The Devil's Rejects

[GodDamnImDaMan]

Honestly I don't understand why there is so much hate for the first film? The film took pieces of great horror films and put them all into one with a tad bit of Cheese factor.

Don't trust any reviews from a man who has a picture of a crazy scientologist as his avatar.

[MacGuffin]

His new corpse work
Director Rob Zombie’s got a new movie about to open, and he’ll be singing its praises this summer during Ozzfest.
Source: Los Angeles Times
 

 
Rob Zombie would like you to know that although his upcoming movie, "The Devil's Rejects," shares several characters with his debut feature — they're members of a marauding family of serial killers from "House of 1000 Corpses" — it is not a sequel.

"By nature, sequels are terrible," says Zombie, former front man for the platinum-selling heavy-metal band White Zombie. "This one is sort of like the next chapter for these characters. And it's a much bigger, better film than the first, which is almost never the case."

Also important to note: Although the new movie depicts characters getting stabbed to death in a junkyard, includes several gruesome torture scenes and prominently features a grimy basement where body parts are stored in refrigerators, the director says it would be a mistake to construe "The Devil's Rejects" as a horror film.

"To me a horror movie is the last thing it is," he asserts. "There's a lot of terrible things that take place, and it's definitely violent and whatnot. But it's more like an Italian western like 'Once Upon a Time in the West.' Or 'Taxi Driver' — that really nasty '70s filmmaking that doesn't exist anymore."

Zombie has staked his professional reputation on upending conventional wisdom — such as the thinking that filmmakers can't be rock stars and vice versa. Beginning this month and through to September, he'll be traveling cross-country with Ozzy Osbourne's Ozzfest rock festival, performing on its second stage, just as he did before the release of "House" during Ozzfest 2003. He will proselytize about "The Devil's Rejects" directly from the concert stage and plans to play the movie's trailer during his sets. But Zombie stops short of admitting that he is doing Ozzfest only to push the film.

"It's a great promotional tool that you wouldn't ordinarily have," he says. "It's good for the movie because we're going to be in a different city every day. The same person that typically buys my records is the type of person who would go see movies like that. It's a perfect match."

His efforts paid off for "House." Though generally mauled by critics, the film has attained certified cult status among hard-core horror enthusiasts — it did a respectable $12 million in its theatrical run and has gone on to sell a million DVDs.

This time, Ozzfest is just one facet of the multi-pronged media assault the 40-year-old director, whose driver's license lists his name as "Robert Wolfgang Zombie," is launching to get out word about his film, which opens Friday.

In addition to music, he's using comic books (a "Devil's Rejects" graphic novel is being put out this summer), the radio (Zombie hosts a weekly show on L.A.'s Indie 103.1 FM) and a weblog (lionsgatedirectors.com/zombie), a Web diary on which he has been posting news about the movie since last year.

It's hard to imagine another indie-inclined filmmaker with the wherewithal to mount a similar push, and executives at Lions Gate Films, which is releasing "Rejects," are justifiably thrilled to have a director in their stable whose commercial instinct can feed his artistic impulses. By the end of "Corpses' " opening weekend, the studio had expressed willingness to put up the money for what became "Rejects."

"To have a filmmaker who can go out there on a weekly and daily basis and help market his movie, to help share the experience with a built-in fan base, gives us a competitive edge that a lot of other movies don't have," says John Hegeman, president of worldwide marketing. "He has an unbelievable relationship with his audience. It's a very close bond."

The director relies upon his inner fanboy as muse. "I try to make the thing I want to see or hear," Zombie says, reaching up to stroke his straggly beard and revealing a "Creature From the Black Lagoon" tattoo on his forearm. "It's the simple thing: It comes from being a fan. And it all goes together. People would ask, 'What do you want to be?' Well, I wanted to be Alice Cooper and Steven Spielberg and Stan Lee."

