Day Twenty-Two: The Devil’s Rejects (2005)
What are we to make of The Devil’s Rejects ? I admit that I didn’t much care for Rob Zombie’s film when I first caught it over summer of 2005. I thought the film reveled in a certain vile killer chic, and laughed along with its band of madmen (who seem to be modeled after Charles Manson) as they indulged in relentless, prolonged scenes of torture. Zombie even perversely denies us the pleasure of a good guy, the cop pursuing them is just as insane as they are, the fact that he’s on the right side of the law seems to be more by accident than design.
I thought House of 1000 Corpses, his prior film as writer-director, was stylish, a more watchable than usual entry in the neverending chain that is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre ripoff. Rejects is interested in more though and I got on its wavelength in subsequent viewings. The film has an appealing lunatic bite, a flamboyant sting of lawlessness to it, and it’s in this acknowledgement of lawlessness that the film’s one truly great scene emerges. One of the killers, (Bill Mosely, in a performance that should get him more work) notices a potential victim praying to God, and laughs, and screams to the sky, if there is a God then strike me down with lightening. For a moment, we’re dealing in the pure, primal, animal fear of breakdown, of chaos that powers most great horror films.
You sense, like many recent horror directors, Zombie’s infatuation with past horror junk, but Zombie’s too head over heels in love with the tropes of the genres to overly intellectualize it or quote mark it like other filmmakers who’ll remain nameless. Zombie gets carried away and roots for the bad guy because the good guy’s squareness is repellent to him. He’s too busy embuing The Devil’s Rejects with a hellfire energy to instill it with any moral compass, and I dig the lack of hypocrisy, the cojones of Zombie. This thing rocks and rolls, and seems to be entirely uninterested in anyone’s opinion beyond it’s creator’s.
It also helps that Zombie has a found a mildly more original schtick this time. If Corpses was TCM, then Rejects is TCM part 2 as remade by Sam Peckinpah. The MTV splatter is gone here, and replaced by a dry, oversaturated Western cinematography that’s a breath of fresh air for the genre. We open with the mentally diseased Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe, if you’ve thought he’s chewed scenery in the past, you’ve seen nothing yet) opening fire on the Firefly Clan’s home, the family from Corpses, who murdered his brother in the prior film. Right away Zombie lays on the hyperbole: killers dressed in homemade armor, shotguns blazing with no apparent kickback, a Sheriff who walks in the line of fire like the Terminator, the mayhem reaching a gorgeous crescendo when a character fails to off themselves to spite someone else. Cue the Allman Brothers.
Zombie’s zeal is both his greatest asset and strongest limitation. One can’t tell where the satire ends and the misguided begins. Zombie lays on the purpilish dialogue, the Lynard Skynard, and the Tarantinoish digressions (though Tarantino would probably never sideline from the plot long enough to consider chicken fucking) and you’re left wondering if this filmmaker has any self-consciousness at all. That is, ulimately, the thrill of a Rob Zombie movie, or at least the first two Rob Zombie movies.
A teensy bit of self-consciousness might help though. Zombie could stand to learn that certain moments don’t need slow-mo to sell them or that some people don’t talk like ironically articulate white trash sailors (a much bigger problem with his Halloween) but, even as he is, Zombie is something to appreciate, he’s seemingly untouched by doubt, and he’s the only person working who’d showcase Sid Haig in something that could be called a star performance. What’s a matter honey? Don’t you like clowns? Don’t you think they’re fucking funny?
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:06 am
Ok ok, it’s in my netflix queue already!
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:17 am
Look forward to your response. This is a little more divisive than “The Descent.” I seem to remember you being a little kinder to Halloween than most, so you may warm to this.
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Actually I was pretty cruel to Halloween but I admired what Zombie was trying to do. I’ve heard from other horror fans that Rejects is pretty good.
Congrats by the way of keeping to your post a day promise. You’re doing great.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:38 am
One of the best things about this movie is how it gets under your skin. I, personally, felt very dirty after seeing it. And that’s a good thing. Minus points for unimaginative soundtrack, however.
January 18th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I agree with Car Loans