'Halloween 3' News, 'Halloween II' Alternate Ending

Halloween II might have been a slight step up from the 2007 remake, but the trajectory of the series is nevertheless a bit depressing. Rob Zombie is probably on the hook for most of it, since he wrote and directed both films. But he had an unbelievably quick turnaround this last time: They started shooting in April, only a few months after Zombie decided to come back for round two. And it was released in August. There's no margin for error with a scheule like that...and there were a lot of errors in the movie. Bad combo.

The Weinstein Company still made money, though, because the film was made so inexpensively, so it almost immediately announced plans for a third movie in the franchise, not recognizing that the same kind of move doomed Halloween II before it ever got off the ground. Then TWC put it on hold for a few weeks, and it re-emerged as a future project for My Bloody Valentine director Patrick Lussier, which is the best-case scenario. Now, Bloody Disgusting says that the studio is accepting pitches for a "new angle" for the third Michael Myers movie, and because Lussier and Valentine writer Todd Farmer are busy working on the Nic Cage action pic Drive Angry, they might be out of the loop now. That hasn't been confirmed by the studio, but if Bob Weinstein has sent word out that he wants new story ideas, it could be bad news for Farmer, and that could keep Lussier from coming on board.

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Rob Zombie Remaking 'The Blob' Without The Blob

Perhaps I'm a bit testy because his movies have gotten so bad that I always have to see them at midnight on opening day, but would studios please stop letting Rob Zombie write scripts? It's been downhill ever since House of 1,000 Corpses, even though as a director, he had shown steady improvement until Halloween II, which is pretty empty.

I ask the studios this because Zombie has just cashed in to write, direct, and produce a remake of The Blob, one of the quintessential American monster movies of the 1950s and 60s. The original, released in 1958, introduced the world to Steve McQueen. There has been a remake before now, and it was dreadful, and I can't believe Zombie has the creative chops as a writer to give us anything better. I mean, the proof is in the (blood) pudding, right? "My intention is not to have a big red blobby thing -- that's the first thing I want to change," Zombie tells Variety. "That gigantic Jello-looking thing might have been scary to audiences in the 1950s, but people would laugh now."

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Movie Review - 'Halloween II'

Halloween II Starring Scout Taylor-Compton, Tyler Mane, and Malcolm McDowell Directed by Rob Zombie Rated R

Are horror movies more or less popular when they show more blood and eviscerations? Well, the most famous movies in the genre - Exorcist, Psycho, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween are almost evenly split. Even the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is more suggestive than bloody. I ask that because, with Halloween II, Rob Zombie seems to think all you want to see is bloodshed. And even among those classic movies that do explore gore (note: the original and best Halloween from 1979 does not) are rarely more violent than not. The reason is simple: Gore for the sake of gore simply isn't interesting. There's no effective, efficient build-up to the scenes of undeterred violence, and without that suspense, there's no release. You're just watching a slaughter, which has no drama in a one-sided boxing match and even less in a movie featuring a knife-weilding giant with an inhuman pain threshhold. The kicker here is that Zombie has actually created a small shred of a story that beats anything in the Michael Myers films since John Carpenter's 1979 original. He began exploring the psychology of Myers in his remake two years ago. For the first time, we saw Michael Myers as a child, and though it's a heavy-handed and rudimentary explanation, Zombie does make a case for how the killer got that way. In fact, the origin story elements of Halloween were what made it stand out. Here again, the writer-director looks inside the mind of the killer, but now also his only survivor from the first film, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton). There are a couple of surprises down that dark road, so far as you go in not thinking about how the movie might end. It's all illustrated through dream sequences and flashbacks, which are a decent device for such material.

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Rob Zombie Talks 'Werewolf Women of the SS'

We know they're making Machete, we've heard they're planning a feature-length version of Don't and possibly Thanksgiving, and now Rob Zombie's talking - hypothetically - about a possible movie based on his Grindhouse trailer, Werewolf Women of the SS.

It's a bit odd that as many as four movies might pop up out of Grindhouse, which was a pretty king-sized flop two years ago. I would guess if any of these other spin-offs happen, it will depend on the success of Machete, which Robert Rodriguez is currently shooting. As for Zombie and Werewolf Women, he tells Hollywood.com, "I think the time is right. I feel that the Nazi movie is back," perhaps referencing Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

"Once the trend comes back, the Nazi trends comes back, now you pervert it like crazy and you add werewolves. So, I don't know if we'll ever see that movie, but now is the time. The time is now to strike with this."

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Red Band Trailer for Rob Zombie's 'El Superbeasto'

It's not just because a character invokes our signature ratings system of Damn Dirty Apes, but I thought you'd like to see the new Red Band trailer for Rob Zombie's The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. He's been working on this animated movie for years, and now, somewhat disappointingly, it's headed straight to DVD.

Zombie has Paul Giamatti and Rosario Dawson in his cast, along with comedians Tom Papa and Brian Posehn and Sheri Moon-Zombie (what a surprise). It's a pretty trippy story and the animation takes me back a few years. Plus, anytime your movie involves "murderous super-intelligent gorillas," that can't be a bad thing, right? Here's the Red Band:

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