"August 31 -- the day it came out" doesn't have quite the resonance of "Halloween -- the night he came home," and neither does Rob Zombie's take on John Carpenter's 1978 horror/slasher classic that introduced the world to masked boogeyman Michael Myers.

The last half of Zombie's film is essentially a remake of the original, with the requisite ramped-up violence and gore. The first half is attempted prequel, however, offering a back story for Myers -- something notably, and perhaps wisely, absent from the Carpenter mold that inspired seven increasingly dubious sequels.

Michael Myers wasn't even named in the original film; the credits listed him as "The Shape." He was simply an emotionless killer behind an expressionless mask, seemingly unstoppable as he picked up a murderous mission, which had been put on hold while he spent 17 years silently stewing in a sanitarium, planning his escape and revenge.

What set off 10-year-old Michael on Halloween that he so cold-heartedly killed family members and neighbors with kitchen knives and aluminum baseball bats (ping!)? Turns out to be that very same white-trash family, consisting of clueless stripper mom (played by Sheri Moon Zombie, Rob's Mrs.), her perpetually drunk and abusive boyfriend (super-scrungy William Forsythe) and Michael's trampy older sister (Hanna Hall). At school, bullies torment young Michael about his mom, and he's built up quite a Polaroid library of animals he's killed. Fuse lit, we think.

All that plays out in the first half-hour of a film that contains dialogue so nasty and stupid, you'd swear (right along with the characters) that the booker for "Jerry Springer" wrote it (Zombie did).

-- Richard Harrington (Sept. 1, 2007)

Contains strong brutal bloody violence and terror throughout, sexual content, graphic nudity and language.