Rob Zombie is kind of a weird director. His first two films, the exploitation throwbacks House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Reject, were gloriously grimy and mucky horror movies. But then he did that terrible Halloween remake that added nothing the original but hillbillies and an unnecessary backstory to mysterious murderer Michael Myers. Oh and he did the sequel to the terrible Halloween remake, where Michael never wore his mask and looked suspiciously like Sabretooth from the first X-Men film. They were less good. What sounded like would have been way better was Zombie's script for a Crow sequel. Which is something that's been done, like a zillion times ever since the first film, which people only really remember because star Brandon Lee died on set. Otherwise, you're unlikely to come across a hardcore Crow fan. Unless somebody really likes one film being made over and over again. Which is why Zombie's radical Crow sequel script, which he was also set to direct, could have been amazing: it totally reinvented the premise and took the franchise in a weird direction, hinted at by its subtitle "A New Age of Gods and Monsters". Which is not a good name for a movie, but boy is it descriptive. And accurate, since it was indeed set in the future and involved both gods and monsters, including a "dark priest" (not sure which he comes under) whom Zombie was in talks with the late, great Superman actor Christopher Reeve to play. He'd also convinced the set designer of dark, surreal French film Delicatessen to work on the film, so by all accounts this would have been a pretty weird, beautiful post-apocalyptic Crow film about a bounty hunter fighting against the forces of Heaven and Hell. Unfortunately, after 18 months Rob Zombie "burned out" on the project and it never made it past the pre-production stage.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
