L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, July 21, 2005 7:00 pm
With "The Devil's Rejects," rocker Rob Zombie takes a quantum leap forward from "House of 1,000 Corpses" and shows he can actually make a real movie a '70s "Last House on the Left"-style horror movie, but still a real film, and a pretty effective one at that.
Importing some characters for his kaleidoscopic debut, writer/director Zombie tells the gory story of the Firefly family and the slightly demented sheriff out to do them in. A "hard" R-rated film, this one starts out bloody and violent and stays that way through its bullet-raining finale.
The movie opens with the police ambush of the family's isolated farmhouse, a shootout that leaves one Firefly dead, Mother Firefly (Leslie Easterbrook) in jail and son Otis (Bill Moseley) and daughter Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie, Rob's wife) on the run.
They wind up in a rundown desert motel where they take a traveling family country band hostage and await the arrival of their father, a bizarre clown who calles himself Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig).
That's a Marx Brothers reference, but there's nothing funny about the sadist Firefly clan who lethally dispatch anyone who gets in their way and had some kind of horrid torture operation set up at the farm.
But Sheriff Wydell (veteran character actor William Forsythe) is as mean as the Fireflys and he's got vengenace on his mind. His brother died under Firefly torture, and he's going to give them the same treatment, legal or not.
With its high body count, blood and gore, "The Devil's Rejects" isn't for the queasy of stomach or faint of heart. But it is a well-constructed film that borrows from the likes of Sam Peckinpah, Tobe Hooper and Quentin Tarantino for its style and takes on a classic criminal chase movie structure.
This is not to say that Zombie is in the same league with those directors. There are plenty of rough spots in "The Devil's Rejects," and the dialogue is sometimes beyond awkward. But it is a distinct improvement from "House of 1,000 Corpses" and it carries some of the same disturbing power as the '70s movies Zombie is clearly trying to emulate, starting with the film's setting in that decade.
That emulation goes beyond just plot to the washed out visual sensiblitity, created by using 16 mm film, isolated desert settings and crudely horrifying makeup effects. Not surprisingly, "The Devil's Rejects" has a near-perfect soundtrack of greasy Southern rock, helping to give the picture its '70s demented hillbilly aura.
Like "House of 1,000 Corpses," "The Devil's Rejects" isn't intended to be a film for the wide, mainstream audience. But it's a picture that should satisfy the Zombie cult followers and might just add a few people to that legion.
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.
The Devil's Rejects
**1/2 (out of four stars)
Director: Rob Zombie
Stars: Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Shari Moon Zombie, William Forsythe
Rated: R
Now showing: East Park
The reel story: Rocker Zombie shows he can make a movie with this bloody, gory '70s-style horror picture about a family of sadistic murderers and the vengeance-minded sheriff pursuing them.