Rejects a Devilish Waste

The Firefly family wakes one morning to the sounds a police ambush led by the seriously gruff Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe). Of the four trapped inside only two, the maniacal Otis (Bill Moseley) and his homicidal little sister Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie, who just might be the worst actress I’ve ever seen), escape, the duo’s mother (Leslie Easterbrook) unceremoniously dumped in the back of a police car and hauled off to county jail while the fourth is shot dead by Wydell’s sharpshooters.

Holing up in a dusty backwater motel, Otis and Baby wait patiently for their father Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) to arrive and help them figure out what to do next. To pass the time, the two physically and psychologically torment a touring band of country musicians, led by Roy Sullivan (Geoffrey Lewis) and his wife Gloria (Priscilla Barnes), doing every little thing they can think of to make their lives a living hell before bloodily putting them out of their collective miseries. Meanwhile, Sheriff Wydell plans his next move upon the surviving family members, intent on being God’s instrument to provide ritualistic payback for the countless murders – including the killing of his own brother George (Tom Towles) – committed by their hands.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Rob Zombie’s initial entry into the horror game “House of a 1000 Corpses,” but it didn’t bother me all that much, either. It was take-it-or-leave-it enterprise in ‘70’s style homicidal horror, and while it didn’t exactly break new ground it wasn’t so terrible I was going to lose sleep convincing people to not waste their time. Besides, the Firefly family was kind of scary, the gregariously gruesome clown Captain Spaulding and the lithely lethal lumberjack Otis enough to make even the stoutest individual twist uncomfortably in their theater seat.

Still, I can’t say the world really needed a follow up, especially one as venal and abhorrent as “The Devil’s Rejects,” but Zombie went ahead and made one anyway and lo and behold if this exercise in existential terror isn’t the single worst film I’ve seen this year. Not scary, not terrifying, just gruesome, this picture is a hodge-podge of Western and Horror cliché strung together inside a road movie the likes of which would have made Hope and Crosby cry. It is an insipid, head-scratchingly disgusting mess ranking right up there with some of the most disgusting things I’ve ever watched.

Listen, maybe I am getting old or turning conservative but it isn’t like I haven’t enjoyed schlock similar to this in the past. I’m all for explicitly nasty horror shows, the vintage works of Wes Craven (“Last House on the Left”), Lucio Fulci (“Zombie”), Dario Argento (“Suspiria”) and Peter Jackson (“Bad Taste”) some of best guilty pleasures around. Sure they weren’t the greatest acted set of features but they were still stylishly directed and – at least in the case of the latter three – so giddily splatterific it’s hard not to get a little gleeful when watching all the hemoglobin fly willy-nilly all over the place.

The difference here is that “The Devil’s Rejects” is just a boringly inept and degrading chore to try and sit through. It’s an utterly nihilistic foray into human degradation of the bleakest and most sensationalistic bent. It doesn’t matter for one second if I think Forsythe, Moseley and Haig turn in reasonably decent performances. I don’t care if an early act kidnapping is done with surprising humor or flare. Overall this turkey just plain sucks, making me feel so dirty and degraded I ended up walking right over to my favorite bartender and downing a couple of shots before heading home and burying myself in a decent movie, John Boorman’s crime classic “Point Blank.” What does that have to do with this one? Nothing, nothing at all, save for the fact I wanted to take another quick moment and mention something actually worth watching.

I’m not even going to waste my time talking about this anymore. I’m sure on some level what I’ve already stated is going to make the most masochistic out there rush to the multiplex to be first in line. Too bad, because all they’re going to get for their haste is a lighter wallet and a headache the size of West Texas. If that’s your cup of tea, more power to you. Personally, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a toilet to scrub which is sure a better use of my time than sitting through “The Devil’s Reject’s” once again.

Film Rating: 0 out of 4