The night she kicked some serious ass.

Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of Halloween sure has taken its fair share of abuse from fans in the past decade, with many feeling that Zombie’s choice to delve into the backstory of Michael Myers served only to destroy and diminish the terror of the character. Of course, one could argue that the original franchise did more damage to the series and the character than Zombie ever could have on his own, but that’s perhaps another conversation for another day.

Speaking with Yahoo this week, Zombie just revealed his ten favorite scenes from his own movies, and we strongly encourage you to head over there and read that piece if you’re a fan of Zombie’s work. But what caught our eye more than anything about the piece was Zombie’s opinion of the Laurie Strode character, which changed thanks to one key moment in his remake.

Zombie explains:

I really like the way Halloween ends. One of the problems I had with working on the movie was I found the character of Laurie Strode kind of boring. Laurie Strode wasn’t my character, obviously, she was John Carpenter’s character. I tried to remain fairly faithful to her. And I think because of that reason, I was a little bored by her. But by the time I got to the end of the movie, I had a change of heart. Laurie had fallen off the balcony with Michael and she’s all busted up and bloody and she puts the gun to Michael’s head and shoots him, and the blood explodes up in her face and she just starts screaming. It’s almost like the blood has passed to her and she is now as crazy as he is.

Elaborating, Zombie suggests it’s the scene that made him interested in a sequel:

That was the moment that I suddenly liked that character and I felt, ‘Oh, I could come back and do this again, because now this character has become a different character that wasn’t created before, that I could relate to and do something new with.’

Like Zombie’s Halloween films or not, he indeed did bring something new to the table, and it’s hard not to appreciate that. Were they good? Terrible? That’s up to the individual viewer and it’s of course all a matter of taste. But one thing you can’t take away from Zombie is that he puts himself into every movie he makes, and he certainly took Michael and Laurie down new paths.

For that, he’s got my respect.