Rob Zombie

Interview By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

It was only a few years ago that Rob Zombie was best known for his successful heavy metal career, both as a solo act and as the frontman for White Zombie until the group broke up in 1998. Now, though, Zombie is probably best known for his career as a film director, in which he's made a name for himself revitalizing the horror genre with only two movies: House of 1000 Corpses and its critically acclaimed spin-off The Devil's Rejects.

After the success of Rejects, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino invited him to direct a fake movie trailer that would be shown in the middle of their Grindhouse double-feature. While Grindhouse didn't end up being a money-maker, many people thought the fake trailers -- Zombie's fantastically-named Werewolf Women of the SS, and others by Eli Roth and Edgar Wright -- where the best part of the experience.

Now, Zombie has his first shot at mainstream filmmaking with the remake/re-imagining of John Carpenter's classic horror film Halloween for The Weinstein Company. Luckily we were able to talk a bit with the surprisingly polite and soft-spoken filmmaker.

"The first time Halloween came up, I wasn't interested at all," Zombie says. "You know' Originally they just said, well we have this thing, and I didn't know whether it'd be a sequel or a prequel or what. I think if I had told them, well, what if it's Michael Myers in space fighting Predator' Then they would be like, yeah!"

It turns out, though, that he had plenty of legitimate ideas on how to make the prequel work. "I thought let's make him the lead character, instead of Laurie Strode, and just make everything secondary to Michael Myers." That involved developing an elaborate backstory for the serial killer, in which we finally witness his origins. "I didn't want him to have a really terrible childhood," Zombie says, noting that he didn't want to make any excuses for him, because when it comes down to it, "he's just evil."

Besides, that makes the character retain his mystique. "I think the movie stuck around -- because the movie was awesome -- and because the character was so simple," he says. "He just seemed timeless. A lot of times they forget and they try to make these characters so over the top, and it just doesn't work. Like, Freddy Kruger is just this burnt guy in a striped sweater, which seems so dumb, but it totally works." So fans should rest assured that we still get a crazy guy in a weird mask and a mechanics outfit. Still, that didn't stop him from adding some stylistic touches: "I did want to dirty [Michael Myers] up. It bothered me how clean he was. It was the world's cleanest mechanic's outfit." He laughs.

Another big challenge of the re-imagining was the casting of Dr. Loomis, Myers's psychologist from his mental institution. The part was originally played by the late Donald Pleasence, and Malcolm McDowell steps in in the update. "McDowell's the only one I really thought would make it work. Early on, everybody was like, 'Well no one can replace Donald Pleasence.'...he brought the same thing to Halloween that Alec Guinness brought to the original Star Wars, you know'" In Zombie's mind there was only one choice. "I thought McDowell could do it. He was the only one on the list."

While he was able to snag his dream casting for that character, however, there's a long list of respected actors from the '70s and '80s Zombie would've loved to have appear. "Rutger Hauer," he says, throwing out a few random names. "I really wanted Rutger Hauer for Werewolf Women of the SS, actually. Roy Schieder's another one."

Zombie's love for the stars of Blade Runner and Jaws, respectively, is an extension of his love for many movies in the '70s, when he was growing up. "Well, the first film that I ever saw was King Kong, and that made me go, Holy crap, movies. I was like in kindergarten. But the first movie I saw in theaters -- it's funny when you're such a little kid, you don't even know that movie theaters existed, and then you go, why are all these people sitting in these seats' -- the first movie I saw in theaters was Willy Wonka." He notes some of his other favorites include Blazing Saddles and The French Connection. As you might have guessed, A Clockwork Orange, which is from the '71 and stars McDowell, is also among the list. "The first time I saw that [was] in high school," Zombie says. "He's just so insane."

Zombie is also quick to point out that he's a huge fan of the original Halloween director, John Carpenter, who's churned out over a dozen well-regarded horror films in his forty-year career. "I've known John since Escape from L.A.," Zombie says, referring of course to the 1996 follow-up to the '80s Kurt Russell B-movie classic Escape from NY. "I did a song for that movie based only on the fact that I wanted to go down and hang out on the set...when [doing Halloween] came up, he was the first person I called. And he was cool. He was like, 'Oh, great, go for it.'"

Of course, Zombie did go for it, and it looks like his master career plan -- whatever that is -- is working: Halloween shattered the Labor Day weekend record with 31 million dollars over the past four days. Considering the horror genre's many flops this year, and the flick's launch in the no-man's-land of late summer, it's a massive achievement. Already the film has affected his career: a few weeks ago, he signed a multiple-picture deal with The Weinstein Company, so it looks like he'll be a fruitful director of the bizarre and horrific for some time to come.