Rob Zombie

"The last one I picked was another Lugosi film, so yeah, he is in every film I picked. That’s funny. I didn’t even realize it. It’s White Zombie from ’32, which is shortly after Dracula. It’s an amazing movie. I’m pretty sure it’s the first movie to ever use the word “zombie” — to use that in a movie. It takes place in Haiti, and Lugosi runs this sugar mill and the zombies are his workers and stuff. Again, he’s amazing, but the film is — only really bad versions of it existed for so long, so every time you’d watch it, you go like, “Wow, the quality of this movie is horrible. It looks like a cheap movie.” Then later, when people have restored things and find them, it’s a really incredible-looking movie. Again, it seems very primitive, but it looks amazing, and he’s great as always. If you watch some of the leads and you just watch their scenes, you go, “What is this, like a cute little musical comedy?” Then he comes in. Again, not f—ing around."

"I would say my third one would probably be The Black Cat, 1934. Lugosi, but with Karloff, who also is demented, as a Satan worshiper. David Manners, who is in Dracula, again giving another bizarre, stiff, wooden performance, except this time it’s more obvious, because you have two guys who are amazing surrounding him. It’s always weird watching these sort of straight-up leading men being destroyed by these freaks. I don’t know, it’s kind of weird. I guess these guys don’t really get the credit that they deserve for their acting, because they were always in horror movies, but Lugosi and Karloff are just incredible. I mean, they create these iconic moments that define what cinema is, and they’re sort of brushed off. But I guess that’s the way it goes"

"Lugosi’s my favorite. I think he’s in almost every movie I picked here.I didn’t even realize it till I did my list and it’s like, “Oh, s—, He’s in every movie I picked.” Another one is Murders in the Rue Morgue. 1932 again, with Lugosi as Dr. Mirakle, who’s desperately trying to mate a woman with a gorilla. Again, you watch — basically, he wants the gorilla to have sex with this woman, and they’re sort of dancing around the topic the whole time. He’s mixing their blood, and when he’s done with the ones that failed, he just dumps them in the river. It’s pretty f—ed up. Again the male leads seem completely… Oh, they’re from “blah blah blah” acting, and Lugosi is so bizarre and incredible, as always."

"Yeah, and The Island of Lost Souls is amazing, from 1932 with Charles Laughton as Dr. Moreau. That movie is amazing. That movie’s dark. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, the extras — I mean, even now you watch like, this is really disturbing. The extras are supposed to be the half-man/half-animal people. You can tell they got really bizarre-looking extras before they did the makeup, and everybody looks like they’re deformed and f—ed up. Again, Lugosi plays the leader of the beast men. He’s not in it a lot, but of course he has the line that everybody remembers about the House of Pain: “He who breaks the law goes back to the House of Pain.” He’s in the movie for five minutes and steals the movie. Charles Laughton is incredible. But it’s demented again. The basic premise is a crazy one. They have the beast men and they’re being operated on and just screaming. It’s like, “This is not fun.” You have little kids running out of the theater in tears, or adults. It’s amazing. Still amazing. The cinematography’s amazing. Everything about it is just incredible."

