The Police Chat

Rocker Rob Zombie has bounced back as a writer and director from his previous mess of a film House of 1000 Corpses with The Devil’s Rejects, an homage to ‘70s gore and chase films. Rejects finds the murderous Firefly clan, Otis (Bill Mosseley), Baby (Sheri Moon), and Mother Firefly (Leslie Easterbrook), being ambushed at their own home by Sheriff John Quincy Wydell (William Forsythe), the brother of the police office they killed in the previous film. Otis and Baby barely manage to get out alive through the bullets and mayhem, but Mother isn’t so lucky as she is taken prisoner by Wydell.

At a nearby motel Otis and Baby resort to terrorizing a group of traveling musicians as they wait for the arrival of their father James Cutter (Sid Haig), aka Captain Spauding, a somewhat local celebrity with the local spookhouse.

Wydell will stop at nothing to bring the Firefly clan to justice as he sees it his godly duty to do so. