Across eight feature-length movies, Rob Zombie has crafted a distinct 70s Grindhouse look and sound to his horror movies. Though he’s attracted a hardcore base of fans, Zombie has polarized critics and even wider horror fans more generally.
When it was released in 1967, Spider Baby (or the Maddest Story Ever Told) barely made a ripple. And that’s probably a generous assessment. Just about no one saw the Jack Hill-written and directed exploitation thriller. Even the presence of an older Lon Chaney Jr. (The Wolf Man) had little impact. Of course, Chaney was […]
When Rob Zombie followed up his Halloween movies with The Lords of Salem, his most unique directing effort. It marked the possibility that the director might be expanding and building on his style. Four years passed before Zombie got back in the director’s chair. And his next effort, a crowd-sourced project that streamed exclusively on […]
Nearly 20 years have passed since Rob Zombie’s directorial debut, House of 1000 Corpses, released into movie theaters. That release date itself was almost three years removed from when the drive-in Grindhouse feature was ready for audiences. Teaser trailers were turning up as early as the fall of 2000 promising the kind of horror movie […]
Years before the ‘Killer Clown‘ moral panic from Fall 2016 and Twisty the Clown from Season 4 of American Horror Story, author Stephen King popularized the ‘evil clown’ in mainstream circles with Pennywise from his novel, It. Of course the idea of killer clowns has a long history going back as far as the Italian opera, […]
Though it’s hard to believe, metal madman Rob Zombie’s debut feature length debut, House of 1000 Corpses, is nearly 20 years old now. Over the course of his filmmaking career, Zombie has divided horror fans like few horror directors in the past. Given his obvious affection for horror and exploitation cinema, Zombie seemed is a […]
Rob Zombie making a ‘family comedy’ wasn’t something anyone thought they would ever write. The divisive horror filmmaker and metal madman isn’t known for a light or warm touch. And it’s far from a sure thing that the world was asking for modern take on The Munsters. Nostalgia comes and goes in waves, Hollywood already […]
No one will ever argue that Rob Zombie doesn’t know the horror genre. Arguably, the heavy metal madman shows a better grasp of B-movie aesthetics than his contemporary colleagues. Still Zombie’s work has consistently polarized audiences and critics alike. Though The Devil’s Rejects has justifiably earned consideration as a horror classic, Zombie’s Halloween remake and […]