Several years ago when the horror movie remake craze started my little brother used to joke with me about Halloween being remade, something which I adamantly denied would ever happen, not when so many people thought so highly of the film (my mind always thinking that for horror fans remaking Halloween would be like remaking The Godfather or Lawrence of Arabia).  But then it happened.  Word got out that Rob Zombie was going to be making a Halloween movie.  At first people thought it was going to be another sequel, something that I thought might be pretty cool since he has talent (I didn’t care for his first two movies, but not because they were poorly done, which wasn’t the case, I just don’t like the in your face brutality), but then word started getting around that it was, in fact, going to be a remake of the original.  Right away my little brother and I decided we would not see this  

fast forward through any scene that had to deal with an animal -- I can see people put through meat grinders, but when it comes to someone hurting an animal, NOPE!  Now, here we go: I actually liked the movie.  I didn’t like Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween, but I felt the movie itself was really good, one which could have easily stood on its own and didn’t have to be a remake of a classic horror movie, one which could have launched its own masked knife wielding villain icon, something which many slasher fans have been waiting for.  The trouble with Rob Zombie’s Halloween is that it explained too much about Michael Myers, something one didn’t need in the original movie because he was pure evil.  In this one you felt sympathetic toward him, but then found out that he is still pure evil since he can’t die, something which just didn’t work for me.  Don’t get me wrong, I love sympathetic murders and villains, and write about them all the time, but really didn’t need the character of Michael Myers made out to be one of them.  Sure, I can understand people wondering about Michael Myers after seeing the original Halloween and asking themselves why he was doing what he was doing, which of course was something they tried time and time to explain in the sequels, but never really got the message across because of how bad they were, but that didn’t take away from the original.  This remake did.  People who now see the remake first and then see the original are going to be really thrown off, because the beauty of the original is that he was just born bad -- a normal kid in a good family who suddenly becomes a killer.  Nothing made Michael Myers into a bizarre killer, he just was one, which was why Doctor Loomis wanted him locked up for the rest of his life, and why he wasn’t surprised when he disappeared after being shot six times, which, in my opinion, was much more frightening that an ‘abused kid turns into a psycho killer’.  

Like I said, I thought Rob Zombie’s movie was great and would have loved it if he had been creating his own killer rather than butchering the one John Carpenter and Debra Hill created.  In fact, if this movie had been its own rather than a remake I would have been one of the first to see the sequel last night.      

So, my advice to people that want to see Rob Zombie’s Halloween is this: see the movie, but not before watching the original.  It isn’t very long and won’t take up much time, but it will give you a great appreciation for the movie and make you understand why it created an entire sub genera within the horror genera and why it is still considered the best after thirty years.    

movie, not when the original was so good and something an adult could watch late at night for the first time and actually get scared (anyone who claims not to be frightened the first time they see the original Halloween is full of shit), a vow the two of us were able to keep while the movie was in theaters and then continued whenever he had time off from the military (we rent horror movies like crazy when he is on leave, but have always avoided Rob Zombie’s Halloween).  

Well, yesterday I broke down and rented the movie.  It wasn’t something I wanted to do, but given that I now run a website that has a section on horror movies and given that these new Halloween movies are pretty popular I decided it was time to rent it and watch it and review it, something which I suppose I will have to do with other remakes as well (maybe I should start a remake page since this disturbing fad it not about to end and is even starting to go mainstream).  Anyway, my frustration at having this classic movie remade appeared in the store when I went to check it out and the kid behind the counter got really excited over seeing this movie in my hands and wanted to know if I was going to see the new one later that night.  I told him no and that I wasn’t a fan of remakes and that the only reason I was renting this movie was to review it for my webpage.  He, however, must not have heard what I said because he went on and on about this movie and then asked if I had seen the new Friday the 13th?  I told him that it had sucked.  He then started in on how he hoped the sequel to this movie would be good and once again asked me if I was going to go see it.  I again told him no, not that night and that I hated remakes and really liked the original Halloween, which is when he told me that he had never seen the original but that people told him the remake was better because it told the story of the original while also explaining why Michael Myers was the way he was.  Oh yeah, I was pretty much ready to burst at this point, but instead just told him he should see the original and then left.

Once home I waited for it to get dark out and then turned off all the lights in the house so I could watch the movie, my mind telling me to give the movie a chance and to view it as a movie that stands on its own rather than the remake of a classic -- easier said than done.  A few minutes later I started the movie and within ten minutes was ready to turn it off, my insides weeping at how twisted my favorite movie had become.  I didn’t turn it off, however, and kept watching, though I did