Rob Zombie was already a household name when he directed his debut feature, House of 1,000 Corpses, but despite his enormous clout within the music industry the production ran into gigantic problems. The original studio, Universal, balked at the film’s ultraviolence – which seemed destined to earn an NC-17 rating – so Zombie bought back to the rights and took the film to Lionsgate… who ended up cutting the film down to an R-rating anyway.
To date, none of that extreme footage has ever surfaced, but every once in a while we hear rumblings that maybe, just maybe, a director’s cut of House of 1,000 Corpses may be coming.
But according to Zombie, in a new interview with Bloody-Disgusting, the rumors aren’t true.
“There’s nothing,” Zombie confirmed. “I mean, I don’t know where anything is. I gotta be honest. Nothing’s ever been discovered.”
Well, that’s not entirely true, but don’t get your hopes up, horror fans!
“The only thing I discovered, which is not footage, is one time I found a bunch of VHS tapes that had interviews with the cast on set while we were shooting. They could be a special feature, maybe, but yeah… no,” Zombie explained.
“Because we bounced around so much and stuff. It’s amazing that they lose these things. But they do,” Zombie laughed. “So all that stuff’s lost.”
It may be true that the unrated House of 1,000 Corpses director’s cut, the one that ruffled all those studio feathers in the first place, is lost. Then again that’s exactly what they said about the missing footage from Clive Barker’s Nightbreed, another film that infamously got chopped up by the studio, with extensive scenes and sequences that were declared hopelessly lost for years. But then they found it anyway.
Never give up hope, horror fans. But also, don’t hold your breath!
Rob Zombie’s second House of 1,000 Corpses sequel, 3 From Hell, will play in theaters from September 16-18 via FathomEvents!
