One of the biggest gifts and curses of The Halloween Season is the need to watch genre movies. Since I am not one to fall back on personal favorites too much, it means that every year brings with it the challenge to find new corners to explore. In this case, I stumbled upon the unassuming title House of 1000 Corpses (2003), which seemed to pop up on every streaming service imaginable. I figured it would be a fun, quick watch and that would be that. Little did I know that it would start one of the strangest parts of last week: becoming absolutely obsessed with Rob Zombie as an artist.
Which is strange because I don’t like House of 1,000 Corpses all that much. I will side with anyone who calls it a knock-off of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) with a weaker character dynamic. Even then, I was drawn to Zombie’s whole approach to horror cinema. It may be bad, but it was a singular creation that made my disapproval more in tune with disappointment than a belief that I wasn’t seeing an artist flex their creative muscles. I loved how manic the editing was, the way it pulled from Grindhouse and exploitation techniques to keep the viewer on edge. Even then, it bothered me that I was more intrigued by recognizing the reference points than finding substance in the story.
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| Rob Zombie (center, bottom) |
I will side with anyone who considers The Devil’s Rejects (2005) a major improvement. More than anything, it’s an accomplished vision of his weird obsession with murderous psychopaths who are not-not based on The Manson Family, creating one of the most surreal portraits of evil I’ve ever seen. While I admit that my interest in Zombie is limited – his work is vulgar, crass, and favors juvenile jokes – I do recognize his aesthetic as an accomplishment, that he’s living his best life. The fact that he even has a wife who serves as his muse (Sherri Moon) only makes you feel like saying “Good for him.”
I may not love everything he does, but it fascinates me to spend time with an artist whose work is so accomplished, very much what he wants to make and lacks any real compromise. He may be frustrating at times, but it’s amazing to think of the artists from the 1990s who were literal cartoon characters. When you look at people like Marilyn Manson or Trent Reznor, you see people who saw the Satanic Panic of the previous decade and decided to turn it into this great joke. Even if their music is downright sinister, there is something to be said about their approaches. Among them was Rob Zombie and his band White Zombie, who I remember best as that band who began a song with sexual moaning and still got it played on the radio.
Zombie was out there even before he turned his attention to filmmaking. Nothing will strike me as hilarious as the fact that he was considered one of the scariest artists of the time… and his biggest single was a metal track dedicated to The Munsters with “Dragula.” You mean that goofy show from the 1960s? Considering that The Devil’s Rejects features several characters named after Groucho Marx figures, it’s clear that he’s a nerd who just so happens to love hard rocking as well. How did this guy wind up winning the jackpot?
I think the anomaly of his career is what makes him the most interesting for me. Had he not come out in the 1990s, at a time where grunge and metal were experiencing a moment, he likely would’ve sold half. He is the son of carnival barkers who now lives in a mansion with a TV room, a projection room for films, and a long, long hallway where he keeps every horror movie ever committed to home video. His obsession is incredible, and I love that he once claimed that he wanted to paint a bedroom in the style of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) before giving up after a day. On a related note, he used to be a production assistant on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.
On the one hand, I know deep down that a guy who released a song called “Teenage Nosferatu Pussy” when he was 48 would have limited appeal. He has designed his whole career to be a sideshow freak, and it’s what I love about him. More than any other artist, I can recognize Zombie’s work when presented with it. He’s such a shameless horror freak that his ability to mix countless obscure references (both lyrical and in samples) into these rocking tunes is something that makes me loving. As I’ve mentioned before, metal has been a tough genre for me to like on a personal level, and yet I can listen to “Dragula” and recognize what makes it great. It’s theatrical, reminiscent of Alice Cooper on a bit heavier of drugs. I’d even go so far as to argue that Zombie’s work, instinctually, has a pop structure.
That may explain why his solo debut was followed up by the remix album, cheekily titled, “American Made Music to Strip By.” While I haven’t heard that one yet, I feel intrigued to after experiencing the 1998 juggernaut “Hellbilly Deluxe: 13 Tales of Cadaverous Cavorting Inside the Spookshow International.” That may be one of the most accurate titles Zombie has ever released. I remember reading about his inception of this album, made in the wake of White Zombie’s disbanding, and realizing that this was a coming-out party. This was Zombie as his most genuine. He would get Marvel comic book artists to design the artwork, having Moon read excerpts and direct music videos that are homages to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). This was one hell of a celebration (pun intended) and a sign of what we could expect from him going into the next millennium.
