Sheri Moon Zombie – Exclusive Interview
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The Firefly family is still deadly as ever in this scary sequel but you will find these depraved characters toned down considerably from the caricatures they portrayed in the funhouse freak-show that was House of 1000 Corpses. Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) still seduces, but she no longer looks like Malibooty Barbie; Otis (Bill Moseley) still has a taste for necrophilia, but his Edgar Winter look has been traded in for a more Christ-like facade; and Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) is still a wicked wanker but he quickly loses his colorful clown makeup.
Not a big hit at the box office, fans of the first movie might have been taken aback when they heard that The Devil’s Rejects was not a traditional horror flick by any means — it’s more sublime 70s Five Easy Pieces than 80s slasher Rest in Pieces.
Sure to have a second life on DVD cinephiles should delight in The Devil’s Rejects — but you’ll need to have a high tolerance for gore. The movie is bleak, gritty, violent cruel, and very bloody.
The DVD, due out on November 8, 2005 is available in both an R rated version and an unrated director’s cut. The two-disc set as an extensive making-of featurette, plus a blooper reel, deleted scenes, and two commentaries — one by writer/director Rob Zombie, and one featuring his trio of stars, Haig, Moseley, and Moon Zombie.
Horror.com got a chance to speak one-on-one with Moon Zombie about the DVD — proceed with caution if you haven’t seen the movie, as there is a spoiler towards the end of the interview.
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Staci Layne Wilson / Horror.com: I was watching the DVD this morning and enjoying your commentary [laughter]…
Sheri Moon Zombie: That was a fun day with Sid and Bill doing that. Those two can ramble on a lot and Rob was telling me to keep them in check, so I was trying to do that.
Q: I noticed. I was like, “Yeah, she’s kind of like steering them”.
Sheri Moon Zombie: I hope it didn’t seem forceful, because I haven’t listened to it. I was just there that day we did it and that was it.
Q: No, it didn’t. But I’ve listened to so many commentaries, that I can kind of tell.
Sheri Moon Zombie: OK [laughter]
Q: But those two, they’re really cut ups… so to speak… aren’t they?
Sheri Moon Zombie: They’re great, yeah.
Q: And when you do a commentary, how do you approach that? Do you kind of think about what you’re going to say first or do you just go in and have fun with it?
Sheri Moon Zombie: Well, I had seen the movie by that point I think maybe two or three times. I had heard Rob’s director commentary. Of course his is way more in-depth because he’s just involved in every aspect of the movie. But I sort of got a feeling [for it], that was actually the first time I had done a commentary for a film. You know, just basically Rob was there and gave us a little direction beforehand... just describe the day, what happened, how that scene was. He wanted us to be natural.
Q: The blooper reel is pretty funny.
Sheri Moon Zombie: You know what? I have not seen that! I think when Rob first started editing that together, I saw a few pieces, like of William Forsythe. And then there’s one scene I think where I’m in the bathtub. But the rest I haven’t seen. I’m really excited to see it.
Q: Are you shy about letting people see you make mistakes, or is it all in fun?
Sheri Moon Zombie: No. I think it’s funny. First of all, when it’s actually happening you sort of get frustrated and then it just becomes funny. It’s just kind of goofy and fun. But, no, I’m not embarrassed. I mean, it’s all part of the process. Nobody’s perfect. Everyone has bloopers. [laughing]
Q: How true. And the making of documentary is so involved. What was that like having… was it a second crew on the set the whole time or how does that work?
Sheri Moon Zombie: Yeah, basically there was a second crew. It was pretty unobtrusive. I mean, you’re there in front of cameras all the time anyway, working. Nothing was bothersome. Some days they would interview you, ask you a couple of questions and then some background stuff. Half the time I didn’t even notice they were there, honestly.
Q: It seems like it was really hot, windy, noisy. There’s a lot of problems there with trucks going by and stuff like that. Was it still a pretty fun, loose kind of atmosphere most of the time?
