The Devil's Rejects (2005)
While musician-turned-filmmaker Rob Zombie was in the process of writing House of 1,000 Corpses, his first foray into both the art of filmmaking and the genre on which he was nurtured, he had a "vague idea for a story" about the brother of the sheriff, George Wydell, who was murdered by Mother Firefly coming for revenge against the family. After Lions Gate Entertainment made all their money back on the first day of Corpses' theatrical release, they wanted Zombie to produce a follow-up, and he began to seriously think about writing a new story. Not content to settle for a rehash of his predecessor's Texas Chainsaw-inspired plot, Zombie set out to make his sequel "more horrific" and his villainous characters less cartoonish than in their debut outing, opting "to make something that was almost like a violent western. Sort of like a road movie." While still utilizing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a source of inspiration, albeit less overtly this time around. The result is a restless, exhilaratingly gruesome, propulsive continuation of the Firefly saga that forgoes the haunted house/Halloween night atmosphere and surrealism that characterize House of 1,000 Corpses in favor of a grittier, more grounded cross-country road trip structure that makes the daring decision to position the infamous antagonist family as our anti-heroic protagonists, fleshing out their humanity without softening their sadistic, wholly unsympathetic inhumanity. It's a major risk that pays off in spades thanks to Zombie's brilliantly written script, relentlessly unflinching direction, and his knack for bringing the best out of the actors he works with.
Picking up on the morning of May 18th, 1978, a year after the abduction, torture, and killing of the central quartet from its predecessor, Texas Sheriff John Quincey Wydell (William Forsythe), the brother of slain deputy George Wydell (Tom Towles), along with a large posse of state troopers, gather in front of the dilapidated, isolated farmhouse of the Firefly family, having issued a "search and destroy" mission. Not willing to surrender passively, and clearly having prepared for this day for a long time, the unrepentant killers scramble out of their beds, clad themselves in armor vests and masks, and arm themselves with pistols and rifles. Following a tense shootout between the killers and Ruggsville police, with Zombie capturing the cacophonous, visually incoherent chaos with a series of quick cuts as a cascade of bullets fly in all directions, Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley) and Vera-Ellen "Baby" Wilson (Sheri Moon Zombie, having graduated from Rob's longtime girlfriend to wife), the two most sadistic members of the satanic clan, escape through an underground sewer system and make their way to the road, leaving behind their mother, Gloria Teasdale (Leslie Easterbrook, replacing Karen Black), who is arrested and taken into custody while grieving the death of her son, Rufus Jr. (future Michael Myers actor Tyler Mane, replacing Robert Allen Mukes).
On the road, Otis and Baby ambush and murder a nurse in order to steal her car, and drive to a payphone, where Baby phones her father, revealed to be Johnny Lee Johns (Sid Haig), A.K.A. Captain Spaulding, urging him to leave his home as soon as possible now that the police have obtained their identities. At Spaulding's behest, Otis and Baby proceed to the Kahiki Palms Motel, where they'd always planned to go in case of this very event. In a tragic case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, two couples have just arrived at the same motel, a traveling country band named Banjo and Sullivan, which consists of Roy Sullivan (Geoffrey Lewis), the lead singer, his wife, Gloria (Priscilla Barnes), Adam Banjo (Lew Temple), Roy's best friend, and his wife, Wendy (Kate Norby). Also along for the ride is their rodeo, Jimmy (Brian Posehn). This provides Baby and Otis with their latest opportunity to inflict physical, psychological, and sexual abuse on unsuspecting, innocent human beings while they wait for their father to arrive. All the while, Sheriff Wydell is eagerly salivating for his opportunity to capture the trio of fugitives, fueled by an insatiable hunger for vengeance, growing more unhinged along the journey and ultimately adopting the sadistic enthusiasm for bloodshed that characterizes the monsters he's hunting, albeit guided by a vision of God-approved justice.
If this were a more traditional sequel, Zombie would have titled it House of 1,000 Corpses 2 (or maybe House of 2,000 Corpses) and set it once again in the Firefly farmhouse, upon which a new batch of young, blissfully ignorant prey would stumble and become ensnared. Zombie, one of the most audacious and gleefully controversial visionaries in modern horror, and quite possibly my favorite filmmaker for that very reason, immediately subverts that expectation and the rehashing laziness that plagues many horror sequels by crafting a daringly original story that shifts the perspective to that of the titular rejects and removes them from their natural habitat, leaving behind a trail of profuse viscera in their wake. The Devil's Rejects is more narratively ambitious and thematically rich than House of 1,000 Corpses, weaving more characters into the mix, all of whom bring their own colorful personality to the table, and exploring thought-provoking topics related to the righteousness of vengeance and American society's fascination with the most depraved underside of human nature.
