The Devil's Rejects: Review By B. Alan Orange

Snappy title, that is. A clever bit of dry debunking for this celluloid myth. The film owes its lot to the Texas Chainsaw extravaganzas produce in the mid-70s, sure. But somehow, despite its ripped-off pedigree, these Rejects manage to eek themselves into a stated realm of originality that is above and beyond any recent horror outing I can recall. For that I'm grateful. If I see one more dolled-up version of J-shock rendered in kill count fashion, I'm liable to take a knife to this audience seated in front of me.

I would've killed them all had this thing not bobbed up and floated to the surface of watchablity. Okay, so according to the "Anger Management & Harassment in the Workplace" quiz handed out by Movieweb last week, I shouldn't make such aggressive claims. In print or verbally. It could get me fired. I feel it's in tone with this film, so maybe I'll squeak by with just a warning. They'll let it fly. They know my frame of mind. I'm depressed. Mainly about the state of cinema in general.

Rob Zombie's second "stick-shaking" stab at directing hasn't pulled me out of my blue period in criticism. Not hardly. But that's not his fault. I'm burned out. If God woke up in the morning and decided to discontinue the smell of sh*t, I'd probably be more upset about that news than if someone said I'd never get to see another new movie. I just don't want to waist my time and the precious summer air sitting in some hard seat. That said, as I heading into the Devil's Rejects Premier, I truly, genuinely want to see it. I just didn't want to watch it.

Does that make any sense? I wanted the experience of knowing if it was worth my time or not, I just didn't want to take the time out to actually sit through its weight in blood. I probably wouldn't have, either, if our own Evan Jacobs hadn't praised the living sh*t out of Devil's Rejects (with good reason).

Mush is awesome. His eulogized statements in honor of Rob Zombie and this trashy masterpiece garnered his sweet ass a quote on the televised adverts. When I saw that, I became extremely excited. I think that's cool sh*t and I'm extremely proud of Mushy. He got the Movieweb name out there to the masses, and its now being associated with one of the best horror films seen in years. But let's think about that statement for a moment. I'm not kissing the ass of the filmmakers or the studio. Even though it really is one of the best horror films in years, it still hits at about a 5½ out of 10. That right there should tell you something about the condition of not just horror films, but all films at this point in time. The sum of their dozen sucks. And that suckage is so powerful, it makes a slightly-above mediocre ode to 70s fashion seem like a masterpiece. A breath of fresh air. In reality, this is a staged version of Thelma & Louise starring the ugliest cast to ever grace a Cineplex screen (it beats Gummo with two fists.) Just watch the last five minutes; which is a prolonged Freebird music video. I half expected Susan Sarandon to pop-up next to Captain Spalding in the back seat. And we get the freeze frame. What the f*ck? Zombie might as well have had the Firefly Clan drive off a cliff while he was at it…

And the existent connect-the-dots through line between William Forsythe's Sheriff Wydell and Harvey Keitel's Detective Hal is flawless.

Oh, yeah, it also has a little bit of From Dusk Till Dawn thrown in for good measure. I hate to keep comparing Rob Zombie movies to other preexisting cinematic packages, but it's difficult at times not to call genre plagiarism. I'm okay with it. It's entertaining, so what if I've seen it all before? No one gets my comparisons between House of 1000 Corpses and the Dan Aykroyd masterpiece Nothing But Trouble; which makes me wonder if anyone has ever seen that film. It's an exact replica. The amusement park ride. The dinner table scene. The penis nose. Crazy sh*t. Between the once-titled Valkenvania and Dr. Detroit, I often wonder why Aykroyd isn't lumped in and name checked when new directors start going on about their horror influences.

Here, Zombie must have recognized that he was creating a very similar scenario as seen in Robert Rodriguez's 1996 vampire flick. In Dusk, we see the Gecko Brothers interrupt the hotel stay of Jacob and his two children. The daughter, of which, is played by Juliet Lewis. We get a variation of this thematic scene in Rejects. It's very similar in tone. And guess what? Instead of Juliet in the hotel room this time, we get her dad, Geoffrey Lewis. Yeah, Clint Eastwood's best friend. Which is pretty cool. I love Geoffrey Lewis and dig his presence here. Obviously, Zombie must have realized the connection. Right? It can't be a coincidence that Geoffrey Lewis and Juliet Lewis are in the exact same scene in two different horror films. Can it? Their characters essentially serving the same purpose. Father and Daughter…

Maybe.

