Despite numerous distribution issues, Rob Zombie's acclaimed “House of 1000
Corpses” was released in theaters with a runtime of approximately 90 minutes
and distinctive scenes of explicit violence. However, at one point there was a
cut version running about 105 minutes, which was considered too extreme for
commercial release.
Censorship issues.
Originally produced by Universal Studios, “House of 1000 Corpses” was to
be distributed by the same company, but the studio refused to release it
because it was all but certain that the film would receive an NC-17 rating
(restricted to viewers 17 and older) due to its excessive violence and
sexual scenes.
After Universal's first screening of the workprint, filmmaker Rob Zombie
was forced to cut and even reshoot the most violent scenes in order to
achieve an R rating and thus win the studio's approval.
Despite the changes, Universal decided to reject the project because, at the
time, releasing the film could have cast the studio in a bad light, so the
film was left without a distributor. It wasn't until 2003 (three years after
filming and editing were completed) that Lionsgate purchased the rights and
released it, although it underwent even more cuts and different editing
styles to achieve an R rating.
Deleted material.
Although there are currently no images or footage of the deleted scenes, and
their whereabouts are unknown, there are descriptions of what the original
film was like.
- A slightly different version of the scene where Captain Spauling talks
about Doctor Satan.
- Scenes featuring a character named Miss Bunny (all of which were cut).
- Related to the above, a scene in which Miss Bunny reenacts scenes from
famous movies, using dead animals as puppets.
- More scenes of the main characters traveling on the road.
- A subplot featuring a skunk monkey.
- A scene in which Baby Firefly accuses Mary and Denise of being lesbians.
- An extended scene in which Denise, Jerry, and Mary are tied up, and it is
revealed that Grandpa Hugo is actually Doctor Satan, a creation of the
Firefly family designed to lure victims.
- An extended version showing the creation of “Fishboy.”
- A scene in which Baby Firefly stabs Mary four times.
- An exhumation of bodies in the Firefly family's backyard.
- An extended and alternate version of the encounter between Denise and Dr.
Satan, featuring various experiments in which the doctor eats Jerry, and in
which Mary, while trying to escape from where she is, is chased by demons.
- The original ending, where Spauling picks up Denise in a cargo truck, and
at the end, Ravini, his assistant, grabs her.
- Several scenes featuring the character Baby Firefly, which, according to
the director, were quite violent, particularly the scenes that reveal the
character's necrophilia.
Rumors.
There is a rumor that the original version of the feature film was screened at
the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina, with the print lost for unknown
reasons. However, this rumor is false, as Zombie shot the new ending and
edited the film down before Universal finally shelved it and it was handed
over to Lionsgate. By the time the film began screening at festivals or
theaters in 2003, the original 105-minute cut had been dead and buried in
Universal’s vaults for years. The festival in Argentina did screen the film,
but it was the final cut that we all know.
It has also been reported that the original cut was leaked online
approximately one month before its theatrical release in 2003 via P2P networks
(such as Kazaa or eMule) by a piracy group known as “Svenne,” who uploaded a
screener in VCD format. Although this leak is entirely true, lost media
hunters who have managed to recover those old video files have confirmed that
the runtime of those files was about 88 to 89 minutes, identical to the
commercial version.
Lost forever.
According to Rob Zombie, for the film’s DVD release, they searched for all
the scenes and other footage shot as part of the behind-the-scenes material,
but unfortunately, they could not be found. In an interview with Fangoria,
Zombie stated that he is not interested in recovering the scenes and that he
does not know their whereabouts either:
"I don't think it ever will [be released], because I don't think anyone
knows where any of it is, truthfully. Even when they put together the DVD,
which was 13 years ago, we couldn't find anything because they had shot
two hundred interviews in the time since the shoot. We had
behind-the-scenes stuff, make-up tests, all these different things, and
nobody could find it. It was all lost. That's why I think whatever exists
is all that's going to ever exist."
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