HOUSE OF REJECTS: THE MAKING OF ROB ZOMBIE’S FIREFLY TRILOGY by Dustin McNeill
When musician Rob Zombie’s feature directorial debut House of 1000 Corpses reached theatres in 2003, I was hyped. I had been looking forward to the movie ever since it was first announced a few years earlier. I followed its progress as it made its way through production, then got dropped by two different studios (Universal, then MGM) for being too depraved. I was a fan of cast members like Bill Moseley and Sid Haig, the movie seemed to have The Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibes, and I wanted to see what a Rob Zombie film would look like. I was so excited to check it out, I gladly took the 180 mile round trip required to see it at the nearest theatre that was showing it when it was finally released by Lionsgate. And I was disappointed. I didn’t think it was a “catastrophic mess,” which is how Zombie has gone on to describe it, but it was certainly messy – and, like Zombie, I could mostly only see flaw after flaw when watching it. But then we got the sequel The Devil’s Rejects a couple of years later, and I think that’s a legitimately great movie. It’s Zombie’s masterpiece; none of his other movies have come close to it. Not even the sequel 3 from Hell, which was made a decade later... and it probably shouldn’t have been made at all. But as far as movies that shouldn’t have been made go, it’s fine.
Dustin McNeill is an author known for his books that have taken deep dives into the making of the Phantasm films, the Child’s Play / Chucky films, the Halloween films, and more. And with House of Rejects, he turns his attention to the making of House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, and 3 from Hell – Zombie’s Firefly trilogy, as it’s called, since the Fireflys are the family of maniacs at the heart of the franchise.
McNeill covers the development, pre-production, production, and release of these movies in meticulous detail over the 340+ pages of House of Rejects, going through all three movies scene-by-scene and giving some kind of behind-the-scenes information on every one of them, along with his personal observations (which make it clear that he’s a big fan of all three movies). Since House of 1000 Corpses had the most ups and downs, its story takes up the most pages, roughly half of the book. Then The Devil’s Rejects and 3 from Hell each take up about 25% of the page count. But it doesn’t feel like either of them got short-changed in comparison to 1000 Corpses – Zombie just didn’t have to deal with as many issues when bringing them out into the world. Even though 3 from Hell got shaken up in a major way when it was discovered that Sid Haig wasn’t healthy enough to play the lead role that was intended for him; a sad turn of events that led to a last minute rewrite.
I’m not the appreciative fan of this trilogy that McNeill is, I really only need to watch the middle movie from time to time, but I found House of Rejects to be an interesting, informative, and enjoyable read.
No comments:
Post a Comment