Though Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses is now sixteen years old, it still finds itself as the subject of a good amount of hearsay, much of it stemming from the chances of the fabled director’s cut finally seeing the light of day.
If you’ll recall, the 2003 horror movie had a bumpy journey to theaters. At first, Universal refused to distribute it due to fears of an NC-17 rating. Eventually, Zombie bought back the rights and put it out through Lionsgate. Even then, though, House of 1000 Corpses was cut down quite a bit to get an R-rating.
Unfortunately, the more extreme content from the pic has never been released, and while fans would no doubt love to see it, the filmmaker admitted in a recent interview with Bloody Disgusting that he doubts it’ll ever be shown off. And that might be because he’s not particularly fond of the movie in the first place.
According to ScreenRant, Zombie has expressed his thoughts on House of 1000 Corpses being a bit of a disaster in the past, saying the following in an interview about the pic:
“The first film [I directed], which people seem to love, is just a calamitous mess. Well, when it came out it seemed like everyone hated it. Now everyone acts like it’s beloved in some way. All I see is flaw, upon flaw, upon flaw… upon flaw.”
Clearly, he’s not a fan, and though it’s easy to understand where he’s coming from – filmmakers are usually the harshest critics of their own work, after all – many people would still no doubt love to see a director’s cut of Zombie’s first feature-length effort. But unfortunately, it seems that’ll never happen.
Still, fans can at least take comfort in the fact that even despite viewing House of 1000 Corpses as a mess, Rob Zombie has gone on to have a very successful career and continues churning out enjoyable efforts in the horror genre on a pretty regular basis. And hopefully, he doesn’t feel the same way about his more recent movies as he does about his first outing behind the camera.