Director: Rob Zombie
Writer: Rob Zombie
Director of Photography: Phil Parmet
Editor: Glenn Garland
Music: Tyler Bates
Notable Cast: Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, William Forsythe, Ken Foree, Matthew McGrory, Leslie Easterbrook, Geoffrey Lewis, Priscilla Barnes, Lew Temple, Danny Trejo, Diamond Dallas Page, Tom Towles, Michael Berryman, Ginger Lynn, Brian Posehn
I’m not a horror guy. Never been a horror guy. And will never be a horror guy. Perhaps owing to how timid I was as a child, and how terrified I’d get, at even the most seemingly random thing. By way of for instance, I remember vividly seeing just the commercial for C.H.U.D. as a child (not the actual movie), a woman walking her dog, a sewer plate suddenly lifts up from below and something grabs the woman’s ankles, sucking her under the street into God knows what hellscape. That 30 second spot absolutely terrified me to my core. I could not sleep that night. Kept thinking I heard the sewer covers being lifted up on the street outside my bedroom window. To this day, I swear I actually heard that sound of metal against asphalt at three in the morning. Clearly, this incident is seared into my brain.
Along with other images, like Nancy walking up the gooey stairs in A Nightmare on Elm Street, horror was something this imaginative boy assiduously avoided. Having a robust inner life as a child can be wondrous, but also agonizing. All this is to say I have no great affinity for horror. I do not give horror movies a pass for being shitty like a lot of horror fans seem to do. Nor do I have any great love for this new, so called “elevated” horror we’ve been subjected to lately (Ari Aster? Give me a fucking break!). Much like the crowd in that shitty Ridley Scott movie, I just want to be entertained.
Which brings us to the one and only, Rob Zombie. What can you say about the guy? In my mind, he’s only made one great film, and that film is the one we’re here to write about today. Odd, perhaps, as this is the second in what was at the time a seemingly final entry in the series begun in the supernatural tinged horror flick, The House of 1,000 Corpses. That movie, while it had some interesting shit, notably Tiny sloppily eating cereal (one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen in my life and to Rob Zombie’s eternal credit if he came up with that shit), it never really comes together.
Thing is, Corpses has a ton of huge fans, including a filmmaker buddy of mine, who very much dislikes Rejects, mainly for jettisoning all the supernatural horror elements from Corpses, which he thought was the most interesting aspect. While I agree it’s a bit of a whiplash having a sequel to a film that takes place in what amounts to a completely different horror genre subset, Rejects is filmmaking on a whole other level, so much so it makes much of Corpses look amateurish in comparison. Where Corpses feels stagey, Rejects feels raw. Where Corpses feels goofy, Rejects feels brutal. I don’t know, I think it just comes down to taste, as with everything. I personally do not miss Dr. Satan, or the theatricality of Corpses.
But more than that, Rejects is the rare sequel you can enjoy without ever having seen the first one. Everything you need to know about the demonic Firefly Family, all named after Marx Brothers characters (Zombie clearly loves old shit, which I’ve already been clear in regard to my own stance. I thoroughly enjoy The Devil’s Rejects having known nothing, and still knowing nothing, about the Marx Brothers, save one terrible movie I watched in a high school film class, and Sean Connery’s amazing line reading in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, “I should’ve mailed it to the Mahhh-ks Brothers!”), is laid out right up front. Compact storytelling, maybe not at its best, but pretty damn close, which admittedly only counts in horseshoes and tiddlywinks, but still…
The Devil’s Rejects is a straight, Southern-fried, hippie redneck gothic horror/crime thriller slasher movie. And it’s evident from the jump.
1ST 5 MINUTES
CLICK HERE for First Ten Minutes of The Devil's Rejects
Immediately greeted by a twangy, slow guitar/banjo tune, quickly followed by what look like either trophy photos or evidence of murder victims, all young females, and a title card with narration setting up the opening raid on the farmhouse, as well as the year… 1978. We see more pictures of missing girls and Polaroids of dead women, their faces slashed and bloody. This sequence ends with a title card identifying the clan by their nickname, “The Devil’s Rejects,” followed by a nice zoom into one of the Polaroids, which fades into the actual murder scene, as the victim is dragged slowly out of frame.
It's a pretty brutal first couple of minutes here. If you’re looking for fucked up shit, you know you’ve come to the right place and it hasn’t even been three minutes yet! Soon it’s revealed the dragging is being done by a giant with a burlap sack over his head. Fans of Corpses know this character as Tiny (Matthew McGrory, R.I.P.), the cereal eating giant from the first movie. But even if this is your first time watching this, it’s basically irrelevant whether you know this is Tiny or not, even with his eventual appearance late in the film as a deus ex… Tiny-a? The mere sight of this clearly deformed 7 foot tall human with a burlap sack over his fucking head with sloppy eyeholes cut out dragging this poor woman through the woods, is enough to let you know what’s up. Are you into it? Then you’re gonna fucking love the movie. No question about it. If you’re not into it, even a little, it is only going to get worse!
Tiny suddenly hears commotion, sees a road up ahead through a clearing in the woods, multiple 70’s style cop cars and 4x4s, kicking up massive amounts of dust and dirt as they race… somewhere. Tiny stops, considers this. Takes his burlap sack mask off, revealing his scarred, Freddy Krueger like visage. Terrifying. Imagine being that young woman, God knows what this fucking monster did to her. From the first film we know he likes to “play” with them, but only once they’re dead and act like human sized dolls. But even without knowing that, this is some rough shit.
All of this takes place in the daytime, I should tell you. And not for nothing, daytime horror is the best fucking horror. There’s just something about so much of this movie taking place in the blazing daylight. Maybe a metaphor for the Hell they not only put their victims through, but the Hell they come from and are headed to when they die. I don’t know. I feel those kinds of themes hit you on a sub or even pre-conscious level. To spell them out is to not do them justice, cause they just operate on neurons and hormone influenced pathways, like most great art, it hits on an emotional level in addition to the intellectual one.
The darkness in the daylight. It’s one of this film’s best attributes.
We then get our first look at the Firefly Farmhouse via a dope crane shot that rises above a skull and glass bottle lined square arch thing. Mind you, we’re barely 3 minutes into this flick at this point. How are you not loving this?
The cops slowly approach the house. Cut to inside. We get our first look at Otis (Bill Moseley), sleeping next to the corpse of a cheerleader, of course. It’s cheeky and horrifying and upsetting. Complicated feelings come out while watching this.
William Forsythe finally shows his amazing face as Sheriff Wydell. Such a great actor. Really gives it his all in every scene. His conviction and devotion to the part really comes through. Plays a great character that is a flip side of the Fireflys, and forces us to answer the question, how permissible are evil acts when done in service of the good? Is such a thing even possible? Who the fuck knows. But Forsythe plays a hell of a part in the picture. Hell of a part.
Wydell references his brother, George, who was killed by the Firefly clan in The House of 1,000 Corpses, and was played by the late, truly great actor, Tom Towles, who you may know from another seminal horror classic, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Towles actually does have a pretty great cameo late in the film in a dream sequence, that serves as the final motivation for Sheriff Wydell to finally enact fatal revenge.
Wydell has a great line referencing “the good Lord,” a “cleansing of the wicked,” and “100% Alabama ass kicking.” In that inimitable, perfect Southern drawl, this is what I’m here for!
The 1ST Five Minutes of The Devil’s Rejects is amazing. Compact storytelling, style to spare, an inimitable tone, and most importantly, great motherfuckin’ cinematic instincts.
All these elements let you know you’re in for a wild ride.
The rest of the flick
Wydell pulls out a huge microphone, big round silver speaker, and announces himself. The music kicks into high gear as the Firefly family all wake up in a bolt, firing into action. It’s shot and edited in an incredibly propulsive and kinetic way that definitely gets the blood flowing. This movie is not fucking around. I love how in the middle of the panic, they reference Tiny, and how he never came home from the previous night. Writing like that really sells the entire world we’re in. And once they break out the home made armor, all rough and painted garishly, I’m like “fuck, this is amazing.” It feels so genuine, not an ounce of artifice.
