Apparently not content to simply piss off Halloween fans everywhere, Rob Zombie has now directed a commercial for the cleaning detergent, Woolite. And as you can see from the video above, it is a fucking weird commercial. I mean, it clearly plays to Zombie’s strengths (maybe I should say “alleged strengths?”) and image as a director, but I just can’t imagine the target audience for detergent television commercials — say, Suzie Homemaker, for example — responding to this.

Jiri Kulik, some executive at the company who makes Woolite, told the NY Times how the commercial came about:

“We’ve repositioned Woolite as more of a daily-use detergent for all the fabrics that require special care, and we’ve been trying to communicate this to consumers over time… But we’ve always had trouble breaking through with the message,” he added, “because it’s very difficult to change a habit… some of the consumers in our focus groups described what their clothes go through with laundry detergent like a ‘torture,’ we got this crazy idea of the washing machine like a torture chamber for your clothes, and then we describe Woolite as the savior.”

And then somehow Zombie got involved.

There are apparently two versions of the commercial — “a darker one for Facebook and movie theaters, and a milder one for television” — but Zombie himself says “I’m not really sure which version is which,” which is a sure sign of how much work went into this crap.

Zombie also says that he doesn’t think the commercial is scary, comparing the tone of the spot to The Addams Family and Tim Burton movies, which leads me to believe that he has never seen The Addams Family or a Tim Burton movie. I mean, it isn’t scary to me, but, again, I’m not Mary Jane Rottencrotch. I just can’t foresee a mother of three who just wants to get her fucking brats’ pizza stains out of their Sunday best not finding the general atmosphere of this ad disturbing.

Am I wrong?  Weigh in with your thoughts below…

-AR

Thanks to Van Durden for the link to the Times piece!