At the risk of getting negative votes by not actually answering your question, I'd posit that the functionality of the filter matters much more than the interface, provided that the interface allows you to specify the options you require and provides the results you desire.

It would be trivial to turn the OO interface you list into a procedural interface. It seems to me the important part is how good the logic is inside the package.

Here's some code which takes the OO interface you hate in your first example and lets you call it as the procedural interface you desire in your second example.

package HTML::ProceduralMarkupRemover;
sub html_passes_rules {
  my ($some_html, $html_rules) = @_;
  my $hsmr = HTML::SomeMarkupRemover->new($html_rules);
  return $hsmr->passes_rules($some_html);
}
sub apply_html_rules {
  my ($some_html, $html_rules) = @_;
  my $hsmr = HTML::SomeMarkupRemover->new($html_rules);
  return $hsmr->apply_rules($some_html);
}
1;
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But why bother?

-- Eric Hammond