The Devil's Rejects

It may be damning with faint praise to say that this horror sequel-of-sorts is a substantial improvement on director Rob Zombie’s derivative fan-boy debut, ‘House of 1000 Corpses’. Yet it is undeniably tougher, more ambitious and less tongue-in-cheek, stealing its nightmarish tone and anti-heroic stance from movies such as ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’, ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and ‘The Wild Bunch’. But Zombie’s glorification of the feral Firefly family’s murderous cross-country rampage is undermined by a myopic, adolescent amorality: he sees them as symbols of a rebellious, individualist American spirit.  It doesn’t help that the brutalising redneck trio – clown-faced pater familias Captain Spaulding, son Otis and daughter Baby – are played by bad actors: Sid Haig, Bill Moseley and Zombie’s wife, Sheri Moon. All three are eclipsed by veteran genre favourites Geoffrey Lewis, Ken Foree and William Forsythe, the last of whom plays a sheriff unhinged by his lust for Old Testament-style vengeance. This is the kind of unedifying spectacle likely to appeal to brain-dead sickos who think Charles Manson was a misunderstood messiah, rather than a degenerate, manipulative psychopath.