ROB ZOMBIE On New 'Halloween': 'It's Never Random Killing For No Reason'

Rob Zombie recently spoke to MTV.com about his upcoming highly anticipated remake of one of horror's most beloved slasher films, "Halloween". A few excerpts from the chat follow:

MTV: What questions do you hope to answer with this movie?

Rob Zombie: I want it not to be so coincidental. None of this stuff ever bothered me watching the original "Halloween", of course; I've always loved the movie and I think it's awesome. But when making the movie different, I didn't want [the explanation of the origin of Michael Myers' mask] to be: 'He happened to rob a hardware store and steal that mask.' Well, what if they didn't have that mask? Would he steal a Jimmy Carter mask? Or an Elmo mask, if that was the only one available at the hardware store? And when did he rob the hardware store? In broad daylight? And the alarm is still ringing? Thank God [Dr. Sam Loomis, originally played by Donald Pleasance] stopped to make that phone call, at exactly that phone booth, and found the Rabbit in Red matchbook! That type of thing always bothered me.

MTV: Talk about the plot of John Carpenter's 1978 classic versus the plot of your "re-imagining."

Zombie: The plot is so simple [in the original]; it's this young kid Michael Myers. We've changed it a bit — in the original, he kills his sister; then he's sent to Smith's Grove Sanitarium, which he later escapes from as an adult; comes home and starts randomly killing babysitters. Later, in sequels, they made [his back story] more significant — but in the first one, it's pretty random ... I've added a lot more to it, and I've tried to make everything he did be motivated and justified in some way, so it's never random killing for no reason. There's a reason for everything.

MTV: The 1978 film has one of the all-time great opening shots ...

Zombie: You mean the opening shot of the pumpkin?

MTV: The no-edit handheld shot, peeking in the windows at Michael's first killing.

Zombie: Oh, I don't do any of that stuff. That doesn't make any sense in this movie, because by that point we already know everything. [The first] was like, "Faceless killer? What happens? Oh my God, it's a little kid." But since I've already spent a half-hour developing the little kid [when he kills his sister Judith], to do any kind of mysterious POV would be ridiculous because we already know who it is. It's a totally different thought process to how it unfolds; I'm not trying to trick the audience ... we still have the original movie, so to just imitate it or copy it in any way is completely pointless.

MTV: Most people hear "Rob Zombie's 'Halloween'" and assume it'll be the classic movie with tons more blood and gore. Is this accurate?

Zombie: No, not really; there's not tons more blood. I'm not really a fan of '80s slasher bloody movies. [They've] always bored me ... I like character-driven movies. [This] is really violent and really intense, but it's because you get swept up in the characters ... a bloodbath doesn't interest me.

MTV: One thing I can't help but notice is that there's no station wagon around here. Where's Michael's ride?

Zombie: Michael Myers does not know how to drive in this movie, because that always bothered me. They would always play that off like someone must have given him lessons, but you know no one gave him lessons! He's in a maximum-security prison! So he doesn't drive.

MTV: What is Malcolm McDowell doing similar to Pleasance, and what is he doing different?

Zombie: He hasn't seen "Halloween" ... [but] he's doing certain things similar without even knowing it, which is kind of funny ... Loomis, in all the other "Halloween" movies, was some kind of crazy guy running around getting other people trying to help him. It wasn't too hard to believe that no one believed him, because he seemed a little bit like he was crazy and drunk and off his rocker. Malcolm's [Loomis] is more successful, and has profited off of all of this, and there is a conflict between Michael Myers being his greatest failed patient yet his meal ticket. Brackett doesn't really like [Loomis], because he just thinks he's this guy that exploited this tragedy in Haddonfield.

Read the entire interview at MTV.com.