The first tactic Zombie employs to distinguish The Devil's Rejects from its more elementally terrifying predecessor is also his most potentially fatal: positioning the evil Firefly family as our anti-heroic protagonists. It's a lot to ask your audience to devote 109 minutes of their time to the company of three of the most sadistic, remorseless, inhumane monsters simply inhabiting the skin of human beings. After all, what made Zombie's debut so absorbing was that, while the villains each had engrossing personalities and unforgettable quirks to go along with their relentless bloodletting, the focus was still placed on the victims on the receiving end of the torture, ensuring our sympathy and rooting interest to see them escape the nightmare into which they'd wandered. (Spoiler alert: they didn't.) In The Devil's Rejects, Zombie doesn't forget to give us likable innocents with whom to sympathize and root for. But this time, their existence and actions are framed from the perspective of their assailants. Fortunately, Zombie pulls off this gamble as only a master screenwriter and director can. Otis, Baby, and Captain Spaulding are three of the greatest icons in modern horror history, and every second spent in their company is a perversely intoxicating joy, whether individually or especially as a unit. Their actions are utterly despicable, loathsome, unmotivated, and inexcusable, yet the innovation with which they're written and the ebullience with which they're brought to life transcends the black hole where their heart should be.
A large portion of the screenplay is dedicated to exploring the contentious but overall loving family dynamic between the unholy three, and this is precisely where Zombie's penchant for pitch black humor comes into play. In moments of intense stress, such as when they hear their names read aloud on a car radio or they're holding up the band members, Baby and Otis fling four-letter expletives at one another. In rare moments of downtime, however, they demonstrate the affection that underlies every brother-sister relationship, laughing, dancing together, Baby playfully sticking an ice cream cone on Otis' nose. While Baby shifts into "Daddy's little girl" when Spaulding enters the picture, Otis' relationship with his father figure is far more confrontational, as the two often bicker and level violent but empty threats at one another over dominance of the Firefly family. The aforementioned ice cream scene is one of the best in the screenplay, as it showcases the familial mix of bitterness and tenderness that exists in the trio's bond when they're not agonizing over whether to disembowel someone or leave them to spend the rest of their lives in perpetual trauma. (Although this is also where a small but fairly gaping plot hole presents itself: how did Baby manage to walk into an ice cream parlor and order two strawberry cones without anyone recognizing her and calling the police? And what made her entirely ignorant to that possibility?)
While Zombie certainly unveils shocking layers of humanity in his central trio, he's careful not to let "humanity" coincide with "sympathy". At no point do these scumbags miraculously develop remorse for the 70-plus innocent lives they've violently stolen, nor do they ever ask for our sympathy. Otis, Baby, Spaulding, and the rest of their family are not victims of an unjust materialistic society, and they're not exacting vengeance against individuals who have personally wronged them in some way. They are simply the personification of pure evil who maim and kill for the sheer pleasure it gives them. Unlike their masked, silent slasher brethren, though, they come equipped with engaging personalities, thanks in part to the privilege of speech. To ensure his exploration of his killers doesn't rob them of the nightmarish terror they exuded in the original, Zombie doubles down on the carnage candy, delivering one of the most delectably gruesome slasher films this jaded lifelong horror fan has ever seen. There are actual moments where even I flinched, and that's because Zombie's presentation of the violence is realistic, uncomfortably grim, and profusely bloody.
Texas Chainsaw may be his favorite movie, and judging by half his filmography, the one that has guided him the most on his filmmaking journey, but Zombie isn't trying to replicate Tobe Hooper's emphasis on psychological torment over visible displays of graphic, visceral penetrations. In fact, he's defiantly taking Leatherface's sledgehammer to the entire concept of less-is-more subtlety, proving two things in the process: 1) a horror movie can be told from the perspectives of the villains without losing viewer engagement as long as said villains have captivating personalities, and 2) a slasher movie doesn't have to withhold its gruesome violence in order to instill terror. Zombie understands the raison d'etre of a slasher is to cut loose and have fun with the slashing, and he steadfastly refuses to shy away from up-close depictions of gushing bullet and stab wounds. Smartly, he doesn't linger on any of these images gratuitously and rub our noses in the blood, either. Rather, he employs gore when necessary to create a visceral impact.
