Rob Zombie's 'Halloween': Reimagining Michael Myers

The "Halloween" that came out almost 30 years ago may be one of the most influential horror films ever made, and it served up one of the most iconic slasher-movie characters of all time in Michael Myers, the mask-wearing, butcher-knife-wielding boogeyman who escapes Smith's Grove Sanitarium on All Hallow's Eve to return to Haddonfield, Ill., the scene of his horrendous family slaughter 15 years earlier. More trouble awaits.

John Carpenter's 1978 classic spawned numerous sequels and countless imitators (Michael's "blood bros " include Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Leatherface and Pinhead), but there's hardly any graphic violence or gore in the entire thing. Today, the film would be rated PG-13 at worst.

"Probably," says musician-director Rob Zombie, whose reimagined "Halloween" opens Friday (see synopsis on Page 28) with an R rating that won't surprise anyone who has seen Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses" or his surprisingly good "The Devil's Rejects." ("If you love that, you'll definitely love this," he says.) But don't expect an even bloodier "director's cut" -- maybe that should be "director's slash" -- when "Halloween" comes out on DVD.

"There will probably be a director's cut but not necessarily based upon violence," Zombie said recently. He says "Halloween" is "very violent, but it's a different type of violence. Things have gotten pretty extreme in movies, and this movie doesn't really play upon that. That's what I liked about the story of Michael Myers -- he's not a situation, he's a character, an iconic movie monster, and that's what's scary about it.

According to Zombie, his take is "not overly gory, not overly exploitive -- it's not a big special-effects movie; I never wanted it to be. The effects in this movie are simple and basic. I wanted it to be real. There's no extreme stuff."

We'll see.

Written, co-produced and directed by Zombie, this "Halloween" is not a straight remake but a mix of never-told origin story and familiar denouement in which the tremendously troubled 10-year-old Michael (Daeg Faerch) grows up into big (literally, at 6 feet 10), bad Michael (former pro wrestler Tyler Mane, who played Sabretooth in "X-Men" and Ajax in "Troy"). There's a new sister Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton in the role that made Jamie Lee Curtis a star) and a new doom-spouting psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell in the role Donald Pleasence essayed in five of the eight previous Halloween films).

When Zombie, out of respect, informed Carpenter of plans to remake "Halloween," Carpenter's blessing came as an encouragement to Zombie to "make it his own," and that's what he has done.

"I always envisioned the film in three acts," Zombie explains, with "Act 1 being young Michael, Act 2 being Smith's Grove Sanitarium and Act 3 being Haddonfield, and only Act 3 would have elements of the original film."

Trying to deal with fan expectations, Zombie says, is "impossible, but I myself, being a fan of the movie and a fan of horror movies, came to deal with my own expectations. Of course Acts 1 and 2 are easier because you have a blank slate so anything goes." The origin story, he admits, "was the funnest part for me. I ran wild on the whole movie, but with the other parts I wanted to keep some established bits, like the way adult Michael Myers looks and [certain] iconic moments, but his young years were totally up for grabs, so that was great.

"Act 3 was picking and choosing which elements I'd retain and how I'd change them some. I never wanted anyone to feel 'I know where this is going.' I wanted it to be a different twist or turn, where you'd see familiar things but it was always different. The whole movie ends with twists and turns totally different from the original."

Zombie was interested in deepening Michael Myers's character, historically as shallow as a grave, demystified by time. "When a villain or a scary character becomes so familiar, so popular, he loses the mystery, so how's he going to be scary?" Zombie asks.