And then the fucking freeze frames with the music cues just as they’re about to start firing?! Oh my god, I’m in movie heaven with that shit. When the first one hits with Leslie Easterbrook (we’ll get to her later) about to get up, with that fucking mask on, I’m not lying, I feel an intense emotional reaction that hits my tear ducts. I don’t cry, or get watery eyes, but I feel the tiny bit of pressure hit that nerve. It’s marvelous when it happens in the cinema. And it’s consistent. It happens almost 100% of the time I watch the scene, even if watching it in a clip and not even in the broader context. It’s that fucking amazing.
The ensuing shootout is good. I’m not a big action guy, but it’s adequately entertaining. The homemade armor is such a great touch, it definitely elevates the scene. And there’s a fantastic shot once the shootout is at a stalemate, and the cops have fired tear gas into the house, we cut to black, then the cops enter the house in slight slow motion, wearing gas masks, the light streaming through the haze in solid shafts. It’s really dope.
As is the following shootout/ambush, which ends with Rufus Firefly (Tyler Mane) taking on the cops by himself to let everyone else try to escape. There’s something oddly satisfying about the way the shots sound when they hit the metal plates. Good sound work in this movie overall, I must say.
Rufus dies. Mother goes back to try and comfort him, only to get herself caught in the process. She goes to kill herself by blowing her brains out, but the gun clicks, no bullets, Wydell gloats, and we get to one of my favorite parts in the whole movie… the opening credits!
Set to The Allman Brothers’ Midnight Rider, these credits are perfection. Between the freeze frames for each title card (for a while after this flick I wished I could freeze frame myself in real life whenever I played Midnight Rider in my headphones), the music, and the fact they tell a goddamn escape story as well, all during the credits, it’s fucking glorious. And then the credits themselves.
When you see the cast Zombie has assembled for this film, it’s a veritable who’s who of some of the best actors Hollywood ever allowed entry. I know they’re technically supposed to be called character actors, but I’m not sure if they find that insulting. To me they’re just great actors. And there’s a shit ton of them in this movie. It’s like, can you just shoot this shit into my veins? It’s almost designed to make me love it at this point. I remember sitting in the theater at the time, my first viewing, just being so enamored and immersed into the rhythm and style of the movie. I was SO into it. And the rest of the movie really doesn’t disappoint. Yes, there’s spotty writing in places, and some cringey dialogue, but it never derails the thing, and only adds to the subversive, unique charm on display.
I know there’s lots of people who bag on Sheri Moon Zombie, and they’re… not wrong. Having said that, she’s adequate here and never deters too much from the overall effectiveness of the movie. But it is a shame when one considers how much better the film may have been with a stronger actor in her role. Maybe in some alternate universe somewhere, but not here.
Time to talk about Sid Haig. He plays Captain Spaulding, or Cutter, as he is sometimes referred to, the demonic clown, and he is the absolute best thing about this movie, hands down. No small feat when you consider Ken motherfucking Foree is in this movie! But Haig relishes this role, plays it to the hilt, and just nails every scene he is in, whether it’s making you laugh out loud or recoil in disgust, he’s the black as night, beating heart of this film, and once he shows up, shit just goes to a whole other level, and not just because he is introduced while in the throws of carnal lust with well-known porn star Ginger Lynn. No idea what kind of guy Haig was in his personal life, but he plays the absolute perfect piece of white trash clown shit in this picture.
Leslie Easterbrook took over the role of Mother Firefly from Karen Black, who played her in the first film. I think she’s great in this, and a major improvement over Black. Easterbrook may be familiar to fans of the Police Academy films, especially if you were a libidinal teenager back then. Her rather well-endowed Lt. Callahan was always a welcome treat in those flicks, and she does not disappoint here. She has three major scenes, all with Forsythe’s Sheriff Wydell, and she is just lights out fantastic in all three. Creepy, sexy, malevolent, seductive – she strikes a perfect balance. The way she goads Wydell with pictures of his murdered brother is a real highlight. As is her death scene late in the film which kicks off the whole last act.