For my money, the two most harrowing kills are those of Adam, who receives a swift bullet straight to the left side of his neck, and Gloria, who gets a knife flung at lightning speed straight to her chest. What both of these kills have in common is they transpire just when the victim falsely believes they've gained the upper hand, and it's this scintillating writing that elevates what could otherwise have registered as stereotypical slasher gore porn. Otis and Baby don't just use physical violence to end the lives of their victims, they prolong the torture with verbal taunts and false gestures of free shots. As Adam lies bleeding to death in a field, Otis smashes the butt of a rifle on his wrist and knee while taunting him for trying to be a hero. After Gloria collapses to her knees and sickeningly pulls the blade out of her chest, Baby pulls her jeans down and invites her to shoot a bullet into her exposed bottom. When Gloria pulls the trigger, nothing comes out, and Baby snatches the gun from her hand, hurls a misogynistic insult, and reveals she could've escaped much earlier. "Ain't no bullets in this thing. It's all fuckin' mind power."
Even though the focus this time around is centered on the trio of murderers, Zombie doesn't neglect to develop his quintet of ill-fated captives into likable, sympathetic, and credible human beings, much as he did for the quartet of protagonists in his first film. One of Zombie's most impressive achievements in The Devil's Rejects is his ability to flesh out the Banjo and Sullivan members in a relatively brief amount of screen time. Roy, Gloria, Adam, Wendy, and even Jimmy are not just plastic human props deployed to supply the rejects with five additional victims and increase the body count for the gorehounds. They're flesh-and-blood individuals who have evidently known each other for a long time and share a kinship, which engenders sympathy for their unimaginable plight and raises the sense of impending dread. Zombie conveys their relationship succinctly through dialogue. In particular, when we first meet them standing outside the Kahiki Palms Motel, Zombie zeroes in on them in the middle of their conversation about an amusing incident from the night before. While riding a mechanical bull, Gloria overestimated her ability, and out came both breasts, allegedly flapping. Wendy and Adam are cracking up at the image that will forever live rent-free in their heads, Gloria is reeling from the embarrassment and is fed up with being the butt of their jokes, and Roy would like an encore. In the hands of a less character-invested writer, these people would just be standing there, barely exchanging a word, seemingly awaiting their assailants' arrival. But Zombie, for all his bloodlust and unabashed reverence for go-for-broke horror, actually cares about his characters enough to invest them with interior lives and relationships outside of the nightmare they're unknowingly walking into. Even Jimmy, who's unceremoniously dispatched before anyone else, is enriched with a sincere long-term goal to become a rodeo clown owing to his affinity for animals.
In addition to conversations, he uses body language and heartfelt gestures to illustrate the longtime bond between his characters. After Gloria is thrown by Otis onto a motel bed, after having been sexually brutalized in front of her husband and friends, Wendy's first instinct is to wrap her arms around Gloria's chest and hold her tightly and consolingly. A short while later, while Wendy and Gloria are left alone in the motel with Baby, Wendy asks to relieve herself in the bathroom, and Baby offers her permission on the condition Wendy hit Gloria in the face. Without much hesitation, Gloria warmly gives Wendy her blessing, ultimately permitting her to slap her three times, the last two of which are rough and painful. Roy is shown to be a soft-spoken, God-fearing man, if also a tad pretentious, never passing up an opportunity to remind someone he once (allegedly) shook hands with Johnny Cash, and morally suspect: the second he meets Baby, he practically forgets about the ring on his finger. In a refreshing reversal of gender expectations, Adam is presented as the more effeminate one in his marriage, but not in a way that robs him of his intelligence and rootability. For instance, while being held hostage in the motel, it's Adam who lies his head in Wendy's lap and prays to God for mercy, while Wendy soothes and gently shooshes him.
