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. (read the rest of this shit…)
And BETTER OFF DEAD is an even odder one. It has a pretty normal premise (high school kid gets depressed when his girlfriend dumps him for the captain of the ski team, thinks he can get her back by defeating said captain in a ski race), but it’s filtered through the distinct humor of first time writer/director Savage Steve Holland. Though I don’t personally hold it in nearly the same reverence, I think it has a little bit in common with 