Zombie has become increasingly disenchanted with the medium that won him his financial security and greatest acclaim. "At this point, movies are far more important to me," he says somberly. "I've been doing music for 20 years. I feel like I've done everything I'm going to do. With movies, it's all new, all fresh."

Asked how he would feel if a young fan knew him only through his cinematic output and not for White Zombie's albums, such as "Astro-Creep: 2000" or his own "Hellbilly Deluxe" (Zombie went solo in 1995), the dreadlocked director replies with typical rock star aplomb: "That would be" — here he used a common heavy-metal curse word — "awesome!

"One of the reasons I didn't do anything remotely musical for the movie myself was I wanted to put that to rest. I just wanted to show that making a movie and directing is not some ego-driven thing I'm dabbling in. I take this totally seriously — this is something I want to do."

Hegeman points out that "Rejects" is as much a road movie/revenge caper/western/cop drama as it is a horror flick.

And he confirms Zombie's stated ambition. "I think this film establishes him as a filmmaker with a unique vision," Hegeman says. "It's sort of a crazy kaleidoscope of all of these different things that you may already have an association with."

In the meantime, Zombie's biggest battle will be overcoming people's built-in expectations. "It's hard to switch fields," he says. "People don't seem to like it when you do.

"But it's always that type of thing. Metal, rock music, horror, we're always treated like the dirty little secret. It's another day of no respect. It drives me crazy, but I'm used to it."

[MacGuffin]

Rob Zombie has followed up his horror hit House of 1000 Corpses with a much more brutal, ugly and sadistic film, The Devil's Rejects. Rejects keeps some of the characters such as Captain Spaulding [Sid Haig], Otis [Bill Moseley] and Baby [Sheri Moon] but now instead of them being hunters they are being stalked by Sheriff Wydell [William Forsythe] whose brother they had killed.

Daniel Robert Epstein: Were you such a fan of the Police Academy movies and Three’s Company that you had to cast Priscilla Barnes and Leslie Easterbrook?

Rob Zombie: Truthfully I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a Police Academy movie. I think I saw the first one, but I have watched Police Academy 6 since shooting this movie, unfortunately. With Three’s Company, what kid didn’t watch that show? But really it was funny because Priscilla Barnes and Leslie Easterbrook were two people I didn’t actively pursue, they came in and read for the part. If someone had said their names, I would’ve been like, “Oh yeah, she’s cool on Three’s Company.” But I never saw her do anything like this. There were people on set who I had worked with on other films and they were like, “Holy shit. I never knew she had this in her.” So those were just lucky auditions. They came in and they were amazing. Most of the other parts were filled with people I wanted for them or I wrote it for them.

DRE: Had you always planned on doing a sequel to House of 1000 Corpses?

RZ: Well yes and no. When I finished the first film, I wrote a one-line treatment for a sequel only because I was contracted for one. They were going to make a sequel with or without me. I didn’t want it to be without me, so I kind of had a little half-assed idea.

DRE: What did you learn from the experience of doing the first movie that you’ve brought into this one?

RZ: Everything. I mean the first movie is this calamity because you think you know what’s going to happen and you think you know how movies are made, but it’s complete insanity from day one. The biggest thing was learning that preproduction is god because once you get on set, the time moves so fast that it seems like when you walk on set the first day you’re already behind schedule. Then suddenly it’s lunch and everyone is lazy because they just ate lunch and then the sun goes down and you’re like, “Terrific. We accomplished nothing.” But on this film, preproduction was very intense. The other thing was making sure your key crew members are great. On the first film, I had one cinematographer who came in and I fired him after the first week because he was just not doing his job and we were falling behind schedule every day. Then the next guy came in, who was fine, but there was no vibe whatsoever. Then he couldn’t return for the reshoot, so we brought in another guy and we didn’t get along at all. We spent most of the time like fighting on set and that’s retarded. Literally the crew was in mutiny and walking around set like “I can’t work with this guy.” For this movie, I met with a lot of cinematographers and then came back to Phil Parmet, who I just could tell from his personality that he would do whatever I wanted.

