His new corpse work

Rob Zombie would like you to know that although his upcoming movie, “The Devil’s Rejects,” shares several characters with his debut feature -- they’re members of a marauding family of serial killers from “House of 1000 Corpses” -- it is not a sequel.

“By nature, sequels are terrible,” says Zombie, former front man for the platinum-selling heavy-metal band White Zombie. “This one is sort of like the next chapter for these characters. And it’s a much bigger, better film than the first, which is almost never the case.”

Also important to note: Although the new movie depicts characters getting stabbed to death in a junkyard, includes several gruesome torture scenes and prominently features a grimy basement where body parts are stored in refrigerators, the director says it would be a mistake to construe “The Devil’s Rejects” as a horror film.

“To me a horror movie is the last thing it is,” he asserts. “There’s a lot of terrible things that take place, and it’s definitely violent and whatnot. But it’s more like an Italian western like ‘Once Upon a Time in the West.’ Or ‘Taxi Driver’ -- that really nasty ‘70s filmmaking that doesn’t exist anymore.”

Zombie has staked his professional reputation on upending conventional wisdom -- such as the thinking that filmmakers can’t be rock stars and vice versa. Beginning this month and through to September, he’ll be traveling cross-country with Ozzy Osbourne’s Ozzfest rock festival, performing on its second stage, just as he did before the release of “House” during Ozzfest 2003. He will proselytize about “The Devil’s Rejects” directly from the concert stage and plans to play the movie’s trailer during his sets. But Zombie stops short of admitting that he is doing Ozzfest only to push the film.

“It’s a great promotional tool that you wouldn’t ordinarily have,” he says. “It’s good for the movie because we’re going to be in a different city every day. The same person that typically buys my records is the type of person who would go see movies like that. It’s a perfect match.”

His efforts paid off for “House.” Though generally mauled by critics, the film has attained certified cult status among hard-core horror enthusiasts -- it did a respectable $12 million in its theatrical run and has gone on to sell a million DVDs.

This time, Ozzfest is just one facet of the multi-pronged media assault the 40-year-old director, whose driver’s license lists his name as “Robert Wolfgang Zombie,” is launching to get out word about his film, which opens Friday.

In addition to music, he’s using comic books (a “Devil’s Rejects” graphic novel is being put out this summer), the radio (Zombie hosts a weekly show on L.A.’s Indie 103.1 FM) and a weblog (lionsgatedirectors.com/zombie), a Web diary on which he has been posting news about the movie since last year.

It’s hard to imagine another indie-inclined filmmaker with the wherewithal to mount a similar push, and executives at Lions Gate Films, which is releasing “Rejects,” are justifiably thrilled to have a director in their stable whose commercial instinct can feed his artistic impulses. By the end of “Corpses’ ” opening weekend, the studio had expressed willingness to put up the money for what became “Rejects.”

“To have a filmmaker who can go out there on a weekly and daily basis and help market his movie, to help share the experience with a built-in fan base, gives us a competitive edge that a lot of other movies don’t have,” says John Hegeman, president of worldwide marketing. “He has an unbelievable relationship with his audience. It’s a very close bond.”

The director relies upon his inner fanboy as muse. “I try to make the thing I want to see or hear,” Zombie says, reaching up to stroke his straggly beard and revealing a “Creature From the Black Lagoon” tattoo on his forearm. “It’s the simple thing: It comes from being a fan. And it all goes together. People would ask, ‘What do you want to be?’ Well, I wanted to be Alice Cooper and Steven Spielberg and Stan Lee.”

Zombie has become increasingly disenchanted with the medium that won him his financial security and greatest acclaim. “At this point, movies are far more important to me,” he says somberly. “I’ve been doing music for 20 years. I feel like I’ve done everything I’m going to do. With movies, it’s all new, all fresh.”

Asked how he would feel if a young fan knew him only through his cinematic output and not for White Zombie’s albums, such as “Astro-Creep: 2000” or his own “Hellbilly Deluxe” (Zombie went solo in 1995), the dreadlocked director replies with typical rock star aplomb: “That would be” -- here he used a common heavy-metal curse word -- “awesome!

“One of the reasons I didn’t do anything remotely musical for the movie myself was I wanted to put that to rest. I just wanted to show that making a movie and directing is not some ego-driven thing I’m dabbling in. I take this totally seriously -- this is something I want to do.”

Hegeman points out that “Rejects” is as much a road movie/revenge caper/western/cop drama as it is a horror flick.

And he confirms Zombie’s stated ambition. “I think this film establishes him as a filmmaker with a unique vision,” Hegeman says. “It’s sort of a crazy kaleidoscope of all of these different things that you may already have an association with.”

In the meantime, Zombie’s biggest battle will be overcoming people’s built-in expectations. “It’s hard to switch fields,” he says. “People don’t seem to like it when you do.

“But it’s always that type of thing. Metal, rock music, horror, we’re always treated like the dirty little secret. It’s another day of no respect. It drives me crazy, but I’m used to it.”