Zombie doesn't write these people as passive, unintelligent victims. Admittedly, Jimmy isn't granted much of a fighting chance, and Roy proves a little on the slow side when it comes to grabbing Otis' gun once Adam knocks it out of his hand, but Adam and Gloria in particular stand out for their desire not only to survive but to fight back against their attackers. When Otis indicates he plans to kill Adam and Roy after they help him retrieve buried guns in the desert, Adam hits him over the head with his rifle, continues hitting him once he's down (until Otis delivers a single kick that sends him flying), and wraps the rifle around his neck in an attempt to strangle him while he's wrestling with Roy. Back in the motel, when Baby leaves her chair and rushes to the bathroom door to order Wendy out, leaving her gun unattended, Gloria takes the opportunity to seize the gun and aims it at Baby, threatening to kill her. As I mentioned earlier, her apparent gaining of the upper hand proves a taunting fantasy, but the knee-jerk reaction is still commendable and relatable. Unfortunately for Wendy, she's granted the least amount of inner strength, her irrepressible panic and the psychological trauma of her experience prevailing over her sense of judgment. While her actions don't defy reason, neither do they catapult her to the horror genre's hall of fame of the most intelligent and prudent female characters.
The last time we saw Otis B. Driftwood in House of 1,000 Corpses, he was portrayed by Moseley with albino-white skin, long strands of homemade vanilla hair, devil-red eyes, and a light beard. Owing to his creator's pre-production ambition to strip his villains of any characteristics that verge on cartoonish, Otis is back and more terrifying than ever, resembling Charles Manson in his later years behind bars. Gone completely is the pasty complexion. Two years later, Otis now has more hair, long and gray, making him appear frighteningly older. Attached to his face is an oversized black beard, drawing attention away from a normal, healthy complexion. But the passage of time and emergence of grays have not softened his sadism in the slightest. If anything, his nihilism and misanthropy have grown alongside his wisdom, and Moseley delivers one of the most horrifying, hateful, and relentlessly wicked portrayals of pure evil in the history of horror villains. If there were ever an actor born to play Charles Manson, it's Moseley, and not just because of his strikingly similar appearance. He plays Otis as someone who relishes the power he holds over other people, utilizing a voice that's at once calm and authoritative, and spits on the pathetic concepts of religion and the goodness of humanity. Moseley subtly shifts between two different modes throughout The Devil's Rejects: sadistic toward his victims, using physical and psychological tactics to degrade them in front of their loved ones and make their remaining moments on earth as miserable and filled with as much pain as possible, and harmlessly grouchy toward his familial accomplices, almost like an exhausted father who's come home from a long day of work and won't tolerate a single second of nonsense. Moseley seems to have the most fun embedding himself under his victims' skin, such as when he taunts Roy over the scent on his gun left by his wife's genitals. While he may sport the appearance of Manson, Moseley shares more in common with Manson's right-hand killer, Tex Watson, in terms of personality: filled with unceasing evil and a callous disregard for the suffering of his victims. This is clearly intentional, as evinced when Otis, standing over a badly beaten Roy, declares, "I am the devil, and I am here to do the devil's work." An almost direct quote of Tex's announcement to Wojciech Frykowski on the night he broke into Sharon Tate's home. (Tex's final word of choice was "business.")
And what's a Rob Zombie movie, horror or otherwise, without the queen of evil onscreen? The Susan Atkins to Moseley's Tex Watson. Rob's wife and muse, Sheri Moon. Answer: there would be no Rob Zombie movie. These two are a team, and they are the greatest filmmaker-actor team working in the horror genre today. Rob doesn't just position his wife before the camera, give her a few lines to recite, and direct her to remove her clothes. (Though she has no qualms about that last requirement.) He writes amazing badass characters for her to sink her teeth into, be it forces of good or evil, and knows exactly how to modulate her performance to cull the absolute best out of her capability. To paraphrase recent Bachelor winner Juliana Pasquarosa, Meryl Streep can take a backseat because this is next level-type stuff. Second possibly only to her future heartbreaking turn as Michael Myers' mother in Halloween, where she would be tested with her first non-villainous supporting role, Sheri submits one of the finest performances of her career as Baby Firefly. Ditching the infantile giddy cackle, cheerleader perkiness, and petulant mood swings of her original incarnation for a more mature, serious-minded approach, Moon Zombie makes Baby the most deliciously psychotic and deceptively enchanting villainous in horror history without equal. Instead of the cheerleader uniform or ghostlike dress worn in Corpses, she spends most of the sequel clad in a white spaghetti-strapped top and deliberately tattered jeans. Her hair, while slightly curled, is straighter and less poofy, emphasizing her down-to-business maturity. Like Otis, her age has seemed to have only exacerbated her thirst for human suffering. Once more, Sheri exploits her God-given, innocent-looking allure to disarm any man unlucky enough to cross her path. She doesn't just ooze sex appeal, so much as she wields it like a dagger, alternating seamlessly between sexiness and sadism in the blink of an eye. When an unload gun is aimed at her, Sheri puts on a perfect performance of desperation and helplessness, her face contorting with feigned panic and her voice softening. That is until the second she outsmarts her would-be shooter, returning instantly to the cold-hearted, demonically deceitful monster hidden beneath the slender, stunning physique. However, once Baby is apprehended by Wydell and given a taste of her own medicine for the first time in her life, Sheri communicates legitimately convincing fear on her face, and when confronted with the loss of a loved one, reverts to a childlike disbelief and grief. It's compelling to see how these inhuman sadists exhibit zero humanity for anyone except one another.