DRE: What was it like directing your wife?

RZ: It’s really easy but you have to treat every single actor like they’re the most important person because that’s the way they probably think. The whole thing about directing is you have to find a special way to manipulate each actor to do exactly what you want; yet make them think they thought of it and that you didn’t do anything.

DRE: What makes you want to create such dark films?

RZ: I’ve always been a fan of darker films, whether it is A Clockwork Orange or Taxi Driver where the lines of who’s the good guy and the bad guy are always very blurry. You love Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange even though there’s no redeeming characteristic to him whatsoever, but he’s so charismatic. The same like De Niro in Taxi Driver, at the end of the movie you’re like, “Whoa have I been rooting for an avenging hero or a complete nutcase that’s going to open fire in the Post Office tomorrow?”

DRE: Do you feel like we are supposed to be rooting for these sick people?

RZ: No, I feel like you’re not supposed to know what you’re doing. I’ll talk to different people and they’ll go “I was crying when they died.” Then other people will be like, “I hated them. I was rooting for the sheriff the whole way.” Everyone’s got a totally different opinion, which is what I like.

DRE: How about you?

RZ: For me it goes both ways because I knew those characters were ending and I did like the characters and the actors. I’ve always been a big fan as a kid of reading about the Old West and the concept of vigilante justice and that was where the Sheriff Wydell character came from. I was never rooting for anybody.

DRE: Did you have alternative endings in mind?

RZ: No, that was always the ending and every actor had a complaint about that. I wanted to do it because it seems like nobody makes a movie anymore without a sequel set up. Lions Gate was like “The franchise. It’s gone.” But you know, that’s the problem. I feel like there’s never a definitive ending anymore. Every movie ends with the possibility of another one and it drives me crazy. I feel like, “Why did I just invest two hours? It didn’t even end.”

DRE: Did you have any problems licensing those southern rock tracks?

RZ: Yeah there were always problems, but what I did this time that’s very different and what people never ever do, is that I licensed all the songs in advance. I knew I was going to do that whole Freebird thing but I couldn’t possibly risk shooting it, being in editing and then Lynyrd Skynyrd goes “I don’t think so.” I cleared up all those problem in advance so I wouldn’t run into that.

DRE: Did you have various directorial homages in mind?

RZ: Yeah but there was no specific moments. There was certain key things like a lot of the extreme close-ups and things are very like Once Upon a Time in the West and the ending is like Bonnie & Clyde and the general vibe to the violence is very Peckinpah.

DRE: I read about a lot of cameos like Natasha Lyonne and Rosario Dawson and Mary Woronov that I didn’t notice in the actual film.

RZ: Well Natasha Lyonne never came to set and that became like a whole other thing. So she was replaced by E.G. Daily on the day of shooting and Rosario’s scene got cut unfortunately. Mary’s just in the credit sequence.

DRE: How did you come to cast Ginger Lynn?

RZ: I needed an older actress who was going to be very free with nudity. I never wanted to get young girls that are all like plastic surgery damaged because that would be horrendous. So someone was like, “Well, why don’t we try casting old porn stars?” We went through a bunch of different ones and Ginger was just the best actress even though unbeknownst to me, until two seconds before she got to the set, she was on crutches and couldn’t walk.

DRE: I saw you on Henry Rollins’ show the other night on IFC.

RZ: Henry is one of those people who goes, “I rooted for the sheriff the whole way.’

DRE: You mentioned something that was very interesting about how you feel a lot of the horror movies are watered down to PG-13.

RZ: That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t want to make a G-rated movie for kids that’s totally super nice. But if this was PG-13 and then what we would be watching would be totally ridiculous. None of those decisions are made based on what’s best for the movie. It’s just what’s best for the marketing.

DRE: Did Lions Gate let you do whatever you wanted?

