Rob Zombie

While most of us have Christmas on our minds, Universal Studios Hollywood is already planning for next Halloween. > Halloween Horror Nights 2011: Review | Photos | Celebrities   Universal has been conducting an online survey to gauge fan interest in 50 movie and television properties as potential haunted maze themes for Halloween Horror Nights 2012. The annual post-Halloween poll offers fans a glimpse into what could be on the horror horizon at Universal.

Even from his earliest days as a musician, Rob Zombie displayed a deep-rooted interest in aesthetics and visual style, in creating an entire world stewed in a distinctive brew of horror movies, true crime, the occult and general weirdness. His latest film as writer and director, "The Lords of Salem," might be his most undiluted vision yet, a movie intended as a contraption for unsettling audiences, a mood piece meant to evoke a particularly dark turn of mind. PHOTOS: Movies Sneaks 2013 Set in modern-day Salem, Mass., the story concerns the spiraling downfall of a local radio DJ (played by Sheri Moon Zombie, the filmmaker's wife and something like the Leslie Mann to his horror Judd Apatow)

The South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival announced its midnight features and short film slate Wednesday, a horror and sci fi-heavy list of movies that includes Abigail Breslin as a 15-year-old ghost in "Haunter," Dermot Mulroney as an ex-con on a road trip in "The Rambler" and director Rob Zombie's witch coven movie, "The Lords of Salem. " SXSW's Midnighters section is where the genre friendly festival books its scariest, silliest and most offbeat fare, such as this year's "Big Ass Spider!"

The South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival announced its midnight features and short film slate Wednesday, a horror and sci fi-heavy list of movies that includes Abigail Breslin as a 15-year-old ghost in "Haunter," Dermot Mulroney as an ex-con on a road trip in "The Rambler" and director Rob Zombie's witch coven movie, "The Lords of Salem. " SXSW's Midnighters section is where the genre friendly festival books its scariest, silliest and most offbeat fare, such as this year's "Big Ass Spider!"

The Toronto International Film Festival will debut genre movies from Barry Levinson, Rob Zombie and Martin McDonagh, among others, for the Midnight Madness portion of its festival, which runs from Sept. 6-16. Programmed by TIFF's resident genre expert Colin Geddes, the lineup features some of the most audacious material of the festival. “Expect everything from outrageous horror comedies to mock-doc eco-apocalypse thrillers, featuring trans-dimensional bugs, lewd Catholic priests, meat monsters and dog-napping psychopaths that will animate the Ryerson Theatre when the clock chimes 12,"  Geddes said in a statement.

When Rob Zombie was growing up in Massachusetts, not too far from the notorious town of Salem, his elementary school would take field trips there to see reenactments of the witch trials. So perhaps it's no surprise that the musician and filmmaker has now made “The Lords of Salem,” which premiered Monday night in the Midnight Madness slot at the Toronto International Film Festival. Though as a filmmaker Zombie went from such grungy projects as "House of 1,000 Corpses" and “The Devil's Rejects” to slicker, more commercial work like his two “Halloween” movies, this is his darkest, most unnerving film yet. “My world exists sort of in that cult world,” Zombie said in an interview Tuesday afternoon.

Even from his earliest days as a musician, Rob Zombie displayed a deep-rooted interest in aesthetics and visual style, in creating an entire world stewed in a distinctive brew of horror movies, true crime, the occult and general weirdness. His latest film as writer and director, "The Lords of Salem," might be his most undiluted vision yet, a movie intended as a contraption for unsettling audiences, a mood piece meant to evoke a particularly dark turn of mind. PHOTOS: Movies Sneaks 2013 Set in modern-day Salem, Mass., the story concerns the spiraling downfall of a local radio DJ (played by Sheri Moon Zombie, the filmmaker's wife and something like the Leslie Mann to his horror Judd Apatow)

Among his many talents, former White Zombie mastermind Rob Zombie is a savvy enough rock musician to understand that his real strength lies in the studio. As supercharged as his music is live, it's hard to re-create the rich sound of the recordings, so he bolsters his concerts with a mixed-media assault that is as sophisticated as his albums.

Hollywood slashed away at another box-office record as a new version of "Halloween" scared up a Labor Day weekend haul of $26.5 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales through Sunday, distributor MGM said. Director Rob Zombie's retelling of the 1978 slasher classic shattered the previous three-day record for the often-sluggish holiday period. The old record was set in 2005 by "Transporter 2," which opened to $16.5 million.

Hard rock isn't just about the singer or the song. In the hands of a wild pop-culture artiste like Rob Zombie, it can be something bigger and badder -- an explosive celebration of hot-rod horror Americana, where the music is almost secondary to the overall effect. That was the scene Monday at the first of Zombie's two nights at the Wiltern LG, where the decor was all about stars and stripes and skulls and naked anime chicks on the big screen.

