The Devil's Rejects

Written and Directed by Rob Zombie

The stylistic tour-de-force that was HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES proved Rob Zombie a serious name in the choppy field of contemporary horror cinema. Nasty, imaginative and dazzling to the eye, it outclasses the glut of competent but unimaginative TEXAS CHAINSAW and DAWN OF THE DEAD remakes, and gave the genre its finest icon since PHANTASM's Tall Mann - the filthy, belligerent clown Captain Spaulding.

The biggest complaint that can be directed to the film is the numbing quality it took on after MTV type inserts were added to the frenetic action and luridly coloured scenery. Somewhere between thrilling and enervating, it was a fantastic throwback to Tobe Hooper's DEATH TRAP (1976) and THE FUNHOUSE (1981) that can just about be forgiven for its first time director's crime of stylistic overkill.

If HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES deserves better than the critical backlash that delayed cynical viewers like myself watching it, last year's THE DEVIL'S REJECTS sees Zombie apply his talents in a more mature and productive manner. Instead of the '70s slasher/ghost train ride pastiche that was the first film, this sequel invokes the nasty spirit of that same decade's grindhouse fare - in the guise of a modern day western.

Zombie has admitted the first film was a little too claustrophobic, with its beautifully decorated but cramped studio settings, and gives us a far better feeling for space in this superior sequel. Gone are the winding tunnels and hellish, secret laboratories, in favour of parched, sun battered country, filthy farmhouses and sleazy hotel rooms and bordellos. Indeed, the film comes closer to gritty realism than illusion and artifice, allowing for a far more distressing and disturbing frame of action.

Just as Zombie reinvents the film's style, he does the same with the story and characters. Set in 1978, the film picks up with Sheriff Wydell leading an assault on the family of murderous in-breds, comprised of Mother Firefly - the huskier, more feral Leslie Easterbrook replacing the original's squeaky Karen Black - a nastier Otis (Bill Moseley), Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie), and the giants Rufus and Tiny (the late Matthew McGrory).

After the ambush, Otis and Baby leave behind the wandering Tiny, the dead Rufus and the captured Mother, with Wydell (William Forsythe) in hot pursuit. Obsessed by avenging the death of his brother (Tom Towles, from the first film), the unhinged Sheriff quickly discovers the connection between the Firefly's and the seedy clown Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), who quickly joins them on the road. As the family indulge themselves at Charlie Altamont's (Ken Foree) bordello, their guard is lowered for Wydell's criminal assassin's to strike.

What's apparent from the beginning is that all of the characters - Baby excepted - look far seedier than before. Taking place some eight months later, it's as if none of the principals have bothered to shave or wash, with Spaulding sporting a mouthful of blackened, rotting dentures, and the albino Otis wearing a bristling black beard as well as a burning, wild eyed stare. Like most others, he's far nastier than before. Interestingly, it's revealed that Spaulding is Baby's father, having screwed the whore that is her mother in time-past. Spaulding himself is a more central character to the action, and it's good to see him follow up his venomous, if amusing, personality with action.

While Otis was a gibbering lunatic in the prequel, this time actor Moseley imbibes the film with a startling level of nihilism, most notably his sick and distressing abuse of the Banjo and Sullivan band. While his sister taunts Sullivan (Geoffrey Lewis) with her body, Otis sticks a gun down his wife's (Priscilla Barnes, of POLTERGEIST: THE LEGACY) knickers, and then forces the humiliated woman to fellate him, before making her admit to being a slut in front of everyone! With the sun beating through the windows, it's a scene as claustrophobic and intense as anything in Mario Bava's upsetting yet scintillating RABID DOGS (1974).

As Wydell, Forsythe has never been more spiteful, his obsession for grisly revenge emphasising a world in which heroics and hope don't exist. The chemistry between he and his captive, Mother Firefly, is bristling with violence and sexual energy. His torture of Spaulding, Otis and Baby, whom he captures late in the film, is stomach churning - he staples photos of their victims on their chests - and allows us to lean our sympathies toward the killers, who need not mask their killing with righteousness and are not afraid to answer for their crimes. The scenes in which they own up to particular killings to spare the others getting stapled is oddly moving.

An 'end of the line' type of film, DEVIL'S is shot in the similar yellow-brown tones of Peckinpah's PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, and features similar blood spattered shootings throughout. Filled with actors who primed long ago (i.e. DAWN OF THE DEAD's Ken Foree, POLICE ACADEMY's Leslie Easterbrook, 1970s pinup Barnes, and more), it seems mournful at the loss of an era (of ferocious horror films) but never gets mawkish. Indeed, almost everyone has seemed to have gone to seed - ex porn starlet Ginger Lynn Allen, straddling Spaulding, even looks like shit!

Despite the ferocity of the film, it benefits from a healthy does of humour to temper the tension and the terror. Set at the time of the STAR WARS craze, Charlie's main hooker wants to use a STAR WARS angle to improve business, because, y'know, all the guys "want to fuck Princess Leia". Charlie isn't convinced, but his dog's body, played by Michael Berryman, is - his enthusiastic gasp of "Hot fucker" being perfectly enough timed to contribute another layer to this superlative, ferocious and seedily funny film.

Extras:

On the audio commentary, Zombie gives us his insight into the action sequences, telling us that he never repeated a camera angle during the frenetic opening shootout. When the police enter the Firefly home, however, Zombie tells us he slowed things down when the action enters the crazed family's home - the more surreal images allowing us to experience the proximity to these oddball killers better. The director also discusses his attitude toward the remarkable attention to detail, saying that we may not notice what decorates the scenery, but that we notice when it's Not there.

Over on the second disc, we get the hour long '30 days in Hell', which delineated the various stages of the film's making, including pre production discussions and images of the gruelling 30-day shoot, in the California heat. Zombie tells us that he prefers not to turn up for casting sessions and auditions, due to the discrepancy between how an actor can look in person, and how they come out of the screen.

At an hour's length, '30 Days' is the main extra, the rest being less substantial, including the 'Mary The Monkey Girl' commercial of Spaulding's from the actual film, a Buck Owen video 'Satan's Going To Have To Get Along Without Me', a dragged out and awkward piece of standup comedy called 'Bloody Standup', and a 'Tribute To Matthew McGrory', the late 7' 4 giant who played Tiny.

For those who can withstand overkill, check out the striking trailer, deleted scenes / bloopers, a Spaulding Xmas commercial, an Otis Home Movie (more in the spirit of the first film, in fact), Morris Green Show and a Make Up Test.

Review by Matthew Sanderson