Rob Zombie: “The directors I really love are the ones no one mentions … everyone talks about John Carpenter”
Rob Zombie has long felt misunderstood as a filmmaker. People were openly critical of his debut feature, House of 1000 Corpses, when it bowed in 2003. Zombie received a level of acclaim for his follow-up, The Devil’s Rejects. But that acclaim was short-lived. His reimagining of Halloween divided fans. Many were vocally critical of his interpretation. Not to mention, everything he has directed since Halloween has also been fairly polarizing.
Well, it turns out the musician-turned-filmmaker feels misunderstood in more ways than one. In a conversation with Dutch fanzine Schokkend Nieuws (now archived on the Flashback Files), the Lords of Salem director revealed that most people overlook many of his most-cherished cinematic influences in favor of a couple of more obvious points of reference.
Who are Rob Zombie’s greatest cinematic influences?
“The directors I really loved are the ones no one ever mentions as my influences, Zombie told Schokkend Nieuws . Everyone talks about John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper, but Don Siegel, Arthur Penn and Sam Peckinpah, those are the people that really influenced me. But people get hung up on the fact that I’m a horror director, so they assume all my influences must be other horror directors.”
None of the directors Zombie mentioned in that exchange is exclusively tied to horror. But each was known to work in the genre space. If you don’t recognize them by name, you will surely know their work. In fact, I will even spotlight a title from each that you can stream in case you’re keen to take a look at some of their cinematic output.
Don Siegel directed Escape from Alcatraz, which you can watch on Prime Video as of the publication of this post. Arthur Penn helmed the criminally underrated cult classic Dead of Winter, which is currently available on Tubi. And Sam Peckinpah directed Cross of Iron, which is also on Prime Video. Peckinpah is probably best known for Straw Dogs, which is not currently streaming anywhere. If you’d like to experience that acclaimed effort, I recommend tracking down the Criterion release.
That’s all that we have for you, for the time being, dear reader. Keep an eye out for more amusing anecdotes from noteworthy filmmakers in the genre space as we succeed at unearthing them. In the meantime, if you’d like to keep up with my nonsense on Threads, I’m on the platform as @FunWithHorror.
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