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Rip-roaringly wild, gleefully anarchic, and manic, the long-haired heavy metal rocker-cum-slasher-film-director Rob Zombie sustains an instantly recognizable image on par with his musical contemporaries (and friends), Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne. Long fascinated by Charles Manson, gore films, and the occult, Zombie exudes a goth sensibility that has given him something of a cult following with counterculture folks. Zombie's celebrity name (which he changed from Robert Cummings) thus suits him rather well. Founder of the band White Zombie, the rocker made his name behind the camera not only by directing the preponderance of his group's music videos, but by designing the surreal "head trip" animated sequence in Mike Judge's Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996). His first feature outing came in 2003, with the controversial slaughter pic House of 1000 Corpses, a kind of Texas Chainsaw Massacre update, overloaded with buckets of gore, packed with references to '70s and '80s horror staples, and starring no less than Karen Black. Universal rejected the picture, certain of an NC-17 rating, but Zombie refused to make cuts and still emerged with an R. House drew critical pans but purportedly (and unsurprisingly) earned almost twice its small budget. His follow-up, 2005's The Devil's Rejects, about a group of homicidal maniacs who sport clown makeup and name themselves after Groucho Marx characters, did well critically (Roger Ebert commented, "The movie is not merely disgusting, but has an attitude and a subversive sense of humor,") but disappointed studio heads, earning only slightly more than its production costs even as it thrilled Zombie cultists. |
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