Seeing little point in sending iconic slasher Michael Myers through another repetitive sequel, Rob Zombie pushed hard to distance "Halloween II" from previous movies in the franchise.

Zombie, who wrote and directed the sequel, recently elaborated on the process that spurred the film in such unique directions.

"Well this film is more like a logical follow-up to 'The Devils Rejects' whereas the first film felt like this weird side-step," Zombie said. "I think that because it was someone elses material kinda messed with me, like the first half of the movie was my thing and the second half I had to bring in all these John Carpenter beats because thats what people are expecting.

"Once I started doing that, I dont think I had quite the enthusiasm for the film as I did with the new stuff because its someone elses characters. Thats why in this movie I tried to flip them upside down and make them my characters."

The same line of thought propelled Zombie's initial interpretation of just who or what was Myers.

"We dont want people to feel bad for Michael Myers necesserily, but I dont want him to be like 'Hes the villain and hes scary, blah, blah, blah.' Thats why I like giving him something he didnt have much in the other movies which is making him more of a character. So you might feel a little bit bad because hes this big hulking monster that still has the brain of a ten-year-old boy and hes been locked away his whole life. Its kind of like the Frankenstein scenario."

Though Zombie was free to apply his vision to "Halloween II," the film has faced a number of difficulties, including a rushed schedule, which did force editing compromises. In fact, a director's cut could be on the horizon.

"Except for 'The Devils Rejects,' I feel that everything has been compromised in some way by scheduling, because 'Devils Rejects' was the only movie I ever made that had no release date," he explained. "We worked on it and worked on it until we got it right -- or at least we felt like we got it right -- and we kinda looked at it and went 'Yknow, theres nothing else I wanna change. Nothing else I wanna do.' Ive never had that luxury since.

"Editing is a crucial time and when you sort of get rushed through that process youre never 100 percent sure that youve got exactly the perfect take of every actor, and theres so much footage to go through and its so time consuming, and you do your best to deal with the time that you have.

"As far as the directors cut, theres another version of the movie thats very different. There was two ways we could cut the movie. The way we cut it for theatrical was that Laurie Strodes character is getting her life together before it starts spiraling downward. But in the other version, shes an incedible mess and just gets worse. She never has any good moments, shes just messed up, shes lashing out everybody, shes messed up on drugs. Shes really spun out through the whole movie which makes for a real challenging movie to watch and I dont know if fans wouldve embraced so much darkness."

Zombie is adamant that his future films will enjoy more freedom from such production constraints.

"Yea. I will not make another movie under these same circumstances again," he said. "Its just not the way to do it. When you lock a release date and then you move the release date two months, its just not good. Its good for everything but the cast, crew and people who are creatively trying to make a good movie.

"Thats [editing] what makes or breaks a film. In 'Devils Rejects' we had limited time and didnt do reshoots, but we had time in post. Luckily I use the same editor on every movie, so that helps. The problem is, and I forget who said it, but nobody makes movies anymore. They just make schedules and they make budgets. They dont make movies."

"Halloween II" hits theaters Friday.

Check out the unused (and leaked) "Halloween II" trailer below. Go figure, the unofficial trailer is the best of the bunch. Also, see more of Zombie's interview at Dread Central.