Finally Watched the Rob Zombie HALLOWEEN Workprint... My Thoughts

[Davy_Krueger]

It’s no secret that Rob Zombie’s vision of his Halloween was from Michael’s point of view, and this is even more apparent in his workprint cut of HALLOWEEN. I first found out about this cut, something of a mix between a first draft and Zombie’s “original” vision as presented to test audiences, on this very message board. The idea of a cut of Rob Zombie’s Halloween showing EVEN MORE of the night HE came home definitely interested me. I finally came across a copy on Reddit that had been uploaded to a Google Drive. I immediately downloaded it and watched! Here are my thoughts…

The movie definitely starts out with a very different tone. Instead of a loud guitar riff from the opening of KISS’s “God of Thunder” (a track from the album Destroyer, a T-shirt from which Michael is wearing in this scene and through school) we get clanging chains leading into Bobby Pickett’s classic Halloween tune “Monster Mash.” Anybody used to the mure more realistic tone of God of Thunder immediately cringes to hearing this soon-to-be killer listening to a 1962 Halloween party song. It’s silly, and not what you expect… but it also sets up the portrayal we’ll see of Michael throughout the rest of the movie: not as a brutal, menacing serial killer without reason and conscience, but as an Angel of Death, here to harvest the souls of those who defile his family.

I particularly liked the opening half of this movie even more than the opening half the Director’s Cut. The credits sequence is enjoyable, as we get to actually hear Loomis’ and Debra Myer’s conversation about Michael overlaid footage of Michael fleeing school. I also like that Michael’s killing of his sister, Ronnie, and Steve are given a motive, as he tells his mother, “It’s all over, mommy” when she questions why he’s on the front porch with baby Laurie. The even more additional time we spend with young Michael in the sanitarium tells a much more coherent story of his downward spiral from psychotic, yet protective (and even at times, sweet) child, to a hopeless, emotionless Shape that knows only one thing: that killing is fun. I would be interested in seeing if there’s some form of “supercut” to this first half showing all the footage from the Workprint and the Director’s Cut, as there are several moments in the Director’s Cut that don’t appear in the workprint, in particular Loomis’ explanation of the color black, and Loomis’ black and white home footage of Michael.

The back half of the movie is, I think, where things start to get messy. Things about Danny Trejo’s character are almost completely cut. We see him plant ideas into Michael’s head, and take him out to his hearing where he’s told he’ll be transferred out of Smith’s Grove, but we never see him show up for work that morning to discover Michael’s massacre, or see Michael murder him. In all, this second half presents us with a much more sympathetic Michael, who contrasts against some other, very different, character portrayals. The Workprint shows us the entire Halloween night from MIchael’s point of view. We don’t get a lot of Laurie or her friends, and a lot of footage of them from the Director’s Cut and the theatrical cut are not in the workprint. There is, of course, also vice versa, and for the most part this is a good thing. For example, the character of Linda, who’s bubbly personality in the 1978 original, gets turned into a bratty “daddy’s girl” in the theatrical cut, become an absolutely unlikable witch in the workprint, taking her tantrums out on her fellow classmates while Laurie desperately follows behind her. helplessly apologizing profusely to whichever victim Linda decides to humiliate next. You feel no sympathy for her whatsoever. This isn’t the only divergence Zombie takes with her, either. In a ballsy, and thankfully corrected move in the director’s and theatrical cuts, Bob dies not by being iconically pinned to a wall as his feet slowly fall, but in the back of his van as he combs through empty beer cans. Much of the workprint is edited sloppily like this.

Other than the music, the editing in the workprint is either great, or very poor. It seems that editing these movies is not Zombie’s strong suit. Many of the awkward line deliveries from the theatrical and director’s cuts are “fixed” in the workprint where extended dialogue moments make the characters sound like they’re having actual conversations, but other moments, like Annie’s attack, are butchered almost worse than the TV edits. Meanwhile, the butchered Mr. Strode attack from the theatrical cut is actually given time to make sense in the workprint. Here, we get to see Michael actually walk up to Mr. Strode very calmly before striking. Then the terrible editing comes back when we see Mrs. Strode’s attack butchered as the whole “Michael hunting his sister” angle is very sloppily removed from the workprint. Unfortunately, we still don’t see what knocks out Laurie between Michael dragging her out of the bathroom, and Michael carrying her out of the front door.

The entire ending of the movie is different from the officially released cuts, though not unfamiliar. Instead of Michael chasing Laurie through the abandoned Myers house, we get a hostage negotiation between Loomis and Michael on the front lawn. I can see why test audiences disliked it. It’s rather anticlimactic. Instead of Laurie shooting Michael in the head, we get the cops show up in the middle of Loomis’ negotiations with Michael. As soon as Laurie is out of the way, the cops open fire and Michael is killed in a spray of bullets. This entire ending concept would end up being reused for Rob Zombie’s Halloween two, though I wonder if Zombie just likes the idea of going out in a hail of bullets, as that’s how the titular characters went out in Zombie’s “Devil’s Rejects” in 2005.

