Rob Zombie's latest horror flick 31 has been enticing fans for over a year now. The movie explores a crew of captive carnival workers forced to outlast a deadly game in a compound crawling with evil clowns and other vicious life-enders. In what might be his most violent flick yet, the director revealed the inspiration for 31 came from a rather unexpected place.

"Well 31 came to be out of my frustration of trying to get a movie called Broad Street Bullies made, which was a true life story about the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team," Zombie told Fangoria in a recent interview. Going into more detail, the musician / director added, "I’ve been working on it for two years and the project was just dragging and taking forever. One day, I was just frustrated and talking to my manager when I said, 'I could probably pitch a movie right now, off the top of my head and we could get it made tomorrow.' And I did; I just pitched the idea. I basically made up the idea for 31 on the spot and how we could sell that and that’s how it came about."

Zombie went on to discuss the calculated overt sense of violence in the film and how 31 walks the line between action and horror. "The story (and movie) that I will always love is The Most Dangerous Game, which the Running Man is almost a take-off on, but that original vision of someone hunting humans is so simple yet so exciting," he prefaced. "I wanted 31 to be the most action-y film I’d done, but that being said, I didn’t want it to turn into an action movie."

Talking about how current actions movies tend to feature fight scenes where "every single person on the planet is now the greatest Kung Fu master of all time," he said that this is never how these events unfold in real life. "They’re usually sloppy and weird, so I tried to keep it as realistic as possible," Zombie affirmed.

As for what the future holds, Zombie, as he's done over the last year, reiterated he plans on tackling the Groucho Marx film and that "one of them is another movie which I’m very excited about that I can’t announce yet but I’ve actually been chasing for almost 14 years and it’s finally going to happen."

31 is out now in theaters and can also be rented at iTunes. The movie was suspected to be involved in a viral marketing scheme and responsible for the string of creepy clown sightings around the world, but Saban Films denied these accusations.

Ever-busy, Rob Zombie released his latest album, The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser earlier this year, reaching No. 6 on the Billboard 200 charts in its debut week.

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