Rob Zombie well remembers a sleepover with a friend when he was in the third grade.

The two buddies were watching television when a commercial for the horror film "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" suddenly filled their eyes.

"I knew I wasn't going to go see the movie because I was in third grade," Zombie said during a telephone interview from his Hollywood home, "but I was, like, 'Oh, my God. That looks crazy.'

"But my friend was so terrified his parents had to come get him and take him home."

Zombie, who will perform with his band Wednesday, July 20, at Reading's Sovereign Center as a co-headliner with Slayer, realized early on that he wanted to be the one doing the scaring. After all, nothing scared him.

"I was never really a super-scaredy kid about anything," he said. "I always loved all this type of stuff. When I was a little kid, I loved going to the haunted mansion or anything scary, and watching horror movies on TV. I never seemed terrified by them."

Zombie, however, has haunted many a dream since then, becoming something of a renaissance man of horror.

Using his music — first with the heavy metal band White Zombie and later on his own — as a platform, Zombie expanded his reach by first becoming a director of his own music videos and then becoming a screenwriter and film director. He also has written comic books, turning one into an animated feature film.

"I would always do everything as a kid," Zombie, 46, said. "I would draw comics. We would make little movies with a Super 8 camera. You'd have your friends, everybody's got some instruments and you'd have a crappy band. You're sort of always doing it and, I guess, if you never lose that feeling, eventually you do it."

The Massachusetts native, who describes himself as an ambitious, serious and competitive person, enjoyed his first success as the leader of White Zombie.

White Zombie, an unhinged heavy metal band, always embraced fantasy as it leaned on horror-movie imagery for both its sound and its image. The band found a receptive audience as its albums, starting with its debut, "Psycho-Head Blowout" (1986), sold millions of copies.

Zombie was most influenced by Alice Cooper, whom he inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March, but said there were a lot of other bands that helped point the way.

"I loved Alice Cooper, but then I loved bands like the Misfits, Birthday Party and the Cramps and Van Halen," he said. "It was always everything all at once. The Ramones. Alice Cooper and Kiss showed me things should be theatrical; the Ramones showed me it is doable. You can do things. The Ramones are, of course, the band that made everybody want to start a band."

Zombie became an even bigger star when he disbanded White Zombie and started a solo career, releasing the hugely popular "Hellbilly Deluxe" in 1998.

At the same time he was making music, Zombie also was directing music videos.

"Getting to do videos was a challenge," he said. "It became commonplace, but when I started doing it there were no artists that were directing their own videos. It just seemed insane. At the time, I was the only artist who ever won an MTV award for directing their own video. It was unheard of."

Zombie's ambition, however, far outstripped music videos, as he wanted to direct a feature film based on his own original screenplay.

It took four years of "hammering away" at it, but Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses" was released in 2003. He made a sequel, "The Devil's Rejects," that was released in 2005, and then directed a remake of "Halloween" that came out in 2007. It became the highest-grossing "Halloween" film of all time. Zombie, whose wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, has starred in all of his films, also directed a sequel.

When he finishes his current tour with Slayer, Zombie will immediately begin working on his next film, "The Lord of Salem," which uses the Salem witch trials as the backdrop for the story.

"Touring is the easiest thing, the easiest thing I ever do because all I gotta do is make sure I'm at the show and ready to perform," he said. "The rest of the day doesn't matter. But once the tour is over, I'll be going into production on the next movie. That's what makes me nuts."

Zombie, who also has directed a nifty, horror-style commercial for Woolite fabric softener, of all things, said the key to his success in multiple mediums is that he never leaves an idea on the table.

He said that's why he created the comic book series, "The Adventures of El Superbeasto," which he later made into an animated film.

"You don't want the idea to die so you figure, well, if I get it into comic form, at least the idea exists in the real world in some fashion," he said. 'Then it's easier to take the comic and pitch it as a movie and get it going.

"Just having an idea is fairly meaningless unless you put it into some sort of action."

Rob Zombie and Slayer will perform at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 20, at the Sovereign Center, 700 Penn St., Reading. For ticket information, visit sovereigncenter.com" target="_blank">sovereigncenter.com.