As I mentioned, the music is probably the most “rough draft” in this cut. The film has an extensive usage of “Laurie’s Theme” even in parts having nothing to do with Laurie. I’m assuming Zombie just liked the sound of it over the “Halloween Theme,” which would have been more appropriate in the place of “Laurie’s Theme” in many instances of its use. In place of the classic John Carpenter theme is the echoing “piano pluck” sound that recurs throughout the sequel. It’s a cool sound, but you get sick of hearing it after about 20 times. The music definitely felt like Zombie wasn’t done with tweaking it, but it’s not entirely distracting.

In all, I liked this cut, but I still like the Director’s Cut the best out of all of them. It’s not a bad cut, but it definitely feels unpolished and I think Zombie could and did do better with the Director’s Cut.

[Riddict]

A lot of those scenes your mentioning were reshoots. That workprint was going to be the final cut until, as you said, test audiences didn’t like the ending. They did a reshoot of the ending, but also shot additional new footage to either extend scenes or add whole new scenes altogether.

I’m not a huge fan of Rob Zombies Halloween, for the obvious reasons, but to be fair I’ve warmed up to it slightly over the years. For it to be a worthy entry I would like to remove the whole opening with the dirtball family, and simply start the film at night when he decides to start killing. I would also trim back the sanitarium stuff.

After that, I would add back in some of the stuff from the workprint, like some of the stalking scenes and things like Rutger Hauer’s death scene. Keep the theatrical escape scene with the guards, and keep the director’s cut ending.

To me that would make the movie a lot more watchable. But thats just my opinion of course. As I said I’ve warmed up to it over the years, but those changes would make all the difference for me.

[Davy_Krueger]

A lot of those scenes your mentioning were reshoots. That workprint was going to be the final cut until, as you said, test audiences didn’t like the ending. They did a reshoot of the ending, but also shot additional new footage to either extend scenes or add whole new scenes altogether.

I’m not a huge fan of Rob Zombies Halloween, for the obvious reasons, but to be fair I’ve warmed up to it slightly over the years. For it to be a worthy entry I would like to remove the whole opening with the dirtball family, and simply start the film at night when he decides to start killing. I would also trim back the sanitarium stuff.

After that, I would add back in some of the stuff from the workprint, like some of the stalking scenes and things like Rutger Hauer’s death scene. Keep the theatrical escape scene with the guards, and keep the director’s cut ending.

To me that would make the movie a lot more watchable. But thats just my opinion of course. As I said I’ve warmed up to it over the years, but those changes would make all the difference for me.

Ah, that makes sense, yeah.

I do like the footage we get of Michael stalking around the neighborhood, closing in on his prey, but I think without the reshoot footage, the story becomes less about Michael VS Laurie, and it simply becomes Michael’s story, which is not entirely what Halloween is meant to be about. You lose the fear of Michael when he becomes the main character. I think there’s enough footage for there to be room for both. Like I said, I’d be interested in seeing a supercut of the workprint and the Director’s Cut. I think there’s a lot of footage from the workprint that adds to both the story, and to the editing of the movie itself. If I were more proficient in Premiere or a similar editing software, I’d like to create the edit myself. A best of both worlds, as it were.

Of course, I’ve always been interested in a “trimmed fat” version like you mentioned. Basically, something generally closer to John Carpenter’s original film, but realized through Rob Zombie’s vision. I definitely think there’s enough footage available to the fans to do it, it’d just be a matter of sitting down and trimming.

[Le_Shape]

A lot of those scenes your mentioning were reshoots. That workprint was going to be the final cut until, as you said, test audiences didn’t like the ending. They did a reshoot of the ending, but also shot additional new footage to either extend scenes or add whole new scenes altogether.

I’m not a huge fan of Rob Zombies Halloween, for the obvious reasons, but to be fair I’ve warmed up to it slightly over the years. For it to be a worthy entry I would like to remove the whole opening with the dirtball family, and simply start the film at night when he decides to start killing. I would also trim back the sanitarium stuff.

After that, I would add back in some of the stuff from the workprint, like some of the stalking scenes and things like Rutger Hauer’s death scene. Keep the theatrical escape scene with the guards, and keep the director’s cut ending.

To me that would make the movie a lot more watchable. But thats just my opinion of course. As I said I’ve warmed up to it over the years, but those changes would make all the difference for me.

