With the controversies surrounding the theatrical and leaked workprint versions of the film behind it, Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN gets its ultimate and likely optimized release in a new two-disc Unrated Director's Cut edition.  Instead of compromising for running time or skewing the storyline to ease studio pressures, this expanded and slightly re-paced cut of HALLOWEEN presumably fits Zombie's original vision — or at least, his intent — the closest of all three cuts known to attentive audiences and fans.  Some scenes from the theatrical release were dropped, other alternate versions added, resulting in a run time of 121 minutes, adding about twelve minutes of new material which actually clarify the storyline and deepen the characters.  This Director's Cut ultimately strengthens the 'reboot' vision of the once-tired franchise and makes for a stronger if not scarier horror tale — one suspects it's the tale which Zombie should have told (and should have been allowed to tell) the first time around.

UNRATED DIRECTOR'S EDITION — A DEEPER CUT ABOVE THE THEATRICAL RELEASE

This Unrated Director's Cut gives viewers a longer, better paced and more character-driven edit of HALLOWEEN, all driving toward the expanded and more satisfying edit of the film's lethal ending.  In his audio commentary track, Director Rob Zombie gives a fairly thorough tour of the editing variations from the theatrical release, and the Disc 2 Deleted Scenes will also clarify the changes.  Suffice it to say, this Director's Cut isn't simply longer because more shots and scenes were added, but the overall storytelling improves and characters — especially Michael Myers — become more identifiable and believable.

Alternate scenes appear early in the film, including the deletion of Young Michael (Daeg Faerch) toying with his pet rat while holding a scalpel knife.  Now the animal killing is left much more implied, which wisely eliminates the focus on the poor defenseless animal in the moment, and restores the main concept that Michael is growing into an adolescent killer.  The idea of Michael's burgeoning psychosis is extended with the augmented scenes between his mother Deborah Myers (Sheri Moon Zombie), Doctor Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) and the school principal (Richard Lynch), where she learns her son hoards a cat's corpse and photos of other dead animals.  The film's emphasis is now restored to Michael's psychopathic behavior and how his actions warn of his future as a serial killer.

Zombie also makes several subtle but important changes in the Smith's Grove Sanitarium years of Michael's incarceration, undoubtedly the area of Myers' backstory most expanded by Zombie in his reboot of the franchise.  The film spends longer time across several scenes with Young Michael being interviewed by Loomis, which helps establish the doctor's eventual obsessive fixation on his patient.  Alas, these additions also tend to provide more evidence of Loomis treating Michael like any other patient, rather than fearing Michael for what he really is. This is a crucial deviation from the formula of John Carpenter's original film which so strongly set up Myers and Loomis as polar antagonists, mortal adversaries standing in direct conflict throughout the film.

On the other hand, the slightly expanded scenes between Michael and his mother Deborah better support Zombie's take on the killer, that he's a dormant volcano which lulls those around him into a false sense of security.  Michael withdraws so much into his head, that his own mother and eventually Loomis simply give up trying to reach him, either emotionally as her son or psychologically as his patient.  When Young Michael finally returns to his murderous form, killing a nurse in the lunchroom (with her taunting insult restored for added motivation), his betrayal of Deborah's and Loomis' extended scenes of support hits more harshly and effectively than in the theatrical cut.  Naturally, this adds more emotional context to Deborah's distraught suicide as well, rounding out the devotion and disappointment of her character to more satisfying conclusion.

The key editorial change then center on Adult Michael's escape from Smith's Grove.  Thankfully, the theatrical cut's original and boringly conventional chain-busting escape and murderous rampage of Michael is now excised completely.  While there was no major flaw in this original escape scene, it was also exactly what a HALLOWEEN audience would expect: the violent unleashing of a monster, harkening all the way back to Boris Karloff's unshackling from FRANKENSTEIN seventy years ago. Worse, it provided little motivation for Michael's sudden eruption of violence after fifteen years of docile passivity as a patient.