RZ: Lions Gate is great. They have to be the most artist friendly people I’ve ever met in my life. I gave them the script. They read it and were like, “Okay. Fine. Let’s do it. We have no changes.” They would come down to the set every once in awhile and go, “Okay we saw the dailies. We’re happy.” Then they’d disappear for a month. We did a preview screening in front of an audience. That went great and they were so happy afterwards.

DRE: Did you have any trouble getting the R rating?

RZ: Yeah, that was tough. The strange thing was that the R rating was mostly based on tone. It took about eight tries and it all came down to the motel scene with Bill Moseley and Priscilla Barnes. We cut about two minutes out of that. Still I was like, “Well there’s no real nudity. There’s no violence. There’s no language.” But they were like “Yeah, but it’s too dark.” Basically it was like telling me, “Your comedy is too funny.” It’ll be back on the DVD.

DRE: Do you see Devil’s Rejects as a grindhouse movie?

RZ: It’s kept the spirit of that. The funny thing is I was talking to someone else and they were like, “Are you a big fan of bad movies?” I went, “No, I’m a fan of good movies.” In that world there are a lot of great films. Russ Meyer’s films are better than 99 percent of the great films we have to celebrate every year. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is an incredible movie.

DRE: Do you think you can learn more from watching a bad movie than a good one?

RZ: No you really can only learn how to make a good movie from watching good movies. You can learn what not to do maybe.

DRE: Has doing this movie work affected your music at all?

RZ: Nothing really affects my music but what I took away from this is that great actors make great things happen. William Forsythe is a good example. If I had cast the wrong guy it wouldn’t work on any level. That’s where you make or break the movie.

DRE: What are you doing musically now?

RZ: I have a record more or less finished before I started shooting Rejects and I’m actually on tour right now. I played last night and Ozzfest starts on Friday so I’ll be doing that all summer and then I’ll come back to finish the record and then start another movie.

DRE: Will the next film be a horror film?

RZ: I’ve got two movies I’m working on simultaneously and neither are horror movies.

DRE: Isn’t one an animated movie?

RZ: Well, there’s an animated movie that I’ve been working on for about a year. That’s called The Haunted World of El Superbeasto and I’m doing that with Film Roman. It’s an adult animated comedy and it’s basically if Austin Powers was actually an over the hill alcoholic Mexican wrestler living in a world populated by people like the Munsters.

DRE: Is it going to look like your animated sequence in Beavis and Butt-Head Do America?

RZ: No, it’s very stylized. The look was to make it look like it’s a cocktail napkin from 1968. That style of illustration.

DRE: There was an article on CNN.com that pointed to House of 1000 Corpses as the film that started this new wave of horror. When I spoke to [Fangoria editor] Tony Timpone, he said, “Maybe not all horror, but at least Lions Gate horror.”

RZ: I think it’s really hard to judge the effects of something, but it is funny that the movie was dropped by Universal and now Universal is like the house of horror once again. It definitely kickstarted horror for Lions Gate because I know the movie they followed mine with was Cabin Fever and I talked to [Eli Roth] the director and he was like, “Oh man I thought my movie was dead in the water and then your movie came out and was like this huge hit so suddenly mine jumped up to be this priority project.” So it did do something. I don’t know what but you can never judge.

DRE: Gary Panter remembers you from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.

RZ: That’s funny because when Paul Reubens first showed up, he had really long hair and a beard and he stepped off the elevator with Gary Panter and I think half the people thought Gary Panter was Pee-Wee because they’d go “Well, he’s certainly not the other guy.”

DRE: What do you think of all the horror remakes?

RZ: I’m not really a fan of them because I liked the movies the first time. No matter how good it is, it’s never as good as the original and I would like to see something new. It’s kind of boring to sit there and watch a movie where you know how it’s going to end. It’s kind of a bummer and with some of the original movies there was just something about the time they were made and the way they were made that works.

DRE: But you liked the Dawn of the Dead remake enough to hire [music composer] Tyler Bates.