At its core what makes “Hellbilly Deluxe” a great oddity is the reality that it was a big hit, selling three million copies and establishing one of the most significant solo careers to come. Not only that, but he made songs that had a wonderful appeal. In a time where nu-metal was making hard rock less interesting, Zombie was coming out with songs that were so personable, full of this kooky imagery that made him easy to differentiate. Not only that but, as I keep mentioning, he made songs that had a pop structure in metal form,
The way that you can determine what a successful pop song is is based on how easy it is to remix and expand upon. Basically, can you make a 12-second bridge last for 36 without making it seem tedious? Can you prolong any line of the chorus and capture some richer feeling? I feel that way when listening to the best songs on this album, which find him yelling like he’s in the bowels of hell. The guitars sound possessed, able to bend these notes in sinister ways. Add in a small flair for electronic and industrial music and you get something that feels Frankensteined, concocting something that feels as delirious and slipshod as the Grindhouse movies that Zombie watched in his youth.
That comes right off the bat with “Superbeast”: a Grammy-nominated song that features excellent production in the way that the verses lower themselves into something disorienting, finding the lyrics kicking into gear. Then, as the chorus picks up, he yells triumphantly with the guitars blaring through the speakers with such force. It feels like he’s emerged as a beast, ready to attack you with a viciousness designed to give people a heart attack. Given that the album had controversy being sold at Wal-Mart due to the artwork alone (which featured Manson Family and Satanic imagery), Zombie eventually compromised and said that the kids were being screwed over. He was so dangerous that the mere sight of him seemed to cause problems. If you’re more tolerant, it’s easy to make the argument that, quite frankly, “Superbeast” is a great pump-up song if you like your metal with a supernatural, grungy vibe to it.
Of course, there’s “Dragula,” which is easily the catchiest song of his entire career. It will live on for eternity thanks to an appearance in The Matrix (1999). The guitars and the drums feel like a demonic machine speeding through the song, dropping out in the verses as Zombie sings these demented lines. Again, the choruses are infectiously intense thanks to the deep vocals, the harmonies overwhelming the listener. Not bad for a song that legitimately seems goofy when you put it into the context of The Munsters, realizing that Zombie comes across as a metal version of Svengoolie.
If there was anything to suggest the wonder that Zombie would bestow in his filmmaking career, one simply needed to watch his music videos. In some respects, “Superbeast” feels the most indicative of his style, finding an overwhelming amount of editing trying to give epileptics a nightmare and everyone else a headache, unable to understand just what is going on. “Dragula” is a fun pastiche, with colors oversaturated and feeling melted. There’s no distinguishing outline of Zombie as he drives the titular car. “Living Dead Girl” is the most artful, paying tribute to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Unlike the other two, it’s the most symbolic of how much he loves horror. It’s an impeccable tribute down to the F.W. Murnau-inspired set design. It’s moments like that where you realize “Yeah, it makes sense why he began making horror movies.”
The thing is that the initial appeal of him is infectious. He designs every song in such a way that the next portion will leave you craving more, becoming concerned and excited that you’re witnessing something genuine. It feels like a morbid sideshow, an act that he uses to sell cheap thrills. Not only that, but he has enough of a psychedelic quality that makes you feel immersed in the ideas. By “What Lurks on Channel X,” he’s becoming more experimental, challenging the listener to go beyond the lyrics and get wrapped up in the sonic madness that he’s created. While by no means a sharp diversion, it’s definitely something that shows his love of the cinematic, the idea that art can be performative entertainment.
While I may argue that I was too overwhelmed of the experience by the end, I found myself deeply in awe of what Zombie had created. Even if I’m still not willing to even humor metal music full-time, there is something that keeps drawing me in, wanting to go further down this rabbit hole. Zombie doesn’t feel real. He is a cartoon character who has created his own world. Even as he creates this repulsive world, I find something brilliant inside of his failures as well as his successes. I know he’s imperfect, and I’m cursed to love that type of artist. Even if it all feels silly by the end and I may tire of his joke occasionally, I still feel glad to know that he exists.
Then again, he’s one of the more accomplished filmmakers from his era. If nothing else, he’s more successful than Fred Durst because even at his worst, Zombie’s work is personal. The Fanatic (2019) just feels like petty grievances, creating one of the strangest bad movies of the decade. I don’t know if he’ll ever make a conventional masterpiece, though then again few people with refined tastes could make something as so sympathetic and critical of murderous psychopaths quite like The Devil’s Rejects. It takes someone who is willing to make uncomfortable art that may turn a lot of people off. It takes someone who wants to make Captain Spaulding intentionally a “lovable asshole” and give Sid Haig a defining character.
I’m sure there will be some breaking point with Zombie somewhere down the line. After all, we’re talking about an artist whose latest album was called “The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser.” You have to love someone committed to the sleazy macabre like him. As one YouTube commenter said: Rob Zombie looks like a guy who went to a Halloween party 20 years ago and never left. Frankly, it’s the only way you can fully appreciate this crazy career, which will be a lot of things but I doubt it will ever be boring.
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