As compulsively watchable as Haig, Moseley, and Zombie are portraying the ugliest examples of humanity at its most depraved, the greatest performance in a movie loaded with them arguably belongs to William Forsythe as the progressively deranged John Quincey Wydell. When initially approached by Zombie about partaking in The Devil's Rejects, Zombie informed him that the inspiration for how to portray his character came from actors like Lee Marvin and Robert Shaw. I'm not familiar with much of either actor's work, apart from Shaw's iconic "mad captain" turn as the shark-obsessed Quint in Jaws, so I can't say whether Forsythe channeled either legend particularly faithfully. What I can say is that, regardless of his inspirations, Forsythe is the heart and soul, dark as they may both be, of the sequel, playing Sheriff Wydell as a broken man grieving the untimely death of his brother and hell-bent on exacting vengeance against the people responsible. Forsythe is invigorating, performing this role as though it were tailor-made specifically for him. At the beginning of the story, he comes across as a no-nonsense, true-blue man of the law, someone who will follow the proper procedures to bring his brother's killers to justice, but isn't above leveling insults and delivering a backhand to the face when provoked. As the story progresses and more bizarre details come to light, Forsythe gradually transitions from a hardheaded Texas lawman to an unhinged sadist, similar to the lowlife cretins he's hunting yet always morally justified in his pursuit to avenge George's death -- and those of countless other victims of the family. Every second he's onscreen, Forsythe is visibly filled with irrepressible hatred for the Firefly family and driven by a single-minded, unquenchable thirst for revenge, as reflected in the low, cutting, often condescending Texan tone with which he speaks and a stone-hard, almost perpetually smile-free countenance. The only time one really emerges is when Wydell finally achieves his longtime goal, and it is a brutal pleasure watching Forsythe have the time of his life torturing the torturers. However, at one point in the proceedings, Wydell falls asleep at his desk while staring at a picture of George and has a nightmare in which George, living in the basement of the deserted Firefly home, urges him to put an end to the family's reign. From the moment John hears his brother's voice, Forsythe uncovers a hitherto unknown dimension to the character, one of suppressed grief and vulnerability. His eyes alone paint a picture of a fundamentally decent soul concealed protectively beneath a display of southern machismo.
For the role of the Firefly matriarch, whose name is revealed by Wydell via prior police records as Gloria Teasdale, Karen Black was originally offered to return. However, the salary she demanded exceeded what Zombie was capable of paying, and so the role was recast with Leslie Easterbrook. To which I say, "Adios, Karen." From the instant Gloria springs from her bed in the opening police confrontation, Easterbrook makes the role her very own, capturing the absentminded sex appeal exuded by Black while surpassing her forebear in the ability to terrify. She conveys Gloria's maternal love for her family, particularly her daughter, as well as a sentimental longing for the happier times of the past. While loading a gun in preparation for the shootout, Easterbrook quietly breaks down in sniffles over a remembrance of Baby as a baby, who she insists looked like "an angel." Once apprehended following a failed attempt at easy suicide, Easterbrook puts on a career-defining, larger-than-life performance of insanity. While she spends the remainder of her limited screen time chained up in a holding cell, unable to cause any bodily harm, Easterbrook reaffirms an adage uttered by my senior year theater teacher: "There's no such thing as small roles, only small actors." And Easterbrook lays waste to the concept of either, playing her materfamilias as a defiant, sadomasochistic, oversexed lunatic who can gladly take a hit and refuse to break. Her crowning moment worthy of an Oscar nomination in itself comes via a blood-curdling, intentionally incoherent monologue that, impressively enough, is delivered while sitting in a chair, topped off by a hauntingly maniacal witch-like laugh.