Banjo & Sullivan is an interesting sequence in the film. Has basically nothing to do with the rest of the movie, and is an extended side mission of sorts for the eponymous title characters to showcase their patented blend of terror and murder. While I love the casting of the fictional music group and their roadies (Geoffrey Lewis and Priscilla Barnes are true highlights here in very difficult roles), this sequence drags a bit, to be perfectly honest. It has some intense moments, like when Otis and Baby first bust into the room and kill the roadie Jimmy, brilliantly played by comedian Brian Posehn. I thought it was quite effective and memorable when Lew Temple vomits from Jimmy’s brains being splattered all over them. Feels realistic, which helps sell the sequence. Reminded me of the scene in Lawrence Kasdan’s Grand Canyon where Steve Martin’s character gets shot in the leg, and after he vomits from the trauma, the camera booms up and reveals he has also pissed his pants. That always stuck with me cause violence is rarely portrayed so realistically in cinema. Adam Banjo’s reaction to the death of the roadie is extremely realistic. None of us knows how we’d react in such a situation.
Same goes for later on when Otis returns to the hotel room wearing Adam Banjo’s cut off face to taunt the poor guy’s wife, Kate. And as if that wasn’t enough, they end up putting his face over her head! When the maid finds her and Kate runs out into the road, wearing the skin of her dead husband’s face, only to be run over by a semi truck, it is one of the signature moments in the film. Brutal, brutal shit.
And my Favorite Shot takes place during the sequence where Otis kills Roy Sullivan (Geoffrey Lewis) and Adam Banjo (Lew Temple). It’s genuinely upsetting, mainly due to Geoffrey Lewis’s acting here, which is so vulnerable and sweet, it hurts to see him die, and in such a gruesome fashion. But the shot of Otis’s face, from Lewis’ perspective, with Otis’s hair being blown by the wind and sticking to his bloody face… goddamn. Moseley’s acting may be up and down, mainly down, but he's got a fantastic look, no denying that. It’s wonderfully composed with the contrast of the blue sky. Unsettling.
There are also some rather intense scenes of sexual humiliation involving Priscilla Barnes. It’s dark. There’s a fantastic feature length behind the scenes documentary, 30 Days in Hell, that was a special feature on the old DVD of this movie (but not the Blu-ray for some stupid reason, probably lawyer related), where Bill Moseley, who plays Otis, had a real hard time with this material. I can understand. Must be hard to play this kind of shit, take after take after agonizing take.
And then you have that intercut with scenes such as Charlie, played by the great Ken Foree, and Clevon, played by the equally great Michael Berryman (who haunted my dreams after seeing Weird Science as an 11 year old) going to buy some chickens and being asked by the clearly inbred, redneck chicken dealer, Darrell, played by Michael “Red Bone” Alcott, if they planned on eating the chickens or fucking them. Charlie and Clevon’s reaction is fucking hilarious. Really great dialogue back and forth between the three actors in the scene. Ken Foree fucking kills it in this whole movie, but he’s something else here, really great comic timing.
Or a scene like Captain Spaulding stealing some lady’s car from a supermarket parking lot, all while in his clown face makeup. Leads to my Favorite Line in the movie, after Captain Spaulding has knocked the lady out and gets into the car with her young son, crying in the passenger seat, “What’s the matter, kid, don’t ya like clowns? Don’t we make ya laugh? Aren’t we fuckin’ funny?” Sid Haig’s delivery here is phenomenal, despite working with some subpar kid actor. Like, really, Rob Zombie, you couldn’t have found a better kid, that wasn’t obviously smiling while trying to cry and look upset? Fuck! Anyway, it’s a great line.
Danny Trejo and Diamond Dallas Page as Rondo and Billy Ray Snapper, respectively. Holy shit, once these two show up as some hard hitting hitmen/bounty hunters, you’re wondering how much fucking better can the flick get?! Trejo is great, as usual, with his tats and gnarled face, but Dallas Page, wow! Not a modern wrestling fan (WWF was my era, no idea what WWE is), so I had no experience with him before this movie. Between the prosthetics and his natural features, what a look! And his performance, while brief, is insanely good. Genuinely scary. The combo of him and Rondo in the employ of Sheriff Wydell is a great mid-film multiplier and risk magnifier.