"""I could go on forever with the list, so I just picked five random ones, because I go through periods where I watch certain movies a lot. I don’t know why — I’ll get on a kick. I’ve been on a kick lately of watching Dracula, the 1931 version with Bela Lugosi, over and over and over and over. You know? I love everything from the ’30s. The 1930s is my absolute favorite time period for horror movies, because they were just so demented and sick. Sometimes you watch them and go, “Wow, they get away with a lot.” Then, of course, the codes came in and it ruined the party. When you watch movies from the 1940s, they seem so tame and so dry, but everything from the ’30s is just amazing. Lugosi in that film is so iconic, he doesn’t even seem like an actor giving a performance. Some of these people transcend to something else. It’s like Marilyn Monroe or something. They became something else. Sometimes people will make fun of his performance because of his accent, but he’s so… It’s so funny. I love watching him, because his performances are so unique. Sometimes there’s other people in the film — like David Manners, who’s like the lead, good-looking guy, and he’s so wooden and so 1930s-stiff acting, and Lugosi seems like Brando. You can see he’s so in it that when they yelled, “Cut!,” he didn’t cut. You can just see it. He’s so committed that his performance is funny, because it’s on such another level from anyone else in the film. Everybody in those movies back then, you watch them and it’s just — it’s that feeling like, “Eh, you know, even though they’re supposed to be boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife, they don’t [seem] like they’re having sex or something.” Lugosi seems like he wants to f— everything in the movie constantly. He just has that vibe. Really weird, man. You know? He does, essentially, I guess. Yeah, he does. He’s just not tame. I don’t know, maybe because he was Hungarian or whatever, he just has a different way of approaching, but he does not have that “uptight American actor from the ’30s” vibe at all. He just steals every moment. Not just him; Dwight Frye as Renfield is amazing. It’s funny — actors seem like they don’t want to do these types of movies, but as soon as you play a villain in something that’s like a horror movie, that’s what you’re going to be remembered for. Even if Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for whatever — Remains of the Day or Howard’s End or I can’t even remember what it was — he’s Hannibal Lecter. Doesn’t matter if Jack Nicholson won an Oscar for Cuckoo’s Nest or whatever; he’s Jack Torrance. It’s so funny, these roles are just so — they stick."""

"The next movie would probably be Young Frankenstein. I remember going to see that as a kid. Because I loved all the Universal horror films, but I had only seem them on TV, like on Creature Double Feature on Friday afternoons. By that point I loved Gene Wilder, because I made the connection like, “Oh, that guy was in Willy Wonka. Now he’s in Young Frankenstein.” So that movie blew me away. And even to this day, I watch it all the time. It’s such an incredible movie because it’s really, really funny, with such incredible performances, but it’s so beautifully made. Nobody would spend the time now to make a comedy that well. Visually and technically, it’s so incredible. It doesn’t date; it holds up. Peter Boyle’s perfect, and Madeline Kahn and Gene Wilder, and everybody. It’s just an incredible movie. It really captured the feel of those Universal films, like Bride of Frankenstein, yet it is really funny. It’s something that almost never works. You know, kind of look at the Munsters on TV, and the Addams family, where you could get into it and they have the art direction there and everyone’s funny, but it almost never works. It’s almost always a disaster, and that film is just so perfect. I think the fact that people were brave enough back then to release black-and-white movies."

"In terms of mind-blowing experiences, I would say the first film was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, just because I think — I’m pretty sure — that’s the first time I ever saw a live action movie in a movie theater as a kid. My dad took me and my brother to see it. I think up till then I’d only seen one animated movie in a movie theater. I think it was Robin Hood, which, for some reason, was really boring to me. But we went to see Willy Wonka, and I was so blown away, and it so freaked me out, that I couldn’t stop thinking about it for years. I had watched movies on TV and stuff, but that was the first time I think I was old enough to go to the movies, and be able to sit through a movie without wanting to get up and run around the theater. Just seeing it that big and getting sucked into it. I don’t even think I realized those were actors and that anything was fake. I think I just thought it was all real, that Charlie was a real kid, and Willy Wonka was a real person. I really think I thought it was real. I really thought the whole family lived in that one room. I was probably in second grade or something… So I probably didn’t actually think it was real, but I responded to it like it was real."

"And then I’d probably say, to round it out, probably The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. First time going to see that — I remember going to see that. Or Rocky Horror Picture Show, we can make those tied. Finally when I got some wheels and could drive out of town, I would drive for hours and days to go see a movie. I would go to great lengths to see movies. One time I rode my bicycle for seven hours just to see Night of the Living Dead. I did it in the rain, like, “I’m going to see this f—ing movie if it’s the last thing I do!"