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#628 - The Devil's Rejects
Rob Zombie, 2005
A family of serial killers are forced to go on the run after a vengeful sheriff decides to raid their homestead.
Rob Zombie's debut horror film House of 1000 Corpses definitely conjured up associations with Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre due to its plot about a family of murderous rednecks living out of a decrepit mansion. To this end, it made sense that sequel The Devil's Rejects opted to copy The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 by having its plot be about the family from the first film going on the run from said mansion while being pursued by a vindictive sheriff. Of course, where Zombie differs from Hooper is that he affords the family protagonist status as they go on the run; unfortunately, this ultimately ends up being what scuppers The Devil's Rejects for me. Fundamentally unsympathetic protagonists aren't an automatic hindrance to me appreciating a work of fiction, but in the case of the Firefly family the hindrance becomes especially pronounced. Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers is another film that tried to make mass murderers worthy of an audience's interest by not only being humanising them through their undying love for one another but also by the fact that their killing followed a perverse code of honour; this was borne out by the so-called "good" characters in that film frequently being shown as more vile than the protagonists. While I ultimately didn't think that Stone's film did the best job of pulling off that kind of sympathy for the devil, it still proved preferable to what Zombie does with this film.
The Firefly family consists of father "Captain Spaulding" (Sid Haig), son Otis (Bill Moseley), and daughter Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie). I could potentially make an exception in the case of veteran exploitation actor Haig as he plays an incredibly filthy excuse for a sideshow entertainer, but Moseley and Moon Zombie have an appalling backwater malevolence that is somehow even less charming than that of Mickey and Mallory Knox. This ends up being a problem when the film focuses on more of their actions than anything else, especially when a good chunk of the film follows the siblings as they visit a motel and terrorise the members of a traveling country band. There is some promise in the case of character actor William Forsythe as a sheriff whose desire for vengeance leads him to becoming just as much of a vicious, remorseless sadist as the killers he's after. However, he can only do so much with his character; even a scene where he tries to deduce the Firefly family's whereabouts by consulting an obnoxious film critic is still pretty irritating. Even the appearance of Dawn of the Dead alumnus Ken Foree as an associate of Captain Spaulding's isn't enough to salvage things on a characterisation front.
I do get the impression that Zombie is the kind of filmmaker whose willingness to recreate certain forms of cinema is rooted in sincere homage more so than ironic detachment, but that becomes extremely irrelevant when the genre in this case is Z-grade grindhouse horror. Grainy cinematography and haphazard editing may capture the vibe of the period just fine, but it succeeds a little too well at looking like a low-rent B-movie The more obvious examples of comedy do little to amuse, whether it's giving its "heroes" clever one-liners or by attempting to throw in some satirical elements (case in point - the scene with the film critic). Even the attempts to lend the film some degree of poignancy don't feel remotely justified. There is no better example than the notoriously elegaic ending that plays out to the tune of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird", which was probably the one thing about this movie that I knew about ahead of time. While it's arguably the best scene in the whole movie, I think that's more or less by default; besides which, it still feels awfully hollow if you're like me and have already spent the rest of the film struggling to find any reason whatsoever to care about who comes out on top.
While it's entirely possible that I may have missed just what makes The Devil's Rejects such a beloved piece of work for so many people (to the point where my dismissing it in another thread resulted in fans unleashing a barrage of angry reaction images), I have trouble thinking about what that might be. I obviously don't think that it's supposed to be a sincere endorsement of its reprehensible characters and their actions, but I can't really see how I'm supposed to buy it as dark satire or a black comedy or anything like that. Even the least horrible characters are severely lacking in charm, not even managing significant exceptions in the form of Haig or Forsythe or Foree or even Danny Trejo. This becomes a problem when the film seems intent on trying to make us like the Firefly family despite their more horrendous actions, but it constantly fails for obvious reasons and ends up undercutting its supposedly iconic ending. As a straight horror, it is extremely lacking in suspense or thrills; I concede that the whole sequence of events involving the country band has a little of that, but even that isn't handled in a way that makes me think of the sequence as anything more than filler. It's not so much that the film is violent and disgusting so much as the fact that it feels fundamentally pointless, unless of course the point is just waiting for everyone to die in a presumably violent fashion. It may not be a generic slasher film like House of 1000 Corpses, but the attempt to change things up doesn't feel like a significant improvement. This marks three Zombie movies I've seen so far, and I seriously doubt I'm going to bother with any more.