RZ: I thought his music was great. It’s not that they’re bad movies. Maybe they’re better for a new wave of kids who haven’t seen the original. But I’d already seen the original Dawn of the Dead like a hundred times.

DRE: What if you got offered a horror remake with carte blanche?

RZ: I’ve gotten offers to do things and I always say no. Maybe if there was a certain movie where I felt like the original idea was great but the movie was bad, but I don’t understand remaking great films.

DRE: Do you ever think about stopping doing music and just working on movies instead?

RZ: Yeah because I definitely can’t do both. Doing both is impossible and I don’t want to have years between films.

DRE: What should fans expect from the tour this time?

RZ: Well the tour this time is very stripped down because Ozzfest is outside in a summer festival and there are like a million bands so there is no production. You can only take production so far where the best thing you can do is scale it all back to nothing and then that becomes interesting. Whenever I’ve seen huge acts, whether it be Alice Cooper or KISS, in a situation with nothing, it’s ten times more interesting.

DRE: Are there any comic books or books you’re reading lately?

RZ: No, I’m sort of burnt out on comic books right now. Steve Niles and I did Bigfoot together. We were starting another one called Giant Monster that was going to be like a twelve part series but I just said, “Steve, I don’t have time.”

DRE: Are you involved with that deal that Steve and Thomas Jane have with Lions Gate?

RZ: No, they asked me to be involved. We met a couple times to talk about it but since I’m so busy I knew I would be of no use to it whatsoever.

DRE: Do you mourn the state of rock and roll today?

RZ: I felt the music industry making this horrible shift maybe like five or six years ago when it started becoming like the movie industry in the sense that it became about the opening week with a record. All the best records took a year or two years before anyone would go “Oh? What’s this band? Guns N’ Roses? I wonder who they are.” But now if it doesn’t hit the first week, they’re like, “Oh. I told you that wouldn’t work.” That’s not the way music functions. That’s not really the way movies should function either. With Halloween, it was months before it caught on and every week it would grow and grow and grow until suddenly it was this phenomenon called Halloween. Also the labels have no artist development. The Ramones would never have a record deal. They’d get dropped after their first record, as would Cheap Trick and AC/DC and everybody. The Ramones stayed on a major label for 22 years and they never sold more than 150,000 records. Now a million records, a platinum record is considered a failure. Labels have nothing but mega artists and total failures and no artist development. They have a bunch of stuff we won’t be talking about in six months.

DRE: What are you listening to now?

RZ: I’ve been listening to a lot of Terry Reid during making of this movie and those have to be the great lost records of all time.

[bonanzataz]

SCATTERED REVIEW. MINOR SPOILERS IF YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS MOVIE SINCE HO1KC CAME OUT.

i love this movie, i love rob zombie, i love lynyrd skynyrd. just, everybody go see this opening weekend. it's so much better than that piece of shit charlie and the chocolate factory ('i wanted to go for a darker and truer version of the story' my ass, FUCK THAT MOVIE! the original was so much fucking darker and truer to the source material. the new one hurt my head). devil's rejects is nothing like house of 1000 corpses (which i was also a big fan of) and i know a lot of you shied away from that one. maybe b/c there was too much pointless gore? if that was the case, kids walking out of the theater last night were saying there wasn't enough nudity and gore. things in this movie have more of a point than in the first - it's not just violence for violence's sake (but i don't know if i'd be able to back that point up at the moment). there is a scene reminiscent of one of my favorite scenes from wild at heart but zombie takes this scene just a little further, almost like, 'how far can these people go before you start disliking them?' there's no karen black, but leslie easterbrook of police academy fame is a welcome replacement (she's plays the part of a fucking nutcase well). also, i noticed in the end credits that pj soles was in the movie. who was she? one of ken foree's whores? one thing about this movie that i was unsure of was sheri moon. she was so funny and insane in the first movie, but devil's rejects is much more serious, and she's not really a serious actor, so we don't really get a lot of baby in this movie and what we do get is kind of lacking. but that's a small gripe. i'mm sure zombie as a director can and will do better things in the future, but he was obligated to do this movie first and it turned out great. i hope this movie does well at the b.o. b/c it has balls - more than any mainstream movie i've seen in a LONG time. basically, go see it. it's worth the $10, and not much is these days.