I believe Cole Edits fan cut might actually include some stuff from the work print, although I’m not too sure. His fan cut is pretty damn watchable and great though, ngl, amazing that it’s free to watch on YouTube.

[Davy_Krueger]

A lot of those scenes your mentioning were reshoots. That workprint was going to be the final cut until, as you said, test audiences didn’t like the ending. They did a reshoot of the ending, but also shot additional new footage to either extend scenes or add whole new scenes altogether.

I’m not a huge fan of Rob Zombies Halloween, for the obvious reasons, but to be fair I’ve warmed up to it slightly over the years. For it to be a worthy entry I would like to remove the whole opening with the dirtball family, and simply start the film at night when he decides to start killing. I would also trim back the sanitarium stuff.

After that, I would add back in some of the stuff from the workprint, like some of the stalking scenes and things like Rutger Hauer’s death scene. Keep the theatrical escape scene with the guards, and keep the director’s cut ending.

To me that would make the movie a lot more watchable. But thats just my opinion of course. As I said I’ve warmed up to it over the years, but those changes would make all the difference for me.

I believe Cole Edits fan cut might actually include some stuff from the work print, although I’m not too sure. His fan cut is pretty damn watchable and great though, ngl, amazing that it’s free to watch on YouTube.

Huh, amazing! I’ll have to watch this!

[ChiefSmackahoe]

It’s no secret that Rob Zombie’s vision of his Halloween was from Michael’s point of view, and this is even more apparent in his workprint cut of HALLOWEEN. I first found out about this cut, something of a mix between a first draft and Zombie’s “original” vision as presented to test audiences, on this very message board. The idea of a cut of Rob Zombie’s Halloween showing EVEN MORE of the night HE came home definitely interested me. I finally came across a copy on Reddit that had been uploaded to a Google Drive. I immediately downloaded it and watched! Here are my thoughts…

The movie definitely starts out with a very different tone. Instead of a loud guitar riff from the opening of KISS’s “God of Thunder” (a track from the album Destroyer, a T-shirt from which Michael is wearing in this scene and through school) we get clanging chains leading into Bobby Pickett’s classic Halloween tune “Monster Mash.” Anybody used to the mure more realistic tone of God of Thunder immediately cringes to hearing this soon-to-be killer listening to a 1962 Halloween party song. It’s silly, and not what you expect… but it also sets up the portrayal we’ll see of Michael throughout the rest of the movie: not as a brutal, menacing serial killer without reason and conscience, but as an Angel of Death, here to harvest the souls of those who defile his family.

I particularly liked the opening half of this movie even more than the opening half the Director’s Cut. The credits sequence is enjoyable, as we get to actually hear Loomis’ and Debra Myer’s conversation about Michael overlaid footage of Michael fleeing school. I also like that Michael’s killing of his sister, Ronnie, and Steve are given a motive, as he tells his mother, “It’s all over, mommy” when she questions why he’s on the front porch with baby Laurie. The even more additional time we spend with young Michael in the sanitarium tells a much more coherent story of his downward spiral from psychotic, yet protective (and even at times, sweet) child, to a hopeless, emotionless Shape that knows only one thing: that killing is fun. I would be interested in seeing if there’s some form of “supercut” to this first half showing all the footage from the Workprint and the Director’s Cut, as there are several moments in the Director’s Cut that don’t appear in the workprint, in particular Loomis’ explanation of the color black, and Loomis’ black and white home footage of Michael.

The back half of the movie is, I think, where things start to get messy. Things about Danny Trejo’s character are almost completely cut. We see him plant ideas into Michael’s head, and take him out to his hearing where he’s told he’ll be transferred out of Smith’s Grove, but we never see him show up for work that morning to discover Michael’s massacre, or see Michael murder him. In all, this second half presents us with a much more sympathetic Michael, who contrasts against some other, very different, character portrayals. The Workprint shows us the entire Halloween night from MIchael’s point of view. We don’t get a lot of Laurie or her friends, and a lot of footage of them from the Director’s Cut and the theatrical cut are not in the workprint. There is, of course, also vice versa, and for the most part this is a good thing. For example, the character of Linda, who’s bubbly personality in the 1978 original, gets turned into a bratty “daddy’s girl” in the theatrical cut, become an absolutely unlikable witch in the workprint, taking her tantrums out on her fellow classmates while Laurie desperately follows behind her. helplessly apologizing profusely to whichever victim Linda decides to humiliate next. You feel no sympathy for her whatsoever. This isn’t the only divergence Zombie takes with her, either. In a ballsy, and thankfully corrected move in the director’s and theatrical cuts, Bob dies not by being iconically pinned to a wall as his feet slowly fall, but in the back of his van as he combs through empty beer cans. Much of the workprint is edited sloppily like this.