Zombie also riffs on the second half of Dusk by making us question who we should be rooting for as far as the characters are concerned. Quentin Tarantino wrote two disgusting, disturbed, calculated murderer-killers in Seth and Ritchie Gecko. They are horrible people. The things we see them do in the first half of that film is almost worse than anything we see the Vampires do. Especially Ritchie. His behavior is inexcusable. He's a literal monster. But when those bloodsuckers come in, Rodriguez, as the director, asks us to cheer for the Geckos. In a sense, we forget about them as mass murderers and see them as the hero-protagonists. We want them to survive. It hurts when Seth has to kill his brother. They are made into sympathetic characters. Zombie plays that angle to even greater effect here. We know the Firefly Clan are supposed to be the bad guys, but as we watch Forsythe's Sheriff go unhinged and torture them, we almost feel for their suffering flesh. It's a narrow road to walk, and it pulls an audience member to the left. It made me question who I was cheering for. But then Zombie sort of blows it at the end with an unexpected twist. Let's just say that after what happens; I was angry at the crowd for applauding.

F*ck that stupid crowd. Speaking of the audience; let me get back to Geoffrey Lewis for a second…

Geoffrey Lewis actually made me question something about cinema in general. Not about this movie, particularly. You see, we were invited to the Red Carpet Premier of the film. I interviewed most of the actors just outside the theater before watching the Devil's Rejects (whoop-doo, I know). Inside the theater, movieweb's group of assigned seats happened to be directly in front of the cast. Rob Zombie & Sheri Moon were sitting right behind Dave, our videographer. Geoffrey Lewis sat directly behind me. And these people wouldn't shut up for the entire first part of the film. You see, usually I detest seat talkers. And I will always turn around and tell them to be quiet. But what is the etiquette here? Geoffrey Lewis has been a favorite actor of mine ever since I saw him in Every Which Way But Loose when I was a kid. Am I supposed to turn around and go, "Dude, shut the f*ck up"? Probably not, but he mocked what he was seeing on screen, and he kicked the back of my seat a good three or four times, hard. And then he got up and left halfway through. Actually, I guess in retrospect, it was kind of cool. It was almost like a live version of a Commentary track. I heard Rob Zombie declare, "That's my favorite shot" near the beginning of the film, when Tiny Firefly is dragging a naked, dead chick through the woods. I got to listen as Sheri Moon quoted Altamont's hookers. Probably the creepiest thing was the fact that Tiny Firefly, played by Matthew McGrory (aka Bigfoot, the Gentle Giant in Tim Burton's Big Fish) was sitting directly in front of me in a wheelchair. His image is made horrifying on screen. I just kept staring at the back of his real life head, worried that he'd get up and strangle me at any given moment. Damn right I wasn't going to tell the Firefly Family to stop talking during their own film. It was kind of neat to watch Matthew's reaction when the audience erupted into copious amounts of applause at his arrival near the end of the picture.

Suffice it to say, my movie-going experience with this particular outing will remain greatly unique to that had by the general public. Awesome. I guess it was kind of worth my time. I get to do so much cool stuff, I should be grateful…

Really. There are some things I genuinely love about Rejects. So much so, I know I'll buy the DVD and watch it more than two times. Maybe. Every moment with the clown is t*ts. You can't take your eyes off Sid Haig for a moment. He steals the show. Kipes the whole goddamn thing. Yes, Captain Spalding is a ruse. A key player in the annals of slasher history, and it's a shame that this is the last time we'll see him. Every line that comes out of his mouth is pure gold. He should have gotten Chris Tucker's salary, because that black kid has never been this funny. Following close on his heels is Cutter's on-screen brother, Charlie Altamont. Ken Foree, best known as the black guy from the original Dawn of the Dead (personally I love him to death in Texas Chainsaw III), comes in swinging a tight bat. The bitch hits a homerun with every perfected syllable that flies out of his mouth. It's almost as if he's auditioning for his life, which I guess he is. He's got to be better than super awesome if he ever wants to work outside a genre film like this, and he nails the pressure. If I don't start seeing this cat in more mainstream dramatic fair soon, my only choice will be to call foul and give up on the art of movie going.