[Ghostboy]

I hated the first one, as I've said several times already, but The Devi's Rejects is damn near perfect. That doesn't mean its enjoyable - its pretty consistently unpleasant - but its executed beautifully. One of the things I disliked about House was that the tone was just all over the map. Here, Zombie nails what he was going for pretty much from start to finish. It lives up to that amazing poster, that's for sure.

Sheri Moon can't act at all, though.

[Sleuth]

That was a disappointingly Sleuth review

[bonanzataz]

also, i noticed in the end credits that pj soles was in the movie. who was she?

SPOILER

she's the woman that gets carjacked by captain spaulding if anybody was wondering. rock rock rock rock rock n roll high school!

[MacGuffin]

devil's rejects is nothing like house of 1000 corpses (which i was also a big fan of) and i know a lot of you shied away from that one. maybe b/c there was too much pointless gore? if that was the case, kids walking out of the theater last night were saying there wasn't enough nudity and gore. things in this movie have more of a point than in the first - it's not just violence for violence's sake (but i don't know if i'd be able to back that point up at the moment).

There's not as much gore, but I thought the freeze-frames that lingered on the shots in the opening credits were much more frightening than anything that could be shown.

Zombie did something modern horror movies fail to do nowadays - make the villians, well, villianous. These characters just ooze seediness you can almost smell the grime from them. Then...


*SPOILERS*

...he pulls the rug out from under you and makes you sympathize with them.

The ending was a excellent blend of picture and music, beautifully executed; like a modern day display of Bonnie & Clyde's ending.

[modage]

so should i see this or what?

[Finn]

yes, see it

it's very nasty, ugly and of course violent but it's also beautifully executed and gets the tone of those 1970's midnight mayhem movies just right. the build up and the ending is great with lots of humor and tension. it's very unpleasent throughout but if you can take it, it's ultimately rewarding.

[GodDamnImDaMan]

The first and secnd movies are two completely DIFFERENT films.

Where as the first film could be considered a drive through film,

this one is actually

GASP

a film!

a really damn good film with awesome cinematography, editting and direction. Although the acting is god awful...

[RegularKarate]

This movie could have been excellent if cut down by about half an hour.

Some scenes were really well done and some went on too long.

I didn't feel anything for any of the characters which isn't super important for this type of movie, but it would have helped with the dull parts.

It's still one of the better horror films to come out in the past few years.

[Finn]

SPOILER!


Rob Zombie loves to show off his wife's body (which I really didn't mind). But I also figured that when the sheriff was chocking her, he wasn't gonna let her die right there. And of course she was saved right in time.

END SPOILER

I actually thought the acting was really good by the actors, although Zombie's wife wasn't very convincing in some scenes. But she's got a good body so who cares.  

[bigperm]

This movie could have been excellent if cut down by about half an hour.

Some scenes were really well done and some went on too long.

I didn't feel anything for any of the characters which isn't super important for this type of movie, but it would have helped with the dull parts.

It's still one of the better horror films to come out in the past few years.

thanks for the invite, BROTHER!

[RegularKarate]

thanks for the invite, BROTHER!

Okay, I've had enough.

You know... I didn't mind the occasional angry PM at first.  Telling me that I don't deserve my Lebowski avatar because I'm not a "real fan", but you've been bugging me for way too long, Señor Perm!

I get that you don't like me, but let's just keep it in PM, okay?  We don't need to waste everyone's time with these stupid comments, egging me on.  So for everyone else's sake, take it back to PM and just go back to posting album covers in public... everyone will like you better that way.