If the marketing for Rob Zombie's Halloween II so far has led you to believe that it's going to be a piece of crap—and for the sake of the discussion, let's put aside our feelings about the first movie—you're not the only one. Rob Zombie himself has been pissed at Dimension Films' approach in promoting the film, calling the trailers and TV spots "generic, stupid f--king slasher movie trailers."
Mysteriously (or perhaps not so after these comments), a very different kind of trailer leaked to the web last week and elicited plenty of positive responses from people who were previously uninterested. Knowing he's in the right, Zombie spoke to Entertainment Weekly and openly trashed Dimension's decision.
"I was f—in’ pissed. In fact, I wrote this long letter to the promotion department: ‘I hate these trailers and these TV spots, and I f—in’ hate you.’ You spend forever trying to craft something special and they’re gonna market it like a generic piece of ’80s slasher movie sh– because they think audiences are so f—ing stupid they can’t understand anything else."
Here's the trailer cut by the company Buddha Jones, which makes prominent use of the terrific Moody Blues song "Nights in White Satin."
According to Zombie, the song is very important in the movie, and that this unused trailer is the first one to accurately capture what the film is like. Poor guy wanted that trailer all along, but was vetoed out of the promotional process by the brass. Dimension, predictably, went with the both-trailers-are-great-but-we-made-the-right-choice statement.
I don't think this "new" trailer made me want to see the film any more or any less, but there is no denying that it's an infinitely better cut trailer than the boring crap they've been releasing. It shows Brad Dourif much more prominently in this, and that will always be a big plus.