Ken Foree has the distinction of playing the most sane and levelheaded relative of the Firefly family, Spaulding's adoptive brother, Charlie. The owner of a brothel frustrated by the inadequate income being brought in by his bottom women, Charlie reluctantly allows his brother, niece, and nephew to take refuge under his roof (mainly because Spaulding refuses to take no for an answer). With a muscular build that belies his warmhearted, gregarious personality, Foree adds a lighthearted energy and caring heart to counteract the otherwise nonstop violence and pervading hostility. Even after he's coerced into selling out his family to the sheriff, you can see the affection in his smile and hear it in his voice when he interacts with his brother and tells him he loves him.
Aside from P.J. Soles' memorable cameo as a mother who cannot afford to be late to work one more time, Zombie also acquires the poetic involvement of E.G. Daily as Candy, Charlie's most prized possession; the naturally monstrous-looking Michael Berryman (who played Pluto in Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, likely a favorite of Zombie's) as Clevon, Charlie's slow-witted assistant; and Steve Railsback as Sheriff Ken Dwyer, a friend of Wydell's with a tendency for oversharing. (Considering Railsback's previous leading roles as real-life murderers Charles Manson and Ed Gein, just his appearance here is a stroke of small genius.)
Further distancing his sequel from his freshman effort, Zombie enlists the help of cinematographer Phil Parmet to imbue The Devil's Rejects with its own distinctive and tonally precise visual identity. In House of 1,000 Corpses, the story transpired on Halloween Eve and Night, largely within the walls of the Firefly family's spookily imposing farmhouse. As such, Zombie ensnared the audience in a haunted house-type atmosphere that felt straight out of an amusement park, enriched with colorful decorations and imaginative costumes worn by both the holiday-reverent psychopaths and their unwilling captives. For Rejects, Zombie moves the action away from the home following the first scene and takes his human monsters on a cross-country road trip, stopping off temporarily at a rundown motel and brightly lit brothel along the way. Parmet swaps out the funhouse darkness of the original with a dusty western look befitting his antiheroes' journey, juxtaposing the unremitting carnage they thrive on with a series of beautiful mountains, landscapes, and exterior settings. When Otis directs Adam and Roy to the desert where he buried guns a couple years ago, Parmet affords comforting wide shots of the baby blue afternoon sky. Scattered all throughout the area are tumbleweeds, and standing along the side of the frame is a ramshackle shack. He also frequently returns to establishing shots of the motel where the family terrorizes the Banjo and Sullivan crew, grounding the story in an unmistakably southern sense of place. Parmet's hand-held camerawork is put to great use during chase scenes, in particular when a maid and a traumatized woman wearing her own husband's face as a mask flee in horror from the motel, lending the proceedings an immersive documentarian style that recalls the original Texas Chainsaw and The Blair Witch Project.
Editor Glenn Garland employs freeze frames and slow motion throughout the action-heavy scenes, utilizing the former to build anticipation, such as when Otis sneaks up behind the nurse trying to help Baby in the road during the opening credits, and the latter to accentuate the drama of moments like Baby being forcibly separated from her mother during the raid. Parmet will often fill the frame with close-ups of the actors' faces to underline their shifting emotional states and establish as strong a connection as possible between their characters and the audience. On Zombie's orders, he doesn't spare us of the most grim images of gore, the most unforgettably squirm-inducing and jaw-dropping of which being the swift, matter-of-fact removal of two nails from a pair of hands. The only time we're treated to a reminder of the more cheerful set design of the original is when we reach our second to last stop at Charlie's brothel, the exterior of which is illuminated in flickering flashes of red and yellow lights.
