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Film review

So horrifying it's a treat

Forget the horror formulas: With The Devil's Rejects, the delicious chill is back and terror is spiked with a grim grin that intensifies the shivers.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published July 21, 2005

Hands down (or chopped off), the best horror movie in decades is Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects, a ruthlessly violent, viciously entertaining blood feast. Not since Leatherface first swung his chain saw has anyone spewed such a delirious obscenity against human nature onto the screen. If there's such a thing as a vile classic, this is it.

Zombie understands that movie horror has dissolved over the years into a bland stew of bogymen , dumb teenagers and spooky children. Viscera may be more sophisticated, but terror has been repeated and spoofed into insignificance. The Devil's Rejects is a throwback to 1970s drive-in flicks such as Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes that coated the screen with sadism in an era when we could still be shocked by the things people are capable of doing to each other.

Yet, unlike a piece of snuff trash like Saw, The Devil's Rejects retains a sense of humor about its offensiveness, although not at Scream's satiric level. Zombie's smiling reverence for classic gash-and-dash movies is obvious in his casting choices (a veritable parlor game of B-movie veterans), his grainy, jittery camera work and a soundtrack of 1970s songs that suits the action perfectly. You'll never hear Free Bird the same way again.

The Devil's Rejects is a sequel to Zombie's 2003 debut, House of 1,000 Corpses, a movie I dodged during its limited release and later found some guilty pleasure in watching on home video. The Firefly family, kind of like the Manson clan filtered through Jerry Springer, laid low after murdering a cop, whose brother, Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe), brings a posse to their door when this movie begins. Mother Firefly (Leslie Easterbrook) is captured, but Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley) and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) shoot their way out, heading to a desert motel rendezvous with Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), a psycho in clown's greasepaint.

Nasty things happen. Constantly. Hostages are taken, humiliated and disposed of in messy ways. The motel sequence alone, with its degrading acts toward women and cold-blooded casualness, may send sensitive viewers to the exits. From there, things only get worse for anyone in the Firefly family's way, all the way to its Bonnie and Clyde-inspired final shots. Zombie pulls punches only when needed to secure an R rating; the unrated DVD version should be a killer.

Tension is eased a few times when Zombie shows a devilishly playful side. If you didn't notice, the Fireflys are mostly named after characters played by Groucho Marx. "Maybe we should find this guy Groucho Marx and bring him in for questioning," says Wydell's dim deputy. Wydell explains he's dead, then orders the next best thing: "Go get that movie critic," he orders. Sure enough, the side of Gene Shalit that was separated at birth shows up to offer clues. Maybe Zombie's pandering, but it works.

Another Groucho reference signals an impressive risk; it occurs when Zombie wants our sympathies to shift in a direction that, frankly, made me uncomfortable. But that's what movies like The Devil's Rejects are all about: either to make us sick or to make us curious about why we're enjoying what's making everyone else sick. In that department, Zombie pushes, licks and seals the envelope.

Grade: A-

Director: Rob Zombie

Cast: Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, Sheri Moon Zombie, William Forsythe, Leslie Easterbrook, Ken Foree, Geoffrey Lewis, Priscilla Barnes

Screenplay: Rob Zombie

Rating: R; pervasive sadistic violence, harsh profanity, nudity, sexual situations

Running time: 101 min.

[Last modified July 20, 2005, 09:58:07]