Rob Zombie talks stage and screen ahead of his Oct 4 date in Topeka

Perhaps it is because Rob Zombie the rock star gets plenty of crowd feedback from the concert stage that Rob Zombie the filmmaker doesn’t feel compelled to sneak into the back of theaters to secretly gauge audience reaction.

“No, I don’t do that. I don’t watch my own movies,” Zombie said by telephone from Los Angeles where he was mixing his untitled fifth studio album and rehearsing for the “Twins of Evil” tour that will bring him and co-headliner Marilyn Manson to Topeka for a 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 4, concert in Landon Arena at the Kansas Expocentre.

J Devil, the electro-metal DJ alter ego of KoRn’s frontman Jonathan Davis, will support the tour.

Zombie, a seven-time Grammy nominee for his recordings with White Zombie and his solo act, branched out to making movies after directing music videos. In addition to “House of 1000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects,” Zombie directed, produced and co-wrote two “Halloween” remakes.

“By the time a movie is finished, I’ve watched it hundreds of times,” said Zombie, who added that unlike a live performance in which he can adjust the set list mid-concert if necessary, a completed film “is what it is.”

Zombie did attend a screening last week at the Toronto International Film Festival of his latest feature film, “The Lords of Salem,” a release date for which hasn’t been set.

In the movie, a radio DJ in Salem, Mass., Heidi (Zombie’s wife, Sheri Moon Zombie) receives a vinyl record from an unknown band called The Lords.

When the album is played, it has a powerful effect on women, including Heidi, who finds herself tormented by nightmares of a trio of women persecuted 320 years earlier in the  Salem witch hunts.

When the generally favorable reviews of that screening are mentioned, Zombie said, “I don’t really read that stuff.”

Zombie is planning his next feature film, one that will depart from the gore of horror films to the gore of professional hockey circa the 1970s. “The Broad Street Bullies” will tell the story of the Philadelphia Flyers who terrorized other NHL teams, including Zombie’s hometown squad, the Boston Bruins.

Meanwhile, Zombie’s attention is on music. In August, he released “Mondo Sex Head,” a collection of remixes of Rob Zombie classics by some of today’s top DJs, including “Twins of Evil” support act J Devil. The yet-to-be-titled studio album should be completed after the 20-city U.S. leg of the “Twins of Evil” tour wraps up on Halloween.

About co-headlining with Marilyn Manson, Zombie said it was something the two shock-rockers have discussed but until now couldn’t match their schedules to do.

“There are not many acts that you can find that are really suitable matches,” said Zombie, who previously co-headlined a tour with Alice Cooper.

While Zombie and Cooper shared some stage time on that tour, Zombie said he doubted he and Manson would perform together even though Zombie’s band includes Manson alumni  guitarist John 5 and drummer Ginger Fish.

Manson will take the stage first, followed by Zombie on this tour, which also has a 10-country, 13-city European leg after Thanksgiving.

For his part of the show, Zombie said he has worked in “a lot of new stuff” into his set that will include hair-raising theatrics, animatronic robots, oversized LED screens, monster film clips, a spectacular light show, pyrotechnics and, of course, Rob Zombie’s trademark sound.