You like blood? Violence? Freaks of nature?
After sitting on a shelf for a couple years, Rob Zombie‘s debut feature House of 1000 Corpses was finally unleashed by Lionsgate in 2003, firmly establishing that the musician was also one hell of a talented filmmaker. Gory, over the top, and full of colorful characters, Corpses was an instant hit with horror fans, spawning a superior sequel two years later.
But did you know that the version of House of 1000 Corpses you’ve seen isn’t quite Rob Zombie’s complete vision? When Lionsgate picked up the film, they considerably cut it down, partly so that it could be released with a R rating. And to date, none of that excised footage has ever been seen; not a second of it was included on the home video release.
So what’s the deal? Speaking with Fangoria, Zombie just explained why we’ll likely never see the extended cut of his inaugural outing as a filmmaker.
“I don’t think it ever will [be released], because I don’t think anyone knows where any of it is, truthfully,” said Zombie. “Even when they put together the DVD, which was 13 years ago, we couldn’t find anything because they had shot two hundred interviews in the time since the shoot. We had behind-the-scenes stuff, make-up tests, all these different things, and nobody could find it. It was all lost. That’s why I think whatever exists is all that’s going to ever exist.”
From what Zombie has said in the past, the full cut of House of 1000 Corpses runs 105-minutes, quite a bit longer than the 89-minute version we’re familiar with. Most notably, some of the death scenes, including the creation of “Fishboy,” were originally much gorier. Apparently it was also revealed in the initial cut that Grandpa Hugo was actually Doctor Satan, and so the scene where Denise comes across Doctor Satan was going to instead feature his test subjects literally eating Jerry. Several scenes with Baby were also truncated or removed.
Will the lost footage ever be found? Only time will tell.
