July 22, 2005

In my review of HOUSE OF WAX, when I alluded to another movie being my choice for the most notable horror movie of summer ’05, I was talking about THE DEVIL’S REJECTS. It’s Rob Zombie’s second movie, and I don’t remember anybody thinking it was odd that he could make a sequel to his debut THE HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES that was not advertised as a sequel and was so different from the original that it kinda stands on its own. We just all agreed it was interesting. Instead of a stylized spookhouse ride on elaborate sets it’s a gritty ‘70s style criminals-on-the-lam movie, putting the previously more cartoonish Firefly family – serial killers Otis B. Driftwood (Bill Moseley, PINK CADILLAC), Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) and the clown Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig, SPIDERBABY) – out on the road to steal cars, lie low and cook in the sun.

And it’s got that 16mm grain I love – dust of the gods. Of course Zombie couldn’t resist using a few wipes and giving the credits gnarly freeze frames that look like lobby cards for some ’70s Italian sleaze movie that makes you feel dirty. He recruited cinematographer Phil Parmet because he’d shot handheld as additional d.p. for Barbara Kopple’s documentary HARLAN COUNTY U.S.A. Maybe the most crucial choice is that the soundtrack is all Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers Band, Three Dog Night and stuff like that. Guitars that sing instead of crunch. That changes everything.

I think of this is an important aughts horror movie in general, but especially as a sequel it’s incredibly impressive – not just the unexpected and drastic shift in style, tone and subgenre, but the leap in directorial skill level, and especially the unlikelihood of actually going through with the premise of “the cops show up at the house so they have to make a run for it.” That never happened to Leatherface (although the prequel LEATHERFACE, 12 years after this, is also a fugitives on the lam movie, inspired by this, I suspect).

It already feels so different just from all the natural lighting. Is this really the same world I called “TEXAS CHAIN SAW meets Pee-wee’s Playhouse“?

There are traces of that CORPSES flavor in the Firefly family’s emergency response plan: they protect themselves from gunfire with crude home-made armor, including welder-style metal face shields that sort of double as Halloween masks. Zombie is the type of artist who puts his aesthetics into every prop, every sign, every t-shirt logo, and the Fireflies are the same. They’re gonna add a little extra flair to their shootout with the pigs.

The style is not as hectically cluttered, collaged and overflowing as CORPSES, more disciplined and focused on this specific desert highways ’n southern rock vision of the world – it’s all about scraggly beards, stained clothes, cowboy hats, vintage signs, sweat and dried blood. I think Zombie does an outstanding job of accomplishing an authentic period feel, with the possible exception of when he gets goofy inventing talk shows for expository purposes, or with an at least conceptually very funny scene where a snobby (but somewhat Shalit-esque?) local film critic (Robert Trebor, also in JIMINY GLICK IN LALAWOOD) is summoned by the sheriff’s office to examine the Marx Brothers inspired aliases. I’m pretty sure Zombie just gave them those names as an in-joke in the first movie, but now it’s part of the m.o. that they follow a Marx Brothers theme. They should’ve released this as THE DUCK SOUP MURDERS or THE HORSE FEATHER MASSACRE in some countries.

In CORPSES Captain Spaulding wasn’t initially revealed to be connected to the Fireflies, but they go to him in this emergency, and Baby calls him “Daddy.” He calls himself Cutter. We never return to his “Museum of Monsters and Madmen” roadside attraction and he only wears civilian clothes, but he does insist on putting on his makeup sometimes, and his reintroduction is the first real laugh in the movie. We first find him at home being ridden by porn legend Ginger Lynn Allen, but she gets mad, shoots him in the face and he wakes up with a more attainable companion (Juanita Guzman), who asks him if he had a bad dream.

“Eh, fifty-fifty” he says.

I wouldn’t presume to know enough of Haig’s filmography to know for sure this is his best performance, but it’s the best I’ve seen. He’s the embodiment of Zombie’s particular balance here, still a clown but his makeup gets smeared or faded, he’s wearing a tank top or a Dan Flash’s type shirt, he has grotesque black gums but they look real, and he uses more gruff charisma than humor (though there’s some of that).

I can’t believe I didn’t note in my original review that there are EMPIRE STRIKES BACK parallels in this part 2. In the opening their base is attacked and they have to flee – okay, that doesn’t have to be a reference. But I do believe that the pimp Charlie Altamont (Ken Foree, of the g.o.a.t. horror part 2 DAWN OF THE DEAD, in his first real role since THE DENTIST in 1996) and his “Frontier Fun Town” (kind of a brothel/western town) fulfill the roles of Lando Calrissian and Cloud City. He’s Spaulding’s brother instead of old friend, but there’s a tense standoff when they come face to face, before Charlie turns out to be kidding. And then Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe, OUT FOR JUSTICE) pulls a Darth Vader and forces Charlie to betray his guests. (A difference is that Charlie returns to help them in this movie instead of waiting for another episode.)

In case you still think it’s an accident, there’s an earlier scene where Charlie’s top prostitute Candy (E.G. Daily, PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, voice of Froggy in THE LITTLE RASCALS) talks about wanting to do some kind of space-themed prostitution because of the popularity of STAR WARS, and their janitor Clevon (Michael Berryman, THE HILLS HAVE EYES) talks about fucking a droid.

