Brett CallwoodIt’s been 14 years since filmmaker and musician Rob Zombie last dived into the grotesque world of the Firefly family. It was in 2005 that The Devil’s Rejects, the followup to 2003’s House of 1000 Corpses, was released and placed the phenomenally nasty characters of Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie), Otis (Bill Moseley) and Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) in a real world setting following the gonzo goings on of the first film. The last time we saw them, they were driving directly into a storm of bullets that nobody could survive. Well, guess what…
Yeah, they survived. Like, ALL of them. We won’t go into detail, but we’re basically told at the start of new installment 3 From Hell that they all spent a lot of time in surgery and they all pulled through. There’s some horrible irony, then, to the fact that Sid Haig has been going through real life health issues of his own that led to him only playing a minor role in this film. At the time of writing, Haig is in ICU for unspecified reasons.
“He hasn’t been well for a while,” says Rob Zombie. “When I originally planned the movie, obviously the “three from hell” were Sheri, Bill and Sid. But about three weeks out from the first day of shooting, I was driving to the sound stage to check progress on the sets, and literally I had just thought to myself, ‘this is the most prepared I have ever been for any film.’ Then my phone rings and it’s Sid. He told me that he had been in the hospital for a while and he wasn’t well. He told me what was wrong and I won’t tell the world but it was serious. I went to visit him, and he looked so different. He’s a big dude, like 6’4”, and when I went to see him, he was like a skeleton.”
It became clear that Haig wasn’t going to be able to film a full movie, though we are blessed with some typically manic Spaulding scenes. Just before filming was scheduled to begin, Zombie was rewriting the script and that led to the introduction of a new character — half brother Foxy played with gusto by Richard Brake.
“I still definitely wanted [Haig] in the movie — it was important to him, me, the fans and the whole trilogy,” he says. “But it was obvious his participation could be limited. For a long time, I kept changing the script around. Nobody knew the title, so I wondered if it could be Two From Hell. I just needed to create a new character. As soon as I felt that, I thought that Richard would be perfect. Him and Bill are different but similar-ish. He was in Spain finishing a movie but it was just gonna end at the right time. So he flew from Spain right to L.A., put on some wardrobe and we started shooting.”
Rob Zombie on set (Courtesy of Lionsgate/Saban Films)
With all of the ingredients in place, last minute changes and all, Zombie could go ahead with the third of the Firefly movies. Fans of the other two will rejoice in seeing their three anti-heroes back on the screen, and they’ll take to the character of Foxy very quickly. There’s enough bloodshed to please the most rabid horror fans, and typical zany Zombie fare. Unsurprisingly though, it’s far closer in tone to the realism of Devil’s Rejects than the Dr. Satan inspired gore-fun of the first film.
“I didn’t think that would make any sense [to go back], Zombie says. “That stuff plays in its own weirdo world that if I brought it back it would be so out of place it would just seem ridiculous. In knew once I established them in the world of Rejects, which was more reality based, I had to stick with that. To go backwards would seem like a big mess, to me at least.”
Meanwhile, Bill Moseley was delighted to come back and step into Otis Driftwood’s filthy boots again.
“It was tricky because it is 14 years later and I think I did Otis proud in Devil’s Rejects,” Moseley says. “So there was a little bit of pressure, but I think it was maybe day two, I had a mini monologue to deliver and I kept tripping on the lines the first two takes, so I took a time out and just sat down, and this voice said ‘Bill get out of the way, I’ve got this.’ That’s what I needed to hear. I needed to let the insecure Hollywood actor get out of the way and let Otis do his thing. After that, everything went pretty smoothly.”
Moseley slips back into the role of Otis with apparent ease, though the evolution of the character has continued; whereas he was a bit zanier and closer to Moseley’s Chop Top (from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) in the first film, he’s become a charming, psychopathic Wild West toughie. We love to hate him. Similarly, Sheri Moon Zombie kills (pun intended) as Baby.
“She was so fun to watch,” her husband says. “Because she was on 10 the whole time. This is my favorite performance of hers. Whatever insecurities or feelings she had were gone. We were shooting one scene in particular, the motel when she has on the fake mustache and comes bursting through the door. We were shooting the scene, and Richard zoned out. He was like, ‘I was so caught up in what Sheri was doing, I forgot what I was doing.’ I love her performance. It’s so endlessly interesting, all the weird stuff she did.”
Whether this will be the last outing for the Fireflies, we don’t know. Zombie doesn’t even know.
“Every time I make a movie, I never know what I’m doing next, and every time I’ve made a sequel, I never thought I was making a sequel,” he says. “I never thought I was gonna make a sequel to House of 1000 Corpses, or Halloween. It’s just however things play out. I love these characters, I love writing for them, and I love watching them grow over the 20 years they’ve been on screen. It’s fun to watch them age, change and just get weirder.”
As for Moseley, he’s down:
“I’ve got a wife and kid and expensive pet, so let’s do five more.”
Tickets for the September 16, 17 and 18 nationwide release of 3 From Hell are available at FathomEvents.com/3FromHell.
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