ROB ZOMBIE Talks About 'The Devil's Rejects'

Rob Zombie recently spoke to Ain't It Cool News about "The Devil's Rejects", the follow up to Zombie's gritty, violent smash horror hit, "House of 1000 Corpses". A couple of excerpts from the interview follow:

Ain't It Cool News: I liked how you felt free to play around with some of the elements of the first film. And you didn't feel the need to present them in exactly the same way. For example, the house. The actual "house of 1000 corpses". It's not even the same type of façade as the one in the first film, is it?

Rob Zombie: "It's a totally different house in a totally different location. The first house in the first film is kind of a cooler looking house. This house is a much more ordinary looking farmhouse, but the location of the other house is terrible for shooting at. There's not enough land around it and I wanted to shoot this big scene with all these police cars coming in. I knew that the other location wouldn't work at all. So that's why I had to find a new place to shoot it."

Ain't It Cool News: I love the freedom you chose to embrace with aspects of the film like that. It seemed you were willing to say, if I feel like changing something, I will.

Rob Zombie: "I just figured they were two separate films. There's no sense nit-picking and sticking to a point just for continuity sake. I usually made choices based on what would made the film better. The character that probably mutated the most from the first film is Otis. And I just thought that, given the way I wanted to shoot this film and the vibe of it, the character from the first film would just look... stupid and be laughable. He had to be changed in order to fit into the new world I was creating."

Ain't It Cool News: Last night I had a friend over and we watched a double-feature of "House of 1000 Corpses' and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2". The first two "Chainsaw" films are a specific example of a filmmaker who felt totally free to do quite a bit of reinvention the second time out. There are some elements of "Corpses" that are reminiscent of "Chainsaw 2", and I wonder what feelings you have about Tobe Hooper's choices with his sequel. He really went out there in reinvented much of the "Saw" mythology.

Rob Zombie: "(Long pause) It's funny. He did sort of kind the exact opposite of what I did. His first film is very real and his second film becomes more cartoonish. My first film is more cartoonish and my second film became real. They're exactly the opposite. I know as a fan it can be upsetting because when 'Chainsaw 2' came out and I went to see it the day it opened, I went expecting to pick up where I left off with the other film. And I was kind of shocked to see that the tone was lighter and a lot goofier... campier than the first film."

Ain't It Cool News: I hadn't put that together, that you guys are doing the exact same thing but reversed.

Rob Zombie: "I never thought of it until the second you said it, either. It wasn't like a conscious thing. I just, in general, think that sequels are a tricky game. And for me to even want to do this movie, I didn't want to make the same movie again at all. So that's why in order for me to even be inspired to make another movie with these characters, I had to dig deeper and make them real people you'd want to watch. Not just walking catchphrases. That's why Captain Spaulding... there's a brief moment of him with the clown makeup, and I was like, we gotta get rid of that, because he's never gonna be a real character in any moment of this movie if he's the horror icon that's on t-shirts and Bobbleheads."

Read the entire interview at this location.