Rob Zombie is taking his second stab at Halloween with Halloween 2 that is out in theaters now. This Halloween feels more like a Rob Zombie film than the first one and he told us at The Weinstein Company press day that he felt this one was more his, “This film to me is more of a logical follow-up to the Devil’s Reject’s, where as Halloween the first one seemed like a weird side step that because it was someone else’s material. It kind of messed with me. I made the first half of the movie more my thing and the second half of the movie, I felt well I should bring in more of the John Carpenter beats because that is what the people are going to be expecting. But as soon as I started doing that, I don’t think I had the same enthusiasm of the film when it was new stuff. Because the fun of it creating your world and you’re going Annie Brackett, and Laurie, well these are someone else’s characters. That’s why in this movie, I tried to flip them all upside down and make them my characters.” He definitely made these characters his own. I have to admit it took me a while after seeing Halloween 2 to absorb what he did with Michael Meyers and the movie. After listening to him in the above interview, I understood him and the direction he took the movie in even more.
He explained to us when he was first approached about doing the H1, they didn’t know what they wanted, so he watched the original one again and realized we didn’t know much about his past and he decided to expand on that. That is the thing with so many of these slasher films, we don’t find out what made them the way they are. It wasn’t only Michael we got to know better, but if he gets his director’s cut for H2 it will also be a much different Laurie Stode we will get to know. He told us, “There’s another version of the movie that is very very different. That will probably be the Director’s Cut. There was two ways we could cut the movie. The way we cut for theatrical is sort of like Laurie Strode’s character is sort of holding it together, getting her life together, it starts spiraling downward, but in the other version she’s an incredible mess and gets worse. I mean she never has any good moments. She’s just messed up. She’s lashing out at everybody. She’s horrible. She’s like messed up on drugs. She’s completely spun out throughout the whole movie. Which makes for a really challenging movie to watch and I feel like, I don’t know if the fans would embrace so much darkness around her.” He added the rest of the movie is the same, but “her relationship with Annie is horrible. They’re like at each other’s throats through the whole movie. Which they are not in the theatrical.” I really hope this version gets released because it sounds like it could be really powerful yet more haunting as compared to scary.
When it comes to the theatrical Meyers we get in Halloween 2 that is out now, he is one of the most disturbing killers I have ever seen in any movie. He is so cold and unremorseful, that you walk away from the movie uncomfortable, which is what a good horror movie does. I can’t explain it, but the kills are so realistic and that is what Zombie and Tyler Mane, who plays Michael Meyers, were going for and accomplished. If you are a fan horror, I highly suggest seeing the movie. If you are squeamish, I hate to say it but beware of this one. The male reporter sitting next to me sat through most of the movie covering his eyes with the productions notes because the movie scared him that much. I have to say seeing him do that cracked me up!
All in all I have a whole new respect for Rob Zombie’s movies and the man himself just because of his attitude about it all. He is just so f*cking cool and lax about it and there is absolutely no BS coming out of his mouth that it is really refreshing. I seriously can’t wait to see his next movie The Haunted World of El Superbeasto when it comes out on September 22nd. Here is how he sold it to us, “That’s an animated movie. That’s a comedy. That’s totally different than anything I have ever done. It’s kind of like X rated Scooby Doo. It’s ridiculous, It absolutely ridiculous. It’s like part musical, part comedy. Absolutely crazy.” Sounds fun, no?
Before Rob Zombie wrote and directed Halloween 1 and 2, he was in the noise rock band White Zombie. How cool is it to see the 23 year old performing at that 1988 gig.
SOME SPOILERS SO BE AWARE OF THAT
Malcolm McDowell is back as Dr Loomis in Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2 that is out tomorrow, August 28th. Now after seeing the first one, I wasn’t sure how he was going to come back, but the blue-eyed actor who seems to be in everything told us at The Weinstein Company press day he didn’t feel the same as me. When I asked him if he thought he would be back he exclaimed, “Of course! I’ll be back for the third one. Even though I know I lost my head.” So I said, “hey there’s plastic surgery now”, and he said matter-of-factly, “Who cares, it’s not real.”
When you are sitting in a room with him and you get the real Malcolm McDowell, you just appreciate him so much more. He is a no BS guy and that just makes him so much cooler. When he was asked about horror movies, he told us he really isn’t a fan of them. In fact he also let us know he rarely sees any of his movies more than once and he mostly sees them at premieres. In fact there are about 20 of them he has never seen, but don’t ask them which they are because he doesn’t know because he has done so many. One movie in case you were wondering that he has seen more than once is Clockwork Orange because he is invited to see when it screens at different events.