In the Director's Cut, Zombie adds additional scenes of Michael's hospital attendants (Danny Trejo and Lew Temple) which set up both Michael's hibernation as a mask-making cipher of a patient and his revised escape from the sanitarium.  Trejo's good caretaker is contrasted very sharply by the restored rape scene in which Temple and another man attempt to molest one of the female inmates in front of Michael.  Since the backstory and film established that Michael's murders often results from sexual situations, now it provides infinitely more reality to Michael's rampage, killing the evil caretaker and being unable to halt his rampage when Trejo's good caretaker attempts to lock up Michael again.  This crucial editing choice and return to Zombie's originally scripted scene now restores the storytelling logic of Michael's ominous return to Haddonfield in search of Laurie.

That bloody quest for Michael's baby sister results in Zombie's re-edited finale, which is not a wholesale swapping out of the theatrical ending and insertion of the workprint version.  Instead, Rob pulls together the best and most dramatically satisfying elements from all variations and takes on the confrontation between Loomis and Michael, then emphasizing Laurie as an agent in her own survival.  The original version of police shoot-out, killing Michael in a hail of bullets is excised entirely and for the better — again, the definite, sequel-stalling finale Zombie wanted most in his film, but all too clichéd and conventional for a true re-imagining of the franchise.  Worse for Scout-Taylor Compton's efforts, this ending left Laurie as a passive victim cowering in terror and saved by Loomis and the cops to end the nightmare.  This went against the grain of the female heroine mold set up so strongly by Carpenter originally and portrayed so effectively by Jamie Lee Curtis, and it just didn't feel right.

Here on the DVD, Zombie extends Laurie's suspenseful escape from the ruins of the Myers house with Loomis only capable of delaying Michael's pursuit of her. The finale is reduced to a one-on-one battle between Laurie and Michael, and her final defeat of her murderous older brother restores the family tragedy which originally wasn't revealed until a controversial move by Carpenter and partner Debra Hill in HALLOWEEN II.  Yet to remain consistent with Zombie's bleaker, darker outlook on this story, Laurie pays a terribly traumatic price for killing Michael and saving herself: Laurie survives only to become the killer of a killer.  Michael's blood splattering on her face leaves Laurie screaming in horror at what she's done and what he forced her to do to survive.  In a truer, more satisfying new ending, Zombie plays the ultimate horror film card by denying the happy ending audiences would expect with the destruction of the monster, continuing his directorial theme of illustrating that the only real monsters are indeed humans and so exist daily around us, even in the highly expected guise of a blond-haired boy or a blood-soaked babysitter.

SPECIAL FEATURES UNMASK HALLOWEEN'S ALTERNATE REALITIES

As Zombie and Dimension have made the standard with his DVD releases, this special edition release spreads hugh amounts of bonus material across two discs which make it a great value for fans who hunger for in-depth details on HALLOWEEN's production.

DISC ONE — FEATURE COMMENTARY

The movie disc hosts one of the greatest assets from the Unrated Director's Cut: Rob Zombie's FEATURE-LENGTH COMMENTARY track.  He speaks at length about the many challenges of taking on such a perennial, yet a recently faltering, horror franchise, and how Zombie chose to re-examine the origins of Michael Myers as the basis of his film.  Commenting roughly in sync with scenes as they unfold on-screen, Zombie rarely gets sidetracked by tangent tales of production and thus keeps the audio track on point for two hours.

The best insights often result from Zombie's discussion of editorial changes made in his film: why some scenes never made even the theatrical release (to be resurrected in second-disc DELETED SCENES), while others were cuts made for theaters which he later restored either for story pacing or character development.  Naturally the true gems of director's insight come from Zombie breaking down the revised ending, which combines aspects of the originally-shot finale and the alternate workprint version into a three-way confrontation between Laurie, Loomis and Michael.  While Zombie's vocal style may not be exhilarating as a commentator, his insights as a director speak volumes about the complex and controversial making of HALLOWEEN.

