The Devil's Rejects

Rob Zombie singlehandedly brings back the exploitation movie

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I went into this film with zero expectation. I have yet to see House of 1000 Corpses but I hear it's pretty bad. The reviews upon release were extremely mediocre and I'm not a fan of Zombie's musical exploits. I was not looking forward to this movie.

To say I was (un)pleasantly surprised is an understatement. The Devil's Rejects is every 14 year old boy and movie geek's dream film. It's scary, excessively violent, funny, has some great performances and the soundtrack is first class. I have to admit I was getting to the point where I really thought that movies couldn't surprise me anymore - how wrong was I?!

The Firefly family are a notorious bunch of deranged killers, harking back to the family we witnessed in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They are on the run and Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe in a deliciously over the top performance) is committed to hunting them down and torturing them in as sadistic a manner as possible.

It should be clear by now that if you are easily offended you should stay away from this movie. Rob Zombie revels in the violence - witness a fleeing victim wearing the face (literally) of her dead boyfriend, run out in to the street and splat onto the windscreen of an oncoming lorry.

Sometimes it manages to mix in some gallows humour with the gore, other times it's just plain disturbing. Zombie crosses the line into true bad taste only once in this reviewer's humble opinion - the torture of the mother of a kidnapped family leans too far into out and out misogyny.

That small stumble aside, the film is careful to remain true to its 1970's exploitatiom film heritage. It looks great, most of the action is shot out in the heat of the motorways and deserts of hidden America on grainy film footage - keeping true to the sun bleached colours of Texas Chainsaw.

The music too plays an important part, never has Freebird by Lynnrd Skynnrd been used so successfully in a movie. The climax is a knockout and look out for cameos from Ken Foree of Dawn of the Dead and Michael Berryman from The Hills Have Eyes.

Destined to become a cult classic - for a night of guns, guts, creepiness, laughs and all out rock 'n roll movie making The Devil's Rejects is hard to beat.