Robert Bartleh Cummings, Rob Zombie to us, may be best known for sporting crusted dreadlocks and high-fiving Satan, but the down-to-earth writer-director of the Halloween remake knows from pranks, too.

Sporting a Hell's Angels surfing T-shirt and covered in tattoos depicting The Creature and The Phantom of the Opera, the 42-year-old told Radar about some backstage clowning on the set of his revamped version of John Carpenter's 1978 classic horror flick (Halloween opens Aug. 31). The victim: legendary actor Malcolm McDowell, who plays Dr. Samuel Loomis.

"He got really pissed at me," says Zombie, er, Cummings. "It was the last day of shooting, and it was sort of the scene where he's confronting Michael Myers and he's doing his, 'Michael, it's not her fault, it's my fault,' and he's going into his big read. And I just felt, like, It's just taking him too long to get through this. And I told the guy, Tyler [Mane, who plays Myers], 'Half-way through this thing, just grab him!' Like, Michael Myers can't stand to hear Dr. Loomis talk anymore. And he lunged at Malcolm. And Malcolm, like, screamed —like, 'Ooo oww!' And he was not happy. He was pissed. He was, like, 'I'm gonna get you, you mother f***er."

Zombie revealed his craziest band fan story, too, regaling reporters with a yarn about a radio promotion in which tickets to his concert were up for grabs for the fan who most creatively displayed the station's call letters. "This guy," Zombie said, "thought, Well, a good thing would be to carve it into my chest with a razor blade. So, they bring this kid backstage, like, 'Here's Steve. He won passes to meet you.' And he's, like, gushing blood withWKOZ carved on his chest. And, like, this doesn't seem like a bad idea to anyone here? Oh, it was ridiculous! He looks all light-headed from blood. I'm, like, 'Get this guy to the emergency room before he dies!'"

Finally, Zombie said he might retire his rock star role. "Music becomes one of those things you only want to keep doing to a point, and then, with rock music especially, you can get to an age where you're kind of embarrassing yourself. And, hopefully, you know when that is and you stop, right?"