When Rob Zombie was growing up in Massachusetts, not too far from the notorious town of Salem, his elementary school would take field trips there to see reenactments of the witch trials. So perhaps it's no surprise that the musician and filmmaker has now made “The Lords of Salem,” which premiered Monday night in the Midnight Madness slot at the Toronto International Film Festival. Though as a filmmaker Zombie went from such grungy projects as "House of 1,000 Corpses" and “The Devil's Rejects” to slicker, more commercial work like his two “Halloween” movies, this is his darkest, most unnerving film yet. “My world exists sort of in that cult world,” Zombie said in an interview Tuesday afternoon.

The Toronto International Film Festival will debut genre movies from Barry Levinson, Rob Zombie and Martin McDonagh, among others, for the Midnight Madness portion of its festival, which runs from Sept. 6-16. Programmed by TIFF's resident genre expert Colin Geddes, the lineup features some of the most audacious material of the festival. “Expect everything from outrageous horror comedies to mock-doc eco-apocalypse thrillers, featuring trans-dimensional bugs, lewd Catholic priests, meat monsters and dog-napping psychopaths that will animate the Ryerson Theatre when the clock chimes 12,"  Geddes said in a statement.

While most of us have Christmas on our minds, Universal Studios Hollywood is already planning for next Halloween. > Halloween Horror Nights 2011: Review | Photos | Celebrities   Universal has been conducting an online survey to gauge fan interest in 50 movie and television properties as potential haunted maze themes for Halloween Horror Nights 2012. The annual post-Halloween poll offers fans a glimpse into what could be on the horror horizon at Universal.

Halloween Horror Nights gets bigger, better and busier every year -- so much so the annual theme park event seems ready to burst like the bloody entrails spilling from the guts of so many hapless victims at Universal Studios Hollywood. > Halloween Horror Nights maze-by-maze preview | photos Horror Nights 2011 has grown to six mazes, many with hourlong waits during my visit on opening night, but the increasingly popular event probably needs twice as many mazes to handle the bloodthirsty hordes that crowd the park to capacity on the busiest evenings.

The jagged growl of motors revving up in the distance cuts through the warm evening air at Universal Studios Hollywood. "I hear the sound of chainsaws," says John Murdy, the creative director of the studio's theme parks. "That can only mean one thing. " In an instant, four soldiers in elaborate zombie-pig makeup round the corner brandishing chainsaws as if they had jumped from the set of a "Child's Play" film. "Go get 'em," Murdy says, pointing to the visitors attending that evening's Halloween Horror Nights ?

They can put all the numbers they want after the titles of these horror franchises, but a better name for "Halloween II" might be "One More Halloween." In writer-director Rob Zombie's pile-it-on ethos, murder scenes that already incite déjà vu now feel as if they contain one more scream, one more angry downswing of the knife, one more pulpy stomp on a head, one more pounding of a naked woman's face against a mirror and one more lingering shot of carnage. Zombie's follow-up to his own 2007 reboot of the aging slasher series -- which now follows massacre survivor Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton)

Rocker Rob Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses" is at once a work of demonic brilliance and of wretched excess that could serve as a timely, savagely comic metaphor for the darkest impulses of the American psyche. Since we seem to be always upping the ante in many aspects of our lives, it stands to reason that the gore quotient keeps on going up in our horror pictures as well.

Rob Zombie would like you to know that although his upcoming movie, "The Devil's Rejects," shares several characters with his debut feature -- they're members of a marauding family of serial killers from "House of 1000 Corpses" -- it is not a sequel. "By nature, sequels are terrible," says Zombie, former front man for the platinum-selling heavy-metal band White Zombie. "This one is sort of like the next chapter for these characters.

It's hard to envision veteran British actor Malcolm McDowell cooing, but the 66-year-old star of such classic films as Lindsay Anderson's "If . . . " and Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange," for which the actor will always be remembered as a vicious hood, turns out to have a weak spot: his three youngest children. "It's pretty magnificent on the whole," says McDowell of his second time around as a father, as he scrolls through his iPhone looking for pictures of his children with third wife, Kelley Kuhr -- 5-year-old Beckett; 2-year-old Finn and 7-month-old Seamus.

Hollywood slashed away at another box-office record as a new version of "Halloween" scared up a Labor Day weekend haul of $26.5 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales through Sunday, distributor MGM said. Director Rob Zombie's retelling of the 1978 slasher classic shattered the previous three-day record for the often-sluggish holiday period. The old record was set in 2005 by "Transporter 2," which opened to $16.5 million.