Never Made Movies - No.1 Rob Zombie's The Crow III
"Mrs Zombie, I'm afraid we're going to have to let your son go..."
Loved The Crow? Hated the sequels and the recent remake? Well, if you agree with both of those statements, you’ll hopefully be interested to learn that the third Crow picture, 2000’s Salvation, was meant to be directed by one Rob Zombie.
Yes, the White Zombie frontman was such a fan of James O’Barr’s 1989 comic-book and Alex Proyas’ 1994 picture that he spent two full years writing the second sequel, during which time he cut his teeth as a filmmaker on his band’s music videos.
And what would a Rob Zombie Crow have been like? “[My Crow] was a lot darker, weirder and different,” explains the man who’d have to wait until 2003 to make his first feature. “I didn’t want to just make a sequel and go, ‘Oh, let’s just run through the same stuff we already did.’ That made no sense to me - as the second movie was a total failure, why would you wanna do it a third time?
“But,” continues the man born Robert Bartleh Cummings, “apparently that’s just what the studio] wanted!”
In particular, Dimension Films took issue with Zombie’s idea of ageing the title character: “The movie was written around The Crow being a little bit older - a little more old-style Clint Eastwood. Then the execs were like, ‘How about if we make him 30? How about if we make him 25? How about if he’s 18?’ Next thing you know, they want to have a 17-year-old fresh-faced kid as The Crow. I’m like, ‘That’s a far fucking cry from The Man With No Name!’”
Things only worsened when the writer-director announced his preferred choice of leading actor. As Zombie explains, “The person I was most excited about was Willem Dafoe. I wanted The Crow to be almost evil - there were no good guys in the movie. Everyone was going to be a villain, [but] nobody want[ed] that. The producers were like, ‘How do we work in a love interest?’ I told them, ‘This guy’s caught in some apocalyptic Satanic war, and you want to work in a love interest?! I think he might have bigger issues at hand…’”
And so it came to pass that Robert Zombie abandoned the good ship Crow III and dedicated himself to projects such as House Of 1000 Corpses (2003), 2005’s The Devil’s Rejects and a Halloween remake (2007) that was almost as bad as its 2009 sequel.
Still, just the idea of Willem Dafoe as The Crow brings a sinister smile to one’s lips…