What awakened Zombie's dark vision for 'Halloween'?

From USATODAY, NORTH HOLLYWOOD — Rob Zombie, director of the Halloween film coming to theaters Friday, may not think his horror movies influence behavior in younger viewers. But there is no denying he was heavily influenced by images he says he has seen in his 42 years.

There was the time he was playing in his backyard on a sunny day when he heard a man's screams. Zombie recalls, "There was this chubby naked guy who had just been stabbed running down the street covered in blood — the most surreal sight."

Then as a young adult in New York City, he witnessed a fatal bludgeoning and, working as a bicycle delivery man, passed a frozen corpse. "I think it was a homeless guy who froze to death," he says. "But what was even more disturbing was the time I walked out of my apartment in Brooklyn and came across a dead Saint Bernard on the sidewalk."
The former frontman for the metal band White Zombie worked through much of that psychological trauma as the director of 2003's House of 1000 Corpses and 2005's The Devil's Rejects. His Halloween, a remake of John Carpenter's 1978 original, is more mainstream, but it still embraces Zombie's flair for gore.

He has been known to examine violent crime-scene photos to accurately depict death.

"People's bodies almost explode," he shares nonchalantly. "I always want things to seem real, even when they're fantastical. That makes it more horrible."

As much as he enjoys assembling carnage on film, he steers clear of meat in real life. He turned vegetarian while in high school after seeing a documentary on slaughterhouses. "It freaked me out, and I found it so disgusting that I stopped eating meat."

Zombie grew up in Haverhill, Mass. His father worked as an upholsterer, and his mother's family worked carnivals. His sibling, Michael, now goes by the name Spider and travels with the band Powerman 5000.

He and his wife, Sheri Moon, who were married on Halloween 2002, don't plan to have children. Their family is complete with pug dog Dracula and cats Frankenstein, Spooky and Lily.

"I don't really know hardly anybody who has kids," he says. So he found it surreal directing child actors in Halloween. "I just talked to them like they were short adults," he says.

After a solo record and tour this fall and winter, Zombie will dig back into filmmaking with preproduction on his next live-action film and preparations for the release of his first animated film (as writer/producer), The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, which, he cautions, "is not for kids."

"It's a superhero monster sex comedy about a washed-up alcoholic wrestler and his attempt to rescue a stripper from the evil clutches of Dr. Satan," he says. "It's a ridiculous movie."

Though his body is tattooed with likenesses of famous movie monsters, there is no Michael Myers, Halloween's psychopathic killer.

"We'll see," Zombie teases. "If the movie's a big hit, I might get a tattoo to celebrate."