Perhaps Zombie's most remarkable achievement with The Devil's Rejects, apart from topping his own outstanding debut feature and proving that sequels can be more than mere cynical cash-grabs, is his sense of pacing. At 109 minutes, this breathtakingly horrifying and exuberantly entertaining splatter fest never lets up for even a split second. It would've been easy for Zombie to use his road trip structure as an excuse to send his antiheroes on the run without actually taking them anywhere of interest, but The Devil's Rejects is utterly incapable of meandering. The audience is rarely afforded the opportunity to catch their breath. While it approaches the two-hour mark, the minutes fly by because there isn't a single wasted scene, shot, or line of dialogue. Every scene serves a purpose and pushes the plot forward, whether by revealing a new piece of information relevant to the characters -- Officer Dobson (Dave Sheridan, A.K.A. Doofy Gilmore from Scary Movie) observes that the aliases used by the Firefly killers are named after characters from Groucho Marx movies -- creating a new exciting action, or devising an interaction that further reveals the interiorities of the characters (you will never forget to watch your mouth when speaking about Elvis Presley in the presence of John Wydell).
In place of the heavy metal grunge played throughout House of 1,000 Corpses is a classic 1970s southern rock soundtrack that perfectly complements the cross-country atmosphere. For the incidental score, Zombie has deployed Tyler Bates, whose synthesizer mood music aurally resembles an alarm, exacerbating the nerve-racking tension of moments such as Otis and Baby bursting into the couples' motel room with guns extended. By contrast, the upbeat songs, both diegetic and non-diegetic, increase the pulsating energy of The Devil's Rejects while providing a welcome respite from the oodles of bloodshed and anxiety. During the opening credits, beginning the perfectly timed instant Gloria realizes she has no escape, "Midnight Rider" by the Allman Brothers accompanies Otis and Baby as they execute their escape from police. Following Gloria's dramatic outburst in the police station, Zombie relieves the mouth-gaping tension with the soothing sound of Elvin Bishop's ballad, "Fooled Around and Fell in Love," playing on the radio of the bandmates' van as Adam and Roy are driven to their deaths. The song is accompanied poignantly by a full-screen photo of Adam and Roy smiling with their arms around each other. On the night the titular antiheroes are located by Wydell and his tough-talking but competent bounty hunters, Rondo (Danny Trejo) and Billy Ray Snapper (Diamond Dallas Page), Terry Reid's "To Be Treated Rite" saturates the deceptively jovial ambience with an air of melancholy to foreshadow the trio's impending capture. Adam's visually discreet but tacitly torturous murder is alleviated by a J-cut to Otis Rush singing "I Can't Quit You, Baby" on a TV in the motel.
Zombie's most inspired use of southern rock is reserved for the iconic ending. As Otis drives along a deserted road in the early morning, Baby and Spaulding sleeping in the backseat, Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" accentuates their euphoric, if short-lived, sense of freedom and relief. Once Otis realizes the police are awaiting them, he wakes up the other two and hands them each a gun, readying themselves for one final battle. They recognize this is the end of the line, but refuse to go down without a fight. While Zombie doesn't expect us to sympathize in any way with their plight, he uses the slow-paced, wistful intro of the song to engender a warped feeling of approaching tragedy for three wasted lives, augmented by humanizing flashbacks of them hanging out like a normal loving family. With their guns fully loaded and extended, Otis speeds toward the barricade, and Zombie reflects their mood of defiance by forfeiting the slow motion and switching to the jarringly fast and furious guitar solo to accompany the shootout.
Aside from that graphically gratifying denouement, the centerpiece of The Devil's Rejects is unquestionably the harrowing motel scene. It's here where, not only are we presented with our four most sympathetic characters by far, but Zombie builds a deliciously unbearable sensation of dread through the unpredictable actions and behavioral changes of his villains. Garland creates dramatic irony by cutting back and forth between a flirtatious conversation between Roy and Baby outside at the ice bucket, and a debate between Adam and Gloria in their room regarding the seriousness of the Ruggsville massacre as it's discussed on TV. Once Otis sneaks up behind Roy and orders him at gunpoint to take him and Baby to his room, Garland returns to the tranquility of its interior. The feeling of impending doom is so thick you can practically taste it because we know Adam and Gloria are seconds away from becoming the latest subjects of the story currently being broadcast. Even with a bullet to one character's head and a knife to another's chest, the most gut-wrenching aspect of the sequence may be the sexual assault and humiliation of Gloria by Otis. Thankfully, Zombie films this moment with a judiciously calibrated mix of luridness and restraint, aided by the commendably strong and emotionally draining performances of Priscilla Barnes and Kate Norby, both of whom are fearless when called upon to show nudity.
