Rob Zombie’s ‘3 From Hell’ Is Not a Prequel + Not What You Expect
For the first time in 14 years, Sheri Moon Zombie, Sid Haig and Bill Moseley will spill blood together on the silver screen. Come 2019, Rob Zombie will release 3 From Hell; the third installment of his "Firefly Family" series and the musician/director himself gave Loudwire a scoop on what audiences can expect.
With the plot of 3 From Hell still considered top secret, Zombie revealed the most info to-date about the project. Zombie has confirmed that 3 From Hell is not a prequel, even though his three main characters met a bloody end in the final scene of The Devil's Rejects... or did they?
Nobody really knows much about 3 From Hell. I know I'm excited to see Sheri, Sid and Bill come back from the dead, so to speak. Is there anything you can tell me about the plot? Is it a sequel? Is it a prequel?
It's nothing [like] what people seem to think, which is always fun to read, because everybody's like, ‘Oh, I know what this is. It's exactly this.’ And they're always wrong, which is great.
I'll just say it's not a prequel. I’m making this movie 15 years after the last movie, so my cast is aging the wrong direction and I certainly didn't replace them with other actors. The one thing I will say is that when we got together — because my biggest fear of making this movie was the actors won't have the vibe they had — it was almost spooky how much [they vibed.] It didn't seem like it was 15 years later, it seemed like it was six months later.
I believe in this movie. They've taken everything they've done to a whole new level and I think it's the best they've ever been. The general vibe was like, ‘Wow, this is like right where we left off.’ It was really kind of weird. It was something special when I made Devil's Rejects. There was just a vibe we had at the time we were doing it, and we're like, "Man, if we can't recapture that, it's going to feel like a struggle," but right from the get-go it was right there.
Those three have great chemistry together. Last time I talked to you we were talking about how House of 1000 Corpses was this great love letter to classic horror, even though, at first, people didn't go see it. Can you speak to having a movie that really is seen as more and more of a cult classic?
You just don't know what's going to happen. Having been a fan of other people's movies, you just accept how the movie exists. It's only after the fact, if I read an interview with John Carpenter, and he's like, "Oh The Thing was a disaster." And it kind of derailed his career. As a fan you just go, I just love The Thing. You just don't think about that stuff. And every director has a story like that. It might even be their best movie, and it was the one that didn't connect or something.
So yeah, it's weird after all this time that movie that was sort of forgotten and was sort of trashed has now become this beloved thing. The amount of merch it generated and stuff... it gets bigger every year. I kind of already knew this, because it's the same thing with records. People can go back now, going, "Oh, that's the classic record. That's your best record." I'm like, "No one said that at the time." It's easy now to say it. That's the thing when you're making movies or records or music; sometimes things age well. [At first] they're going to judge how they thought it should've been. Once you get that out of your system and you just watch it, maybe it's a year later, two years later, or whatever, you go "Oh, okay. This is actually really cool. It's not what I thought it was when I saw it."
Especially now, because people get themselves so worked up on the internet; it's so funny sometimes. Like, I put up an image of something and people will concoct this whole big scenario of what they think it means, which will be completely incorrect. Then they'll all start arguing about it. You're like, ‘Oh, my God. They're all crazy.’ They've all concocted this giant story and now they're all arguing about it, and it's not even based in reality.
That's the ultimate test, especially for a horror movie. If it's still good 30 years later or 15 years later, people are still going to love it. It won't go away.
Yeah, I think for the most part, with most horror movies, it's the weird ones that seem to stick with people. It's not the blockbusters that did $100 million that was everywhere, that everybody loved. Sometimes those just get forgotten. It's kind of the weird movies that really hit the fan base. Like Evil Dead; that wasn't a blockbuster that did $100 million. It's a movie most people, at the time, had never even heard of. Those are the ones that stick around.
So is 3 From Hell going to see a 2019 release?
It's a 2019 thing for sure because I don't even really start editing the movie until September, so we gotta edit, gotta compose the score… there's a shit ton of work left to do that we haven't even scratched the surface of. It's 2019, but I don't know when. The last thing I want to do is rush it. I've spent so many years getting this thing up and running, that I don't want to, at the last second. I’ve had that happen to me twice, on both Halloween films where they lock in the release date and it's rapidly approaching, and you're like, ‘We're not really done.’ And they're like, ‘We don't care. We're putting it in theaters, anyway.’ And you're like, ‘Great, fantastic.’ So that's not really a scenario I want to get involved with again.
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