Other than the music, the editing in the workprint is either great, or very poor. It seems that editing these movies is not Zombie’s strong suit. Many of the awkward line deliveries from the theatrical and director’s cuts are “fixed” in the workprint where extended dialogue moments make the characters sound like they’re having actual conversations, but other moments, like Annie’s attack, are butchered almost worse than the TV edits. Meanwhile, the butchered Mr. Strode attack from the theatrical cut is actually given time to make sense in the workprint. Here, we get to see Michael actually walk up to Mr. Strode very calmly before striking. Then the terrible editing comes back when we see Mrs. Strode’s attack butchered as the whole “Michael hunting his sister” angle is very sloppily removed from the workprint. Unfortunately, we still don’t see what knocks out Laurie between Michael dragging her out of the bathroom, and Michael carrying her out of the front door.

The entire ending of the movie is different from the officially released cuts, though not unfamiliar. Instead of Michael chasing Laurie through the abandoned Myers house, we get a hostage negotiation between Loomis and Michael on the front lawn. I can see why test audiences disliked it. It’s rather anticlimactic. Instead of Laurie shooting Michael in the head, we get the cops show up in the middle of Loomis’ negotiations with Michael. As soon as Laurie is out of the way, the cops open fire and Michael is killed in a spray of bullets. This entire ending concept would end up being reused for Rob Zombie’s Halloween two, though I wonder if Zombie just likes the idea of going out in a hail of bullets, as that’s how the titular characters went out in Zombie’s “Devil’s Rejects” in 2005.

As I mentioned, the music is probably the most “rough draft” in this cut. The film has an extensive usage of “Laurie’s Theme” even in parts having nothing to do with Laurie. I’m assuming Zombie just liked the sound of it over the “Halloween Theme,” which would have been more appropriate in the place of “Laurie’s Theme” in many instances of its use. In place of the classic John Carpenter theme is the echoing “piano pluck” sound that recurs throughout the sequel. It’s a cool sound, but you get sick of hearing it after about 20 times. The music definitely felt like Zombie wasn’t done with tweaking it, but it’s not entirely distracting.

In all, I liked this cut, but I still like the Director’s Cut the best out of all of them. It’s not a bad cut, but it definitely feels unpolished and I think Zombie could and did do better with the Director’s Cut.

DO you have a link to the work print?

[Richard_Vandark]

I actually watched the work print first, before the theatrical release. Much preferred the work print really.

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[Ryantology]

@Davy Krueger

A lot of those scenes your mentioning were reshoots. That workprint was going to be the final cut until, as you said, test audiences didn’t like the ending. They did a reshoot of the ending, but also shot additional new footage to either extend scenes or add whole new scenes altogether.

I’m not a huge fan of Rob Zombies Halloween, for the obvious reasons, but to be fair I’ve warmed up to it slightly over the years. For it to be a worthy entry I would like to remove the whole opening with the dirtball family, and simply start the film at night when he decides to start killing. I would also trim back the sanitarium stuff.

After that, I would add back in some of the stuff from the workprint, like some of the stalking scenes and things like Rutger Hauer’s death scene. Keep the theatrical escape scene with the guards, and keep the director’s cut ending.

To me that would make the movie a lot more watchable. But thats just my opinion of course. As I said I’ve warmed up to it over the years, but those changes would make all the difference for me.

Ah, that makes sense, yeah.

I do like the footage we get of Michael stalking around the neighborhood, closing in on his prey, but I think without the reshoot footage, the story becomes less about Michael VS Laurie, and it simply becomes Michael’s story, which is not entirely what Halloween is meant to be about. You lose the fear of Michael when he becomes the main character. I think there’s enough footage for there to be room for both. Like I said, I’d be interested in seeing a supercut of the workprint and the Director’s Cut. I think there’s a lot of footage from the workprint that adds to both the story, and to the editing of the movie itself. If I were more proficient in Premiere or a similar editing software, I’d like to create the edit myself. A best of both worlds, as it were.

Of course, I’ve always been interested in a “trimmed fat” version like you mentioned. Basically, something generally closer to John Carpenter’s original film, but realized through Rob Zombie’s vision. I definitely think there’s enough footage available to the fans to do it, it’d just be a matter of sitting down and trimming.

I did an edit that does damn near all the things you said. It starts with the killing on Halloween night and the Smith’s Grove scenes are treated more as a prologue than anything. Michael never speaks at all in the edit. Used the theatrical cut escape scene because I thought the directors cut scene was nonsensical garbage. Didn’t use any of the scenes from the work print though because I honestly didn’t know it existed before reading this post. Anyone interested can watch clips on my YouTube channel (Make Bad Movies Great Again) or send me an e-mail at MakeBMGA@gmail.com.


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