I'm extremely impressed with Rob Zombie's ability to write clever dialogue. He fills the rott-black infective mouths of his cast with some of the funniest, most quotable riffs heard in a film since Napoleon Dynamite. I've already seen 101 different lines from Devil's Rejects etched on a thousand different T-shirts (a lot of them homemade, mind you), and the film hasn't even opened yet. I also like Rob's use of the 70s-style sideways wipe and pause…For the first little bit. Midway through the proceedings, this same technique, used again and again, grows tiresome. And Zombie has a really bad habit of keeping the camera too close to the faces of his actors. I don't need to be all up in their pours, do I, Rob?

I didn't think so.

I've grown wearisome of the head-on hit and run shock sequences that seem to be utilized in ever horror picture nowadays. Meet Joe Black did it best. We weren't expecting it. The way that car plows into Brad Pitt is priceless. Now, whenever a character wanders into the street, I know instinctively what will happen. They'll get missed by the first car that goes by, step back, relieved…And then they'll be metal-slammed into oblivion by a bus or a semi-truck. Yawn. I was a little disappointed that Rob went for this. It's become the new "old faithful." His only saving grace is the after shot of carnage, which is, itself, priceless. And the most realistic depiction of guts splattered on a highway that I've ever seen.

Zombie has already expressed in numerous interviews that he doesn't care for the expository set-up. And I'm grateful for that. I've seen House of 1000 Corpses. I don't need it explained to me in detail here. He just dives in and goes for broke. The film has a hum to it. It bumps and shakes for a good 80 minutes without ever slowing down. Sheri Moon Zombie (sorry Rob) has a tendency to halt the proceedings ever so slightly with some horrible line readings. I'll be direct and just say it…The girl is beautiful. Hot, even. I like looking at her, and when she's unhinged, she's a fun bit of muff to stare at on screen. But the bitch needs some acting lessons. She throws away priceless chunks of dialogue, and it hurts to watch. It's unnecessary. And her Baby Firefly becomes the only truly horrible thing about the film in general.

There are some locked scenes, unique to horror here, that also, I hate to bring it up again, hearken back to Tarantino's scripted works. I realize that both directors are children of the 70s, and it shows on screen. I was quite surprised to find Zombie tossing in unnecessary passages of tarded dialogue. They seem to go no place, and serve no real purpose. Interesting to watch, but they play out on screen like discarded edits that should have been reserved for the Special Edition version of the DVD. One has Brain Posehn and Geoffrey Lewis reminiscing about god knows what outside of a hotel room. For a long time. Its one of those things that make you go, "Hmm?" I welcome the scene's presence, it's different enough to make me take notice, but I still had to question it…"Well, that made no sense." Someone actually said this aloud during the screening. Just as unexplainable is a scene where the vengeful sheriff calls a film critic into his office and they get in a fight over Groucho Marx and Elvis Presley. It's a fun, long moment that never adds up to anything. Refreshing, yes. But does it serve the picture? I'm not sure. It's not my movie, so I guess I'm not at liberty to say.

I do have two questions, though. One: there's a prolonged sequence that finds Otis B. Driftwood taking country crooners Banjo & Sullivan out into the desert to dig up some guns. What happens to these guns? Do we ever see them in the film? Are they ever mentioned again? I don't think so. Also, what became of the Unholy Two? They sort of just disappear like Johnny Knoxville did in Men in Black II. A waist. I really dig the Unholy Two, hired killers that capture the Firefly Gang. Maybe we'll see them in their own movie someday…

Anyway…

So, overall, this film is a winner. Especially when compared to the other junk out there at the moment. Contrasted against the history of the genre, it hits level ground, never really becoming the classic it should be. But in this current draught of cinematic wretchedness, people are going to forget that fact and praise the living sh*t out of its truncated, plagiaristic ways. It is, hands down, the most watchable, enjoyable horror offering served up in years. It tops its predecessor tenfold. There are some classic scenes to be had, and it hits occasional pay dirt. Yet, I won't deny that there's an odd, off feel to the piece…

And so, I think that's all I have to say about that.

Now…GET OUT OF MY FACE! (I'm going to go f*ck this dirty OW porn magazine sitting on the floor.)

-PS: Don't forget to check out MovieWeb's streaming video coverage from the Red Carpet Premiere.