What prevents The Devil's Rejects from devolving into a mind-numbing exercise in relentless cruelty is the grim sense of humor Zombie weaves into the narrative. He never forces a joke to artificially ease the violent nature of the story, but rather allows the colorfully unhinged personalities of his characters to add a natural dose of levity. The most outlandishly funny scene revolves around a heated exchange between Charlie, Clevon, and the owner of a chicken farm regarding the morality of "chicken fucking." Then there's Spaulding's previously mentioned disdain for his overweight, horny girlfriend (as if he himself is a real standard of physical perfection). After Spaulding goes to the bathroom, Garland smash cuts to a close-up of him pouring black coffee into a cup while sighing contentedly. Similarly, right after Otis bitterly assures Spaulding and Baby that "there is no fuckin' ice cream in [their] fuckin' future," Garland smash cuts to the latter two joyfully licking strawberry ice cream cones. Lastly, once the trio arrives at the brothel, Charlie performs a gag involving a water gun that everyone except Otis is privy to. The faux insult Spaulding hurls at Charlie is both elaborate and uttered to humorous perfection.
Of course, the set piece everyone is salivating for, that this movie spends its runtime slowly but surely building toward, is the inevitable capture and torture of the rejects, and once we get there, neither Wydell nor Zombie pull any punches. While the revenge-obsessed sheriff may not deliver on every last detail he promises, i.e., urinating in their faces or skinning them alive, he nonetheless makes thrillingly innovative use of a staple gun, crime scene photographs, a cattle prod, two nails and one hammer, a leather strap, and ultimately his bare hands. It's a jaw-dropping, viscerally cathartic sequence of well-earned, long-overdue comeuppance for three sadists who are about to learn whether they can take it as well as they can dish it. Wydell doesn't just employ physical means to torture his targets; he torments Baby by showing her photos of her deceased mother and bragging about the almost sexual fashion in which he gutted her. "You know, you were her little angel," he taunts, preying on the love Gloria conveyed for Baby. While this scene shows the killers in a never-before-seen state of powerlessness and vulnerability, Zombie doesn't strip them of their callousness and imbue them with contrived repentance. They're unhappy with having been caught and fearful of the retribution awaiting them, and they struggle to escape because, as inhumane as they are, they're still human beings with a primal sense of self-preservation. But when given the opportunity to confess to a crime, even when they know they'll pay a penalty for it, Otis and Baby can't resist bragging. Never once do they ask for mercy or plead their case as misunderstood victims.
However, once Tiny (Matthew McGrory) makes a surprise last-minute reappearance after spending the majority of the runtime MIA, the climax suffers a marked dip in plausibility. For starters, the timing of his arrival is blatantly contrived: how convenient that he emerges from hiding just in time to save his sister's life. Can you say deus ex machina? And while Tiny reaffirms his role as the most fundamentally good-natured and tragic member of the Firefly clan, as culpable as he still is for the crimes of his relatives, I don't buy for a second that he would've succeeded in rescuing Otis and Spaulding from their burning home. Or that Otis, after having two nails smashed into, then swiftly removed from, both of his hands, would be able to drive a car. These are meant to be flesh-and-blood human beings of the most despicable order, so why spoil their humanity by imbuing them with superhuman durability?
No matter. Despite the implausibility of the trio's rescue and escape, it's still immediately followed by that infamously bloody, disturbing, masterfully shot, edited, and scored ending. While Rob Zombie is a proudly provocative and decidedly divisive genre auteur, The Devil's Rejects is considered by most to be his masterpiece, a sentiment yours truly is not about to protest. Tightly paced, thoroughly gripping, unremittingly violent, and enclosed by colorful characters brought to life by a flawlessly assembled cast, this is a rare superior sequel that radically changes gears while retaining the crucial ingredients that made its predecessor so scary and exhilarating. It's emphatically not intended for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, containing scenarios and images so uncomfortable and upsetting that the average viewer may feel forced to look away. But no one will debate whether The Devil's Rejects lives up to its accurately descriptive title. Zombie's sophomore effort presents a vision of hardcore horror at its most barbaric and uncompromising -- and I loved every blood-caked, profanity-laden minute of it.
8.2/10
Comments
Post a Comment