Oh, it seems like only yesterday that people were asking if Rob Zombie’s decision to remake Halloween made him a hypocrite. After all, he was the auteur who said:
I feel it’s the worst thing any filmmaker can do. I actually got a call from my agent and they asked me if I wanted to be involved in a remake of CHAINSAW. I said no way! Those movies are perfect.
But a scant while later Halloween II has hit the theatres with Zombie’s name firmly attached. And now comes some very odd news from Variety.
Rob Zombie is remaking The Blob.
Yes, The Blob. The one that starred Steve McQueen, produced a sequel directed by Larry Hagman, and was remade as a gory little flick in 1988. That The Blob.
It’s easy to second-guess, of course. To accuse Hollywood of having no imagination. Although I would argue that it certainly takes a lot of imagination to put “The Blob,” “remake,” and “directed by Rob Zombie” into a coherent sentence without forgetting how to breathe. My own opinions about the quality of Zombie’s previous work aside, one has to admit that his comfort zone is rednecks, white trash, and strippers.
Which makes the key point of his vision all the more fascinating.
“My intention is not to have a big red blobby thing — that’s the first thing I want to change,” Zombie said. “That gigantic Jello-looking thing might have been scary to audiences in the 1950s, but people would laugh now.”
The Blob without the Blob? Brilliant! And I’ll bet there are white-trash alcoholics and strippers involved, as well!