Rob Zombie, 2005
A family of serial killers are forced to go on the run after a vengeful sheriff decides to raid their homestead.
Rob Zombie's debut horror film House of 1000 Corpses definitely conjured up associations with Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre due to its plot about a family of murderous rednecks living out of a decrepit mansion. To this end, it made sense that sequel The Devil's Rejects opted to copy The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 by having its plot be about the family from the first film going on the run from said mansion while being pursued by a vindictive sheriff. Of course, where Zombie differs from Hooper is that he affords the family protagonist status as they go on the run; unfortunately, this ultimately ends up being what scuppers The Devil's Rejects for me. Fundamentally unsympathetic protagonists aren't an automatic hindrance to me appreciating a work of fiction, but in the case of the Firefly family the hindrance becomes especially pronounced. Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers is another film that tried to make mass murderers worthy of an audience's interest by not only being humanising them through their undying love for one another but also by the fact that their killing followed a perverse code of honour; this was borne out by the so-called "good" characters in that film frequently being shown as more vile than the protagonists. While I ultimately didn't think that Stone's film did the best job of pulling off that kind of sympathy for the devil, it still proved preferable to what Zombie does with this film.
The Firefly family consists of father "Captain Spaulding" (Sid Haig), son Otis (Bill Moseley), and daughter Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie). I could potentially make an exception in the case of veteran exploitation actor Haig as he plays an incredibly filthy excuse for a sideshow entertainer, but Moseley and Moon Zombie have an appalling backwater malevolence that is somehow even less charming than that of Mickey and Mallory Knox. This ends up being a problem when the film focuses on more of their actions than anything else, especially when a good chunk of the film follows the siblings as they visit a motel and terrorise the members of a traveling country band. There is some promise in the case of character actor William Forsythe as a sheriff whose desire for vengeance leads him to becoming just as much of a vicious, remorseless sadist as the killers he's after. However, he can only do so much with his character; even a scene where he tries to deduce the Firefly family's whereabouts by consulting an obnoxious film critic is still pretty irritating. Even the appearance of Dawn of the Dead alumnus Ken Foree as an associate of Captain Spaulding's isn't enough to salvage things on a characterisation front.
I do get the impression that Zombie is the kind of filmmaker whose willingness to recreate certain forms of cinema is rooted in sincere homage more so than ironic detachment, but that becomes extremely irrelevant when the genre in this case is Z-grade grindhouse horror. Grainy cinematography and haphazard editing may capture the vibe of the period just fine, but it succeeds a little too well at looking like a low-rent B-movie The more obvious examples of comedy do little to amuse, whether it's giving its "heroes" clever one-liners or by attempting to throw in some satirical elements (case in point - the scene with the film critic). Even the attempts to lend the film some degree of poignancy don't feel remotely justified. There is no better example than the notoriously elegaic ending that plays out to the tune of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird", which was probably the one thing about this movie that I knew about ahead of time. While it's arguably the best scene in the whole movie, I think that's more or less by default; besides which, it still feels awfully hollow if you're like me and have already spent the rest of the film struggling to find any reason whatsoever to care about who comes out on top.
While it's entirely possible that I may have missed just what makes The Devil's Rejects such a beloved piece of work for so many people (to the point where my dismissing it in another thread resulted in fans unleashing a barrage of angry reaction images), I have trouble thinking about what that might be. I obviously don't think that it's supposed to be a sincere endorsement of its reprehensible characters and their actions, but I can't really see how I'm supposed to buy it as dark satire or a black comedy or anything like that. Even the least horrible characters are severely lacking in charm, not even managing significant exceptions in the form of Haig or Forsythe or Foree or even Danny Trejo. This becomes a problem when the film seems intent on trying to make us like the Firefly family despite their more horrendous actions, but it constantly fails for obvious reasons and ends up undercutting its supposedly iconic ending. As a straight horror, it is extremely lacking in suspense or thrills; I concede that the whole sequence of events involving the country band has a little of that, but even that isn't handled in a way that makes me think of the sequence as anything more than filler. It's not so much that the film is violent and disgusting so much as the fact that it feels fundamentally pointless, unless of course the point is just waiting for everyone to die in a presumably violent fashion. It may not be a generic slasher film like House of 1000 Corpses, but the attempt to change things up doesn't feel like a significant improvement. This marks three Zombie movies I've seen so far, and I seriously doubt I'm going to bother with any more.