Rob Zombie was interviewed by Muse TV on the red carpet of Monday night's (September 16) premiere of his new thriller, "3 From Hell" , at Vista Theatre in Los Angeles. Asked if there are any movies that are so sacred that he would never want to see them remade, Rob said (see video below): "No. Because I don't like thinking like that. Because if I thought like that, I'd go, well, they would have never made 'Dracula' with [ Bela ] Lugosi , 'cause they would have stopped at 'Nosferatu' . Then they would have never made 'Dracula' with Christopher Lee , 'cause they would have said, 'Oh, you can't do…' I used to think more like that. But then I thought, like, 'Fuck it!'
"If you do it for the wrong reasons, yeah, it'll be awful," he continued. "But if you really do it for the right reasons, anything can work. I mean, some movies are hard — like, I wouldn't wanna try to remake 'Jaws' or 'The Shining' or something, 'cause sometimes things have just become so iconic that it's not gonna happen. But I don't like to think… Nothing's sacred."
In 2007, Zombie was famously brought on to remake a film many horror fans thought untouchable, John Carpenter 's 1978 classic "Halloween" . Although the movie was a financial success (it was made for $15 million and it grossed $80.3 million), reactions from critics and fans was largely negative, with many disapproving of Zombie 's attempt to bring the characters from Carpenter 's original into the modern age, while also amping up the gore, violence and cruelty to the extreme. Zombie came back to direct sequel "Halloween II" in 2009. The movie was said to be a bit better, but it was once again criticized for a problem that a lot of critics believe plagues all of Zombie 's movies: a bad screenplay. ( "Halloween II" was also made for $15 million and it made $39.4 million at the box office.)
Zombie recently told Forbes that helming the first "Halloween" movie for The Weinstein Company was "a miserable experience," adding that he was "very reticent to do the second one. I did do the second one, and I thought, 'Okay, well, the first one was a miserable experience, but it did well, so maybe it'll be easier the second time?'" he explained. "It was worse. Oh my God. I felt like they weren't trusting me on the first one because they wanted to make sure it was a hit, and now they weren't trusting me not to fuck up their hit."
Detailing why the experience was not one the creator looks back on favorably, he said: "They would show me scenes from 'Halloween' to try and make a point, and I'd be, like, 'Yeah, I know. I made that movie. Why do you show me that like I've never seen it before?’
"We made a behind-the-scenes documentary for the making of 'Halloween' . That has somehow gotten lost in the vaults. That shows how messed up everything was and what was going on when we were making those movies."
"3 From Hell" is the sequel to Zombie 's 2005 film "The Devil's Rejects" .
