Here’s Rob Zombie’s little ha-ha to the film critics: The most obnoxious character in “The Devil’s Rejects,” about a white-trash family of homicidal maniacs, is a movie reviewer.
Called in by a cocky Texas sheriff to help find members of the bloodthirsty Firefly family and their cohorts – whose names come from Marx Brothers movies – the pompous critic is clearly just a geek beneath his mustache and pseudo-intellectual demeanor. After going off on endless tangents, he proves himself useless and is promptly tossed out on his notepad.
That critic didn’t get the last word, but the rest of us do – and we did after Zombie’s first horror flick, “House of 1000 Corpses,” to which this is sort of a sequel. (This particular reviewer described it as “depressing, and a waste of time and energy for everyone involved.” Then again, we’re probably not the target audience.)
His 2003 movie drew just 16 percent positive reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes Web site, and made only about $12.5 million at the box office, despite the assertion in the press notes for this latest film that it was “a bizarre cult hit.” “Bizarre” is also a good word to describe “The Devil’s Rejects,” which is more coherent and truer to the ’70s slasher genre Zombie loves, but not necessarily more tolerable. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Dawn of the Dead,” films Zombie cites as influences, had the benefit of building tension.
This is just an assault – a deafening, repetitive, gratuitous mess. And for all its pretenses regarding authentic details and mood, “The Devil’s Rejects” is just lazy. Every other word is a four-letter one. Victims are tortured and blood is shed, all to the tune of a Southern-rock soundtrack. All the women are whores, or they’re treated like whores, or they just dress like whores.
That’s not especially daring or offensive. That’s just Zombie – the heavy-metal star turned writer-director – displaying a lack of effort.
Here’s how the rest of the movie goes. Brother-and-sister Otis and Baby (Bill Moseley and Sheri Moon Zombie, Rob’s wife) escape an early morning, Ruby Ridge-style ambush from the law at their dilapidated compound, where the corpses of dozens of the family’s victims have been stashed.
They reconnect with their estranged father, Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), a crass television clown who makes Krusty look as wholesome as Bozo, and all three go on a killing spree with Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe) on their tail.
Then they hide out with Captain Spaulding’s pimp buddy (Ken Foree) at his whorehouse, in case the sex-and-violence connection hadn’t been sufficiently hammered into our heads, until the climactic, slow-motion shootout, edited to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s seemingly eternal “Freebird.”
The end – hopefully, for good this time.
“The Devil’s Rejects”
*
R for sadistic violence, strong sexual content, language and drug use|SLASHER FILM|1 hour, 41 minutes|Written and directed by Rob Zombie; photography by Phil Parmet; starring Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon Zombie, Ken Foree, Matthew McGrory|Opens today at area theaters.
