ROB ZOMBIE Talks About Upcoming 'Halloween' Movie

Bryan Grob of the High Plains Reader recently conducted an interview with Rob Zombie. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

High Plains Reader: The big news is that you will be directing the new "Halloween" movie. Will you be adding the grit of the original "Halloween" back into the project?

Rob Zombie: "When the project came to me about six months ago, I didn't know if I wanted to do it. There are a lot of remakes and retellings, some are good, some are bad, it's no big crime either way, but I wouldn't tackle it unless I thought there was a way and I genuinely thought there was a reason to do it. I think the core story in the first film is great and there is a way to redo things and make it scary again. I do feel over the last however many years all the sequels have really sucked the life out of that character and ruined it. Kind of like what I feel about 'Frankenstein' the original film, brilliant, 'Bride of Frankenstein', brilliant, 'Son of Frankenstein', a little bit creakier, by the time you get to 'Abbot and Costello meets Frankenstein', Frankenstein's pretty much screwed as a character until Hammer Studios came and dusted it off."

High Plains Reader: Is the new album ["Educated Horses"] the mature version of Rob Zombie?

Rob Zombie: "I never really thought of it that way. I just thought of it like it was phase three. WHITE ZOMBIE was one, everything I did after that was two, and this is a new beginning. That's why in a sense I wanted to strip it all back down so that I could build it back up in a fresh, exciting way. People always keep trying to do the same thing, looking the same, acting the same because that's what the fans want. KISS is a good example towards the end people were sick of them with the makeup. Then when they took it off for a few years people were just dying to have it back. You want to be an active, creative person moving forward and not turn it into a Broadway show where there's no life or spontaneity left."

High Plains Reader: What happened with your record label, Zombie a Go-Go?

Rob Zombie: "I got frustrated with the whole thing. That was 100 percent a labor of love. I was pumping tons of money into it, tons of time and it was just becoming too flighty with the bands. They would go play some shows, come back and go, 'We broke up.' You can deal with your own band's bullshit, but when you start dealing with other bands' bullshit, it's like, 'I don't have time for this.' I just couldn't see myself expelling that much energy on bands that are going to break up because somebody's pissed off. I take projects seriously and when I put that much time into a project I want it to work and not be on the whim of somebody else."

Read the entire interview at HPR1.com.