The two of them play a key role in my Favorite Scene, which happens at the beginning of the third act, once the Rejects get to Charlie’s Frontier Fun Town, a sort of macabre Old West setup, complete with whorehouse, run by the aforementioned Ken Foree’s Charlie Altamont.
In one of the few night sequences in the film, the Rejects are relaxing and getting high in their respective quarters. Sid Haig is smoking a joint, Baby is taking a bath, Otis is having sex with one of Charlie’s girls. To Be Treated, by the great Terry Reid, takes over the soundtrack, as Rondo and Billy Ray (Dallas Page laughing at Otis is a real highlight here) raid the place.
Such a fantastic use of that kind of music for this entire scene. The violence is slightly slowed down, which goes perfectly with Reid’s vocal intonations in a really quite wondrous juxtaposition. Very effective.
In the end, it always comes down to taste, and Zombie’s choices here show a really high taste level. This sequence could easily be derailed by the wrong music, but it’s perfect. And the way Zombie shoots it, almost elegiac, is as perfect. Just great stuff.
The torture sequence involving Wydell and our three sickos is pretty effective and twisted and dark and gory. I like Tiny saving the day, as well as the fact he gets left behind by the three when they abscond from the fiery farmhouse in the convertible. But sadly, that’s it for Sheriff Wydell, who has his neck snapped by Tiny.
The end shootout scored to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird is a true standout sequence in the film. Instant classic. Well shot, all told through image and sound, no dialogue (particularly like the cuts to the shots of the gang in better times, filmed with a washed out blue aesthetic).
Glenn Garland’s editing here is phenomenal, as it is throughout the film. The images play so well with the music, and there’s a real satisfaction in seeing the Rejects get their final comeuppance by way of being torn to pieces by a hail of bullets just as the guitar solo hits. Genius.
And the way the music drops out at the end, with the fade to black off the freeze frames, really well done.
And then the end credits montage of aerial shots set to Terry Reid’s Seed of Memory sends the viewers on their way in proper fashion. I have to say, Zombie’s use of Terry Reid is pure genius, so evocative, and now whenever I hear those two songs all I can think of is The Devil’s Rejects. A recurring theme in this Substack will be the importance of music in film, as we’ve seen with all the entries so far, to one extent or another. Rob Zombie “started out” as a musician, and it’s nice he doesn’t feel the need to shoehorn his own tunes into the film, and instead uses his extensive musical knowledge to find the perfect score for his creation. Great job all around.
There’s no need to check out 3 From Hell. No, really, for the love of God, it’s fucking terrible. Zombie somehow hit with Rejects, his genius poured out, and nothing was left, unfortunately. He has never reached the heights of Rejects ever again, not in Halloween, The Munsters, or the sequel to this film, which was completely unnecessary after the perfect ending we already got in Rejects. Maybe now I know how Corpses fans felt when Rejects came out… A real shame, but in a vacuum, The Devil’s Rejects is still a great standalone film. There’s nothing else like it.
The One Sheet
This shot of the three leads is okay, gives off a slight 70’s aesthetic, but doesn’t really tell you all that much about the film. Not bad, as far as one sheets go, but hardly inspiring. I certainly wouldn’t buy it.
This second one, while seemingly not a direct reference to any scene in the actual film, is far more effective at communicating not only the tone of the film, but the style and mood as well. If you see the movie based on this poster, you will not be disappointed. Good tagline also, “This Summer Go To Hell”
This poster is not terrible, graphically speaking, but just screams generic horror crap. Not sure if someone who sees this flick based off this poster would be into it, or think the movie was too slow and languid for what the poster promises?
I like this one, goes for the thriller vibe, not so much the horror vibe. Doesn’t really tell you much about the film, but a nice image.
A play on the first poster, but I think this one works better. Speaks to the sun baked environs, and the Asian lettering makes it look tough as fuck. May be my favorite of the lot.
And that does it for Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects. What do you think, do the 1ST 5 Minutes let you know what’s what? Does it promise a white trash serial killer horror thriller and then proceed to deliver?
Grind that gristle.
See you in two…