The Devil’s Rejects (R)

You’d be forgiven if even after six films, you still think of Rob Zombie as a musician first and foremost. That’s actually not a bad. Whether back in the day fronting White Zombie or for the past two decades as one of the premier names in hard rock and heavy metal, Rob Zombie has torched a path of complete ass-kicking music with a wild knack for visually stunning and shocking stage set ups to go along with handful of great solo albums. And that is all excellent. It’s all wonderful. But do you know what else is excellent and wonderful? “The Devil’s Rejects.”

Zombie’s 2005 film is essentially a sequel to his directorial debut, “House of 1,000 Corpses” but in reality, it feels like a sequel in the way that “License To Kill” is a sequel to “Thunderball.” Same characters, same universe but really a completely different feel and flow. If “Corpses” is like a ’70s-inspired gritty horror movie, “Rejects” is like a psycho western grindhouse film,  one part “The Man with No Name Trilogy and one part “Last House on the Left.”

What you have to realize about Rob Zombie the filmmaker is that love him or loathe him, the man is a visionary. He has a clear cut intent of the kind of films he wants to make and time after time he does. It’s just that with “The Devil’s Rejects,” Zombie reached for and struck gold with his most fun, most ridiculous and most over the top glorious film to date. 

“The Devil’s Rejects” shifts seamlessly from a tale of a group of vigilantes on the run to a film that really explores the depths of insanity that embodies The Firefly Family. On the run and working to escape the clutches of a Texas Sheriff hellbent on avenging the death of his brother from the previous film. John Quincey Wydell is not only hellbent on revenge, he is seeking blood for blood and intends to reign down a hellstorm onto the family. 

Horror legend Bill Moseley and Sheri Moon Zombie are fantastic in their roles as Otis Driftwood and Baby Firefly, respectively. Otis Driftwood is honestly one of horror’s most frightening villains with his complete lack of empathy, disregard for human sanctity and truly criminally insane way of life. But the real star of the show is Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding. He gets more screen time here and really makes the most of it. He’s crass. He’s cruel. And he’s a clown. And in one of the craziest scenes, he literally takes out a mother due to her and son’s lack of appreciation for clowns.

The film is violent and crazy. When The Family takes a group of traveling musicians hostage, shit gets real and it’s nuts. That whole section of the film is so unsettling, it’s almost hard to watch and not cringe and crawl out of your skin. But it hits the point of no return when upon a rescue effort by police, a tortured maid bursts out of the hotel room screaming. Wearing one of the victims removed face over her own, she explodes out into the daylight like a manic ballerina, only to be desemeted by a speeding eighteen wheeler. This is not for the faint of heart. 

Underneath the gore, the guts and the violence though is the work of a truly gifted filmmaker. There is a healthy serving of dark comedy throughout the film that offsets some of the more extreme violence. Rob Zombie uses his film as an opportunity to pay homage to Groucho Marx – whose death was overshadowed by that of Elvis Presley – to great comic effect. It’s almost as if Zombie’s own feelings on the subject are spoken on film by a film critic working on the investigation into The Firefly Family. But just like Groucho’s death was overshadowed in real life, Wydell makes clear he will have none of the movie critic’s slights towards Elvis Aaron Presley. 

The final act is balls to the wall insanity culminating in some really crazy torture tactics by Wydell on The Firefly Family only to see them best him and escape. On the run again, they are ultimately gunned down in the film’s final scene. And what is truly crazy is that you actually feel awful that they aren’t getting away. That is the brilliance of Rob Zombie. He humanised these monsters. These horrific, awful people who over the course of two films committed such disgusting, unimaginable acts. He humanised them to the point that we the audience sympathize with them and  actually want them to get away! Let that be a lesson to aspiring screenwriters on the act of character development. It’s wild. 

Zombie’s next film, “Three From Hell” will carry on the story of The Firefly Family and while it will be great to see the gang reunited, it’ll be interesting to see the manner it’s done in given how “The Devil’s Rejects” ended. However Zombie accomplishes this, I’m confident this era’s Master of Horror will find a way to execute it beautifully!