DISC TWO — BONUS FEATURES

The second disc stuffed full of bonus features opens with 17 DELETED SCENES from the film, complete with optional commentary by director Rob Zombie.  This collection gives some interesting (if a tad repetitive) looks at Zombie's filmmaking process, shooting extra scenes and material for editing flexibility in post-production but which, like most films, often never appear in the final cut. 

Several of these deleted scenes arise from Zombie's self-admitted weakness for creating too many characters to tell a simple story, and spreading that dramatic material over too many locations.  Some deletions are wise cutting of indulgent scenes, like the Rabbit In Red improv with Deborah's strip bar boss, Daniel Roebuck — he's a fine actor and friend of FilmEdge so we hated to see his part cut, but ultimately the banter between owner Lou Martini and a drunk customer fails to advance the story.  The same fate befalls cameo scenes like Parole Hearing, Tombstone and Adoption Agency, in which work from Tom Towles and Adrienne Barbeau fall out of the film amid scenes which ultimately proved superfluous to the main action and tone.  Yet other deletions such as He's Out were cut for logistical reasons — in this case, changing the action to night and making the original day shoots unusable — which short change cameo actors from supporting the film as their characters were intended.  A few of these instances could have been avoided at the script level with rewrites instead of reshoots, while others are simply part of the ever-changing production variables of any feature film.

A valuable contrast between edits of HALLOWEEN may be viewed in the ALTERNATE ENDING of the film, more specifically the first script-based finale shot during principal photography.  As Zombie explains in the optional commentary here, this more conventional and uninspired blasting of Michael Myers by armed police failed to please even the filmmaker, and worse it weakened Laurie Strode's character as just a screaming victim in distress saved by the hail of bullets.   As noted before, this ending seemed pat and rushed, harkening back to the safe and quick exits of monsters from movies of the 1930s like FRANKENSTEIN, which didn't at all fit Zombie's post-modern take on the horror genre nor the higher aims of the HALLOWEEN franchise.  Still, it's a neat resource of comparison for fans which points out the improvements made in Zombie's reshoots and re-editing of his film.

Delivering over ten minutes of outtakes and general on-set shenanigans, the BLOOPERS reel reveals the lighter side of filming the tale of an iconic masked serial killer and the family he cut to ribbons!  Malcolm McDowell takes the lead in this laugh track as numerous clips run as he runs away from the script, turning murder into mirth.  Sheri Moon Zombie is a favorite victim of McDowell's antics, breaking up in take after take, and Brad Dourif is a willing cohort to Malcom's humorous tangents.  While many laughs can be mined from this feature, some bloopers are simply scenes gone awry or run amok with limited comedic appeal or content to them.  Still, making a bloody horror film isn't always fun and games, and as is typical of Zombie's special edition DVD releases, this and all other bonus features never skimp on quantity.

Special Makeup Effects artist Wayne Toth takes center stage in THE MANY MASKS OF MICHAEL MYERS, a short featurette on the design origins and choices to recreate Myers iconic mask yet update it with a scarier, dilapidated look as well.  Yet it's not all about a variation on the classic Captain Kirk mask used in John Carpenter's film three decades before.  Toth and Rob Zombie discuss how they found Young Michael's retro-style clown mask on eBay for $12, then replicated copies for filming.  Actor Daeg Faerch and Toth also give a brief tour of Michael's handmade papier mache masks which he creates during his incarceration at Smith's Grove.  But of course the star is the iconic mask of The Shape, which Toth created in both clean and rotted versions for use by Young and Adult Michael alike.  Zombie's intent to make Michael Myers a truly frightening character and screen image again became Toth's make-up mission, and most would agree he succeeded greatly to that effect.

Next up is an expansive bonus feature RE-IMAGINING HALLOWEEN, which is divided into three sub-topics.  From Camera to Screen dials back the production process to days before the news broke of Zombie's reboot, covering the production's genesis and challenges through completion.  Crew members like cinematographer Phil Parmet, producer Andy Gould and editor Glenn Garland discuss Zombie's style and creative choices as a director and how they influenced this incarnation of HALLOWEEN.