But saying all of that he had high praise for the director, Rob Zombie who let him take Loomis into a new a direction for this movie. He told us after the way his character had a near-death experience in the first one and survived being attacked by Michael Meyers, he thought he would be pissed off and that is how he played him in this movie. He told us he wanted to bring more comedy to it because he was bored and he brought a lot of comedy to it. Especially his scene where he is on a Jimmy Kimmel Live! (that came from Rob Zombie on JKL!) like talk show with Weird Al Yankovic. The actor told us he was familiar with Weird Al’s work before the scene, but he had a lot of fun working with him for that half day. Because he didn’t really know him before working with him, one of the best lines is when he calls him Mr Weird. He told us he didn’t know him, his name is Weird Al, so he figured call her would address him as Mr Weird. Seriously you have to see Halloween 2 tomorrow just for this scene and just to see how brilliantly Dr Loomis plays out in this movie!!! Malcolm McDowell really did a great job adding comic relief to a movie that will scare the crap out of you!
Also coming back to Halloween 2 is Sheri Moon Zombie, who plays Michael Meyers mom Debra. After the first one she seemed like a good candidate for not coming back because she offed herself. In fact she told us when she read her husband’s Rob Zombie’s script and even when she was filming it she wasn’t sure how it was going to work, but she trusted him. She told us by her coming back, “You get more into Michael’s mind by seeing Debra through his eyes, I mean its really twisted because essentially he is mentally stunted at the age of 10 or 11. It just gives you more insight into the workings of Michael Meyers.” She wasn’t kidding, her character coming back really shaped the feel and hauntinglyness (new word for the day) of the movie.
This movie feels more like a Rob Zombie film than the first one and when I asked her about that she told us, “He loved shooting the first third of the first movie. That was own. He got to establish the new characters. For this one he really feels, wow this is mine because he doesn’t have any limitations or anything. I think he’s happier with it. He does feels like this is more of his own.” It really is his own and it takes Michael Meyers to a whole new direction that we have never seen him in all of the Halloweens.
So when she was asked if there would be a third one, she told us, “I think he now has a sense of finality with it, he completed it. He didn’t want someone to his vision from the first one and ruin it and wash it down and have it go straight-to-video. He wanted to have a sense of completion with it and he says he has that now.” She prefaced that answer by saying she doesn’t think there will be a third one, but that didn’t mean anything to us. She was right because if the movie slashes the competition tomorrow at the box office, you know they will be back to kill some more.
So what is she doing while she waits to find out if there will be a third one? She is working on designing her really awesome clothing line Total Skull!!! Seriously you have to check out it, I know I am going to order a few things for myself!
Before Malcolm McDowell was psychoanalyzing Michael Meyers in Halloween 2, he was just a student psychoanalyzing his school’s administration in If… Wow the 24 year old was such a hottie in that 1968 movie. Not saying that he still isn’t now because believe he is just so darn handsome in person and on the screen no matter how old he gets.
Tyler Mane is back as Michael Meyers in Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2 that is out on Friday, August 28th. The 6’9″ wrestler turned actor is the scariest one of them all and it is not his height, but his brains that lead to the effect. When I asked him how his version of the cult figure differs from the others he told us at The Weinstein Company’s press day that the others are one dimensional and he gave him more depth. He said he did his research for the role as in “if you look at any serial killer, they can walk out on the street and you wouldn’t be able to think they would be able to do what they have done and I wanted to bring that to it.” And believe me he brought it. But bringing it wasn’t always easy for him and he told us after his first kill in this movie of the nurse. After stabbing her several times that after the last one, he looked up and told Rob, “I’m done.” So how does he decompress after that? The answer, with a cigar and a glass of a wine. I can so picture him sitting back and enjoying that stoogie and glass of wine, can’t you?
Before he needed to decompress from his role, he told us how he got the call about playing the masked killer. He prefaced the story by saying that he really didn’t know much about horror before he agreed to do the film. He said he was up in Canada when he got the phone call from Rob, and told us how that conversation went down between the director and him, “Hey, I want you to play Michael Meyers in Halloween. And I go Rob, I don’t want to be the guy behind the hockey mask. (Rob says) Dude, wrong mask.” Now he knows which mask belongs to which horror icon.
Tyler originally signed on for two Halloweens and now that both have completed would he come back for a third? He told us it all depends on things like who is working on it. So it will be interesting to see if we will get a third one, but before we have to worry about that go see him scare the sh!t out of you this Friday in Halloween 2. Seriously I am still having nightmares because of how well he played Michael Meyers in H2 and it has been 6 days since I saw it when I typed this. But he did ease my dreams a little bit because as you can see in the interview above Tyler Mane is nothing like the character he portrays…thankfully!!!
So what is up for him next? He created a production company called Mane Entertainment and they are prepping their first feature Penance Lane, which is a horror/thriller that he hopes to start filming this winter. He will be playing a con who gets out of a jail and goes on a mission to a house where people are not as they appear. He added that there will be a lot of twists and turns in the movie. That sounds really good, I can’t wait to see it but first I am going to see him again in Halloween 2 this Friday and you should too!!!