If this is EMPIRE though, who’s Yoda? Well, let’s say it’s their giant mute brother Tiny (Matthew McGrory, BIG FISH), even though that makes no sense. He has a smaller part in this one, but he’s still a highlight – it’s so bleakly funny that he dodges the police raid because he’s outside dragging a naked corpse around when they pull up. So he’s there to save the day when Wydell brings the fugitives back to their house to torture them and then burn it down. It’s not actually the Devil, it’s Tiny who rejects them from hell when he pulls them out of there. Then he walks right back into the burning house, to go down with the ship, I think? Otis asks him if he’s sure about it so they seem to have an understanding, but Otis also says “We’ll come back for you.” (They sure don’t.)

So yeah, it’s a house of at least 1,005 corpses, because a couple cops, Rufus (Tyler Mane, X-MEN) and Tiny all die in there.

As I noted at the time, the sequel’s primary innocent victims, the traveling musical duo of Banjo & Sullivan (Geoffrey Lewis [DOUBLE TEAM] and Lew Temple [DOMINO]) along with their wives (Priscilla Barnes [TALONS OF THE EAGLE] and Kate Norby [Boston Public]) and a roadie (Brian Posehn, 2 episodes of Method & Red), are far more tolerable and natural than the protagonists of CORPSES, and they’re not designed to be annoying or “deserve” to be killed. Maybe it’s just my general love for Geoffrey Lewis (ONLY THE STRONG), but when Sullivan is clearly enjoying Baby trying to seduce him he doesn’t come off as some sleaze. i don’t think he’s even going to do anything, he just enjoys hearing her talk to him like that. I don’t hold it against him. And the thing is she really doesn’t need to get his guard down for Otis to get the drop on him. She just likes playing with people.

This stretch in the Kahiki Palms Motel is one of the most effective but also least enjoyable portions of the movie, the part that feels more like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT or HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER than a slasher movie. Ugly, nasty business. Mostly not graphic, but raw and cruel enough to hurt. It’s the simple mind game things (Gloria Sullivan having to kiss Otis so he won’t kill the others) that are more upsetting than the extravagant horror movie stuff. By comparison Wendy Banjo making a run for it wearing her dead husband’s face and getting splattered by a semi is the fun part.

But not much more than halfway through the movie those poor folks are dispensed with and it’s mostly just the bad and ugly, no good. The Fireflies vs. Wydell, his troops, and the bounty hunters Rondo (Danny Trejo, HEAT) and Billy Ray Snapper (wrestler Diamond Dallas Page, later in GALLOWWALKERS). Wydell is avenging the death of his brother (Tom Towles, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 1990) but he isn’t really like Dennis Hopper as Lefty Enright, the obsessed Texas Ranger tracking the Sawyers in TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2. I suppose both are crazy and spout biblical shit, but Lefty seems like he snapped, while Wydell seems like he’s probly just like this anyway. Don’t get pulled over by that maniac. He only barely pretends to have anything to do with the law, brings Mother Firefly (POLICE ACADEMY’s Leslie Easterbrook doing a great job replacing Karen Black) to the police station in suburban Ruggsvile to interrogate her and then lustfully stabs her to death in her cell.

So even though we know for sure the Fireflies are straight up demons, when they’re in peace time just hanging out having a good time with prostitutes who probly don’t know who they are and the bounty hunters come in and start slitting throats it’s easy to be tricked into rooting for the rejects.

What is THE DEVIL’S REJECTS about, though? What is it saying? These are questions I wonder about a little more now than I did then, and I don’t really think Zombie has an answer. So is it just empty nihilism, or shock value, or fetishistic pastiche? Yeah, probly, but the cinematic experience has always been potent enough that it keeps its spell on me. I take the ride with them, I wince, I laugh grimly a few times, I get tricked by the power of cameras and guitar solos into feeling the weight of these absolutely irredeemable people choosing to BONNIE AND CLYDE themselves while we listen to a surprisingly long section of “Free Bird.”

I don’t know, on this viewing I have a tiny bit more hesitation about my reverence for this filth. It doesn’t work quite as much. But it works.

Twenty years later this is still arguably Zombie’s best movie. I might make a case for HALLOWEEN II, and i know some who would say it’s THE LORDS OF SALEM. Even his very best I always have some problems with, but they’ve got something unique at their core that makes me willing to wrestle with those things. There are many movies that are much more perfect than THE MUNSTERS but not nearly as interesting.

The budget for THE DEVIL’S REJECTS was only about $7 million, so it made that back in its opening weekend. $19.4 million in theaters isn’t massive, but it’s more than I’d expect for a movie of this tone! SAW had come out, WOLF CREEK would come in November, then HOSTEL the following January and David Edelstein coining the term “torture porn” in response, so I guess we were starting to have that Bush era dive into fucked up horror movies. Not a fair trade at all, but better than nothing.

This one got some good reviews, though, including famously from Roger Ebert and less famously from a young-ish writer for The Ain’t It Cool News and Geocities named Outlaw something. It was clear at the time that THE DEVIL’S REJECTS was… something. And it always will be.

Tie-ins:

The toy company NECA made very detailed action figures of the main trio in different outfits (including a “Bloody Showdown” 3-pack). I have the figure they made of Tiny with removable mask.

In addition to the actual soundtrack they released a Banjo & Sullivan: The Ultimate Collection 1972-1978 album recorded by Lew Temple and his friend Jesse Dayton. It includes a cover of “Free Bird.”

Legacy:

Moseley, Haig and Foree all became much more prolific after this (mostly in lower profile horror movies, but I’m glad they got work).

In 2019 Zombie finally did a third Firefly film, 3 FROM HELL, which is cheaper and goofier (and Haig was really sick so he’s mostly replaced by a new character played by Richard Brake) but I kinda liked it.