Anthony Tremblay offers a department head's tour of The Production Design, covering all aspects which influence the look of the film, including set and location design.  One of Tremblay's biggest challenges was shooting in Southern California amid a sunny February but making the exterior neighborhoods appear like a midwest autumn — including hiding all those Pasadena palm trees which simply don't belong in Haddonfield.  Production design helped create the warm, chilling, friendly and institutional atmospheres of the Myers' house, schools and hometown plus the ominous confines of Smith's Grove Sanitarium — and all spanning a fifteen-year jump in time.

Behind-the-scenes glimpses of this re-imagining conclude with a featurette on The Makeup FX, Props and Wardrobe of HALLOWEEN.  Makeup artist Wayne Toth returns for additional insights on the bloody murders of Ronnie White and Judith Myers.  Prop Master John Brunot details his work on the film, creating a multitude of retractable knives for Michael's lethal rampages, along with police firearms and other weapons.  Lastly costume designer Mary McLeod opens the closets of HALLOWEEN to reveal the wardrobe designs, including the heavy influence of 1970s styles early in the film.  McLeod covers all aspects of her department, from creating Young Michael's clown costume to the tattered robe and splattered overalls worn by Adult Michael after his escape from Smith's Grove.  The segment concludes with their agreement on striving for the realism Rob Zombie demanded in his re-imagining of HALLOWEEN for today's audience.

MEET THE CAST introduces viewers to the actors in the film, including: Malcolm McDowell (Loomis), Tyler Mane (Adult Michael), Sheri Moon Zombie (Deborah Myers), Scout Taylor-Compton (Laurie Strode), Danielle Harris (Annie Brackett), Kristina Klebe (Lynda), Brad Dourif (Sheriff Brackett), Dee Wallace (Cynthia Strode), Danny Trejo (Ismael Cruz), Lew Temple (Noel Kluggs) and Sid Haig (Chester Chesterfield).  The lengthy segment also provides keen insight into why and how Rob Zombie made these casting decisions as he formulated the acting recipe to populate Haddonfield.

In a similar vein, Zombie offers viewers a very rare glimpse into the CASTING SESSIONS for Daeg Faerch, Scout Taylor-Compton, Danielle Harris, Kristina Klebe, Hanna Hall and ten more fellow actors.  Videotaped readings shot in the production offices show the cast developing and demonstrating their takes on HALLOWEEN characters through emotional and humorous scene readings, and its these tapes which Zombie uses to evaluate considered actors for roles in the film.

Continuing with deeper insight into this process, the actual SCOUT TAYLOR-COMPTON SCREEN TEST for Laurie Strode follows, showing the rising actress enacting the school library scene with Danielle Harris and Kristina Klebe.  Variations on the scene show Scout's range on interpreting Laurie Strode, from bookish good girl to mischievous teenager and terrified target of Michael Myers' wrath.  These are the moments which eventually won her the prized role in Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN.

More traditional studio fare rounds out Disc Two's Special Features, including SNEAK PEEKS at four upcoming films: the GRINDHOUSE pairing of Quentin Tarantino's DEATH PROOF and Robert Rodriguez's PLANET TERROR, plus the John Cusask hotel horror 1408, and lastly THE FURNACE.  The THEATRICAL TRAILER for Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN caps the bonus material, harkening back to audiences' first in-theater taste of this modern horror reboot which foretold how Evil has a destiny. 

DVD REVIEW SUMMARY — THE LAST SLICE

There is no doubt that the Unrated Director's Cut special edition DVD set is the superior release of Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN now available.  The editorial changes made in his revised cut enhance and deepen the film, while the Disc One feature commentary and abundance of bonus features on Disc Two complete the in-depth experience documenting how this horror reboot was made and why it has evolved.  Rob Zombie's evolution as a filmmaker continues and the HALLOWEEN Unrated Director's Cut sheds new light on the dark path he has taken bringing Michael Myers home again to Haddonfield.