So, our conversation got me intrigued enough to actually rewatch it. Yes, Dwight is in it, I had no idea. Crazy to see him looking so young. Also staring the great Walton Goggins as a deputy sheriff and Chris Hardwick who I had totally forgotten about.

I don't think I've actually seen the 3rd movie myself. I wasn't too impressed with 'The Devils Rejects' tbh.

As far as the supernatural elements go, I could see it interpreted either way honestly. When they lower Jerry and Denise into Dr. Satan's lair, there are some what look like they could be zombies breaking them out of the coffin, before disappearing under the water, but they could also be some of the mental patients Dr.Satan was experimenting on. It seems like if they were zombies they wouldn't have halted the attack, but it really makes little sense either way.

The way I interpreted it was that Dr. Satan didn't just 'experiment' on the mental patients and victims that the Firefly family had been providing him, but on himself and Earl (his 'assistant') as well. I did a little research and some people describe them as 'Cyborg Demons' and some just use their names.

I'm pretty sure Dr. Satan was an actual human at one point at least, if his backstory can be belived. When Earl pulls off his 'gas mask' he definitely doesn't look very human, but he is supposedly Mother Firefly's husband and Tiny's father. So he was probably human at one point himself. Maybe they got their demonic appearances by being possessed, by 'cosmetic' surgery or some combination of the two.

One story has it that Rob Zombie pitched the idea for the movie to Universal without having a script, the name came from a Haunted House attraction that he had done for Universal Studios, and he just sort of made some shit up. After they Ok'd the project he went home and banged out a script. By writing this post I probably put more thought into the story than the did lol.

Another thing I learned was that after the shooting, Universal dropped the project because they were sure it would get an NC-17 rating, and it took him another a few years to find a distributor. By the time he had, a lot of the original footage had been lost so he had to do some creative editing to get a somewhat coherent film and to get an R rating. I'm not sure if the original plot made more sense or not, but I kinda doubt it :)

One other interesting bit I found was an interview with Zombie by bloody-disgusting.com

Which raises the question, of course, of whether Dr. Satan’s appearance in House of 1,000 Corpses was ever real at all. We asked Rob Zombie where he stood on an ending that seemed straightforward, but which now, after a retcon, looks like it may all have been a dream.

“I left it so that it could be whatever,” Zombie said. “Is it real? Is it probably just the girl, that Denise, after a long night of being tortured and watching all of her friends killed, maybe she just went cuckoo and was imagining all these crazy things? You know, I thought for that film it’s best just leave it as however people want to interpret it.”

I'm not sure if that was his original intention, or if that is how he views it in light of the sequels,

I kind of don’t want to watch it again in case it doesn’t hold up.

I think it holds up pretty well for what it is. I view it as an homage to the all great 'B' grade horror movies of the 70's and 80's (which often made little sense themselves) and shot like a feature length music video. It's just silly/gruesome fun.