Sheri Moon Zombie: Definitely the weather, I think being hot and dusty and dirty added to everyone’s performance because that’s what it was really supposed to be like. At times, you just get really dirty. It wasn’t anything different from making any other movie, there’s always some sort of like inclement weather or if you’re doing stunts. There’s always something extra that either adds to it or can distract you, I guess. But for me, I think that all just added to the grit of the movie.
Q: The movies you’ve been in have been pretty intensive. I mean, it’s not like you get to kind of like sit around at a fancy dinner table and have all this dialogue. You’re doing a lot of running and jumping and screaming and stabbing. Do you love to jump in and dig in to that kind of stuff?
Sheri Moon Zombie: I do. I mean, I’d like to do as much of the stunt work as I can. But it is called stunt work for a reason. I mean, you really have to have professionals doing the intensive work. Just doing what I did, I got bruised up a lot in the movie. My neck had gone out for like a week. I would just like suffer through each scene. Somehow like when you’re rolling you don’t feel the pain, but as soon as cut, it’s like “Oh it’s back”. But no, I definitely got bruised and beat up a lot. Other actors would really get into their part. Ken Foree like left finger print bruise marks on my arm after repeatedly shooting the scene in the barn one night. But I had a great stunt girl, Leslie. She did some great work for me, thankfully.
Q: Speaking of Leslies, Leslie Easterbrook, I thought, was amazing in the film. I’ve never seen like
Sheri Moon Zombie: Well, first of all I got along so well with both of them off camera. I mean, I still talk to Karen, every now and then she’ll call. We used to hang out and stuff. I think that was important, that we sort of bonded off camera. Then thankfully it reads on camera. Like, Leslie just couldn’t be sweeter. She was so helpful to me, especially when my neck when out. She called her chiropractor and he came down to the set. She’s just a lot of fun to hang out with. Really so beautiful, could she be any more beautiful?
Q: Yeah...she is. And she’s amazing. It was so fun to talk to her at the premiere.
Getting back to the commentary a little bit, you were talking about blowing your ear out. Is that painful, or is it just that you can’t hear?
Sheri Moon Zombie: I forgot about that injury, which was actually the worst one. That actually was really scary. I had never held a gun or fired a gun, in real life or for a movie before. They just sort of gave us these guns and said, “Ok, here’s the scene” and I’m like, “Wait a minute, I’ve never fired one. Can I even do just a practice shot?” So I did my practice shot and it was fine. But Sid Haig had a shotgun and he was sitting right next to me in a car in the scene that it happened in. We were actually being pulled, I think, on a trailer at that point. He fired his shotgun and it was like a foot away from my ear and I just went down. It like totally popped my eardrum. I couldn’t hear. I got really upset and nervous. I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m going to be deaf.” But thankfully, everything is fine. My hearing came back a couple of days later. But it did have like this buzzing in my head for a few days. It was really disconcerting.
Q: Yeah, I’ll bet! I’m curious about this —there’s a lot of discussion on the internet about the one sequence of the three of you, all bloody and walking down the road. But of course, at the end of the movie you don’t ever get out of the car, you’re killed in the car, apparently. So how did that image come about, was that just for the photo shoot?
Sheri Moon Zombie: You know what? I don’t really know what happened with that. I know that Rob always wanted the ending that he wanted [and he did that]. I think maybe you can look at it like it a different way, like it was just something extra that we did, or it could have been like maybe… I don’t know when that could have happened! [laughter]
Q: That’s why people are discussing it like, “hhmm…” Maybe they’re not dead.
Sheri Moon Zombie: It’s just a little extra something special. I think that image looks really cool though.
Q: It does.
Sheri Moon Zombie: I think that Rob just...Oh, I know what it was! We had an extra day of shooting, which I think was July 5th, to do some helicopter aerial shots of the end of the movie where we’re driving on the freeway, through the hills and sort of where it comes up to the shootout with the cops at the end. And Rob’s like, “Oh let’s just get some extra stuff.” We had this long strip, you know the roads were closed, so we had access. He’s like, “You guys just hold your guns and sort of walk down the street a few times.” You know, Rob has his ideas and he knows when something looks cool and we’ll use it for something.
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