Former White Zombie front man and filmmaker Rob Zombie will look to Crowd Funding in order to support his latest horror film, tentatively titled 31. Zombie’s employed some pretty interesting prizes to entice donators, including signed memorabilia, rare movie props, a lifetime ticket to any Rob Zombie concert and a chance to be a featured extra if the film reaches its goal of $2 million (most likely).
31 will tell the tale of five people kidnapped days before Halloween Night and forced to fight for their lives in the aptly titled “Murder World.” The kidnapped are tasked with killing a number of evil clowns (are there any other kind?) within 12 hours in order to win their freedom. The premise does have a bit of fresh energy on the part of Zombie, who recently gave an interview with Rolling Stone about his campaign.
“People have come up to me over the years and asked, ‘How can I get these props?’ ‘How can I come to the set? So I realized a crowd funding campaign is not a guy on a street corner with a hat asking for money.” In regards to how he came up with the idea for the film, Zombie said “I was reading this statistic: Halloween is the Number One day of the year when people go missing for some reason. I thought, “What an interesting premise for a film.” This is five people that go missing on each day leading up to Halloween and what happens to them on the 31st”.
Since the official breakup of White Zombie in 1998, Rob Zombie has turned into a prolific, if critically panned filmmaker. His filmography of House of a Thousand Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, The Lords of Salem, and the two Halloween reboots have established him as one of the most disturbing filmmakers of the era, for better or worse. Still, Zombie must be a passionate lover of film to constantly juggle directing with his constant touring schedule. Fun fact for those who don’t know: White Zombie got their name from a classic 1932 Bela Lugosi film, considered to be the world’s first full length zombie film.
The premise for the film sounds much more promising than Zombie’s last effort, 2012’s inert The Lords of Salem. It will be interesting to see if Zombie’s Crowd Funding effort will influence his filmmaking, transforming 31 into a love letter of sorts for his fans who have stood by him for decades.