed by horror stalwarts Karen Black (Trilogy of Terror), Sid Haig (Spider Baby), and Bill Moseley (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2). Rounding out the cast were exploitation legends Michael J. Pollard, Irwin Keyes, and Tom Towles — as well as Zombie’s wife, Sheri Moon, in her feature film debut.
From day one, however, Zombie warned the suits at Universal that the film would be extreme. Not one to shy away from excess, the director wanted to ensure that his feature debut would live up to the expectations of his fans — and the dark pedigree he had crafted through nearly 20 years of heavy metal. The film would feature scalping, dismemberment, and other violence most foul — several years before the splatter film genre would successfully resurge under the moniker of “torture porn.”
Production on House of 1000 Corpses was completed in 2000 and Universal hurriedly prepared for its release, starting their campaign with a mysterious teaser trailer that would play before every one of their upcoming releases. And for all of their support and enthusiasm, Universal’s response upon first seeing the completed film was utter shock. Stacey Snider, the head of the studio at the time, called Zombie in for a meeting, fearfully expressing to him that there was no way to release the film in its current state without garnering an NC-17 rating, which the studio was unwilling to do. With no desire to reshoot the film, Universal decided to hurriedly drop their campaign and indefinitely shelve the project. The movie was just too extreme.
Ever determined, Zombie purchased the rights to the film back from Universal and shopped it to several other studios before striking a deal with Lionsgate to distribute in 2003. Realizing horror audiences were craving extremes, Lionsgate was already hard at work preparing James Wan’s Saw for the following year and Eli Roth’s Hostel for 2005, making House of 1000 Corpses the perfect film to test their bloody waters with.
Now with a film release date, Zombie re-cut the film once more, securing it an R rating, and House of 1000 Corpses was finally unleashed upon the world on April 11, 2003, opening second at the box office and ultimately pulling in $17,000,000 worldwide. While critics nearly unanimously thumbed their noses at the film’s nihilism, dread, and buckets of blood, audiences ate it up — and by the time the ultra-violent “torture porn” craze of the mid-aughts was in full swing, Zombie was credited as one of its gory godfathers.
But, in traveling back to the heavy metal haunted house the film was based on, we can see that Zombie’s first feature was influenced by a great many films and filmmakers long before him. The lone country gas station, for example, has long been an American horror trope. From Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) to Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and David Schmoeller’s Tourist Trap (1979), the remote petrol station and its eccentric owner have become unreservedly synonymous with the proto-slasher “kids in a van” film, which Zombie’s debut borrows heavily from.
The demented Captain Spaulding, portrayed by Sid Haig in a bravado performance, serves as the station’s proprietor and carnival barker for the establishment’s “Murder Ride”. Guests boarding it are privy to mechanical recreations of crimes committed by real-life murderers Albert Fish, Lizzie Borden, and Ed Gein — but the dark ride’s garish style and wild panache are a rockabilly take on previous cinematic haunted houses, from Straker’s Funhouse in 1981’s The Funhouse to the day-glo, neon halls of Mater Tenebrarum’s manor in Dario Argento’s Inferno (1980).
Another serial killer is also profiled on Spaulding’s ride: the local Ruggsville legend of Dr. Satan. While fictional, the elderly, possibly-undead surgeon is heavily inspired by the ghoulish Dr. Freudstein of Lucio Fulci’s The House by the Cemetery (1980), who was also fond of working in cellars, jubilantly allowing his macabre surgeries to go unnoticed by the oblivious world above.
Posited above Dr. Satan’s lair is the old Firefly house, a looming, dilapidated Colonial-style manor that serves as home to a bloodthirsty clan of raving, murderous maniacs. While a number of them are named after beloved Groucho Marx characters, their twisted personalities are fully steeped in classic horror. Though ‘74’s aforementioned Texas Chainsaw is the clearest inspiration — right down to both films’ demented dinner table sequences — the “Old Dark House” genre, which heavily inspired Zombie, predated Hooper’s masterpiece by decades. Films about strange murders in old mansions — typically tinged with dark comedy — were hits as far back as the Ginger Rogers-starring The Thirteenth Guest (1932); Bob Hope’s The Cat and the Canary (1939); and Ghosts on the Loose (1943), starring Bela Lugosi and The East Side Kids. Keeping it in the family, 1000 Corpses star Sid Haig headlined 1967’s Spider Baby, which bears a striking number of similarities to Zombie’s ghoulish debut.
And where the cinematic inspirations seemingly end, Zombie’s real-life obsessions gaily begin: the film’s Halloween 1977 setting immediately reveals to us the writer-director’s shameless love of both the holiday and era — seen again in Zombie’s 2016 film, 31. From a well-placed Fiji mermaid reference to the film’s aforementioned rockabilly paint-job, House of 1000 Corpses is packed with everything on Earth that makes Rob Zombie Rob Zombie.
In 2005, Zombie followed up House of 1000 Corpses with a sequel, the aptly-named The Devil’s Rejects. Re-teaming with original stars Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Sheri Moon, he flipped the first film’s genre and sent the Firefly clan on a brutal, blood-soaked road trip across Carter-era America, the sequel as indebted to Bonnie and Clyde (1967) as the original to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Since then, Rob Zombie has written and directed a number of additional horror films, darting between dark inspirations, both real and cinematic. His oeuvre paints a portrait not only of a talented director grasping a singular, shadowy vision, but also of a fan — like so many of us — with countless, undeniable inspirations running proudly through his work.
Ted Geoghegan is a Manhattan-based filmmaker and publicist. His 2015 feature We Are Still Here was one of the year’s most acclaimed horror films. His follow up, Mohawk, is scheduled to bow later this year.
