I never wanted, the violence to seem fun, although it does at certain points 
Rock star renaissance man Rob Zombie is a screenwriter, animator, comic strip author, music promo maker, and now feature film director of grisly horror flick House of 1000 Corpses.
Universal financed your film and then canned it. Were you surprised?
What happened was a little weird. All the executives who saw it loved it - well, they said they did - but I still had to show it to Stacy Snyder, the chairman of Universal Studios. Now this is right after the Columbine shootings, everybody's freaking out about marketing violent material towards children, and she had just come back from Washington after being in front of Congress. So she gets off the plane, goes into a screening of my movie, and all the kids are, of course, reacting the wrong way from what she thinks they should. They're cheering the violence, and yelling and screaming, and she's, like, "No way am I getting involved in this movie."
There are actually points in the film where you appear to want us to feel guilty for watching.
Yeah, I think you should [laughs], because I remember feeling that way coming out of certain movies as a kid. You'd watch I Spit on Your Grave, or The Last House on the Left - films with no redeeming value - and you'd come out having enjoyed it. You'd be, like, "What's wrong with me, that this is entertaining?" So you should feel kind of bad.
Did this influence your portrayal of violence?
I never wanted the violence to seem fun, although it does at certain points. Sometimes there's so much violence in films that you don't even take it seriously. Like in a Friday 13th movie it's: "Look, he got a machete through the head! So what?" You don't even care.
Why did you set the movie in the 70s?
There was an America that I remember when I was a kid where we'd drive cross-country, and every time you crossed a state line, it was like another world. It was so bizarre. The Murder Ride in the film, that's something you would find, and you'd go, "Who would build this? Why is this here?" Now it's the same Starbucks and 7-Eleven on every corner.
Tell me about the sequel.
It will not be called House of 2000 Corpses, as people keep saying, because that's too stupid. Sequels have a tendency to get campier and goofier, and things get ridiculous. I want to go the exact opposite way and make the sequel really dark and serious. All the bad people are back. All the good people are dead.
