Which Of His HALLOWEEN Films Does Rob Zombie Prefer?
Mike Sprague
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This past weekend Blumhouse and David Gordon Green’s direct sequel to John Carpenter’s Halloween stormed into theaters and ran off with all the money. But what does Rob Zombie think of his Halloween films now that a few years have passed?
Well, the writer-director-rockstar just spat a lot of honest info on his feelings on his Halloween reboot and his 2009 follow-up Halloween II. Including which of the two he prefers.
“Yeah, I mean there was so much stuff in the old films I wanted to avoid,” Zombie told SFX Magazine. “They had already made eight Halloween movies – all of different quality – by the time I came along and I took a completely different approach. I wanted to do a new take on the whole series and that is why my Halloween was more of a serial killer movie – we got to look at this troubled kid’s childhood in more detail and what made him Michael Myers. I wanted my version of Halloween to feel a lot more real because the previous films had done everything except for maybe sending him to outer space.”
“It was still the story of this guy searching for his sister,” admits Zombie. “But the guy was definitely more real… I didn’t have him appear and reappear in the movie like in the Carpenter film. I wanted to avoid people thinking he was supernatural. But it was not an easy movie to make. I kept being asked, ‘Hey, should we show this to Carpenter or so and so from the original and see what they think?’ And my response was just, ‘What the fuck do I care?’ When I get asked what my advice is in this business I tell people to just focus on what they want to do because if you start worrying about what other people think you are screwed [laughs]. I am oblivious to all that. I love Halloween and I wanted to do my own thing with it. Whether people like my Halloween or don’t like it is irrelevant to me. At least it has my own personal stamp on there.”
On his Laurie Strode and more:
“I think Laurie Strode from my Halloween was a bit boring,” reveals Zombie. “I mean, she is supposed to be the all-American nice girl and, to me, that is just dull [laughs]. That is why when we did the sequel I made her this really damaged person – because that is infinitely more interesting and cool to explore. But in Halloween, I made a movie about Michael Myers, that came from the pitch of, ‘Okay, what if this was a real man? An actual serial killer? What set him off?’ And then I wanted to think about what Doctor Loomis would be like if he were a real person too – and Malcolm McDowell loved that character. He really understood what I was trying to do and he played it very differently from Donald Pleasence in the original movies…”
Which of his Halloween films does her prefer?
“To be honest, I would rather be doing my own thing anyway,” Zombie says. “But I am still proud of both Halloween movies. I prefer the second one, which might surprise people, but the problem is that when you do a remake you can never get a true judgment on what it is you have done. I think it’s the same deal when someone remakes A Nightmare on Elm Street or anything else – it’s just too hard to completely break the formula. Everyone knows Michael Myers and a lot of the fans want the same thing again, but maybe with a small twist – like when they did the eighth one and he’s part of a virtual television programme or something [laughs]. One thing that I got a lot of was, ‘This is what it should have been,’ or, ‘He should have done it like this,’ but if that is the barrier we set then you cannot ever do anything. I really wanted to rework what Halloween was.”
On making Halloween II:
“That was a tough decision,” He said. “For a start, I was really burned out after doing Halloween. It was a tough, tough movie to make. And I tried to make it look like we killed him in the end. But, yeah, eventually I had to admit, ‘Nah, he just got hurt. He was never really dead’ [laughs]. I was excited to do a sequel, though – mainly because if the first film was about Michael and how he became this famous murderer, the second one could be about Laurie and how this event had really messed her up. The original Halloween 2 never did that. And now that I had established this universe I felt like I could do anything I wanted with it.”
So will Zombie ever make his Halloween III?
“I feel like I said everything I wanted to,” he said. “When I finished Halloween 2 I thought, ‘There is no way I can take this into a Halloween 3’ – and then I heard they were going to do something different with the next one anyway. And that is always the challenge – to keep reinventing this character that we all love.”
Which of Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies do YOU prefer? Make sure to hit us up and let us know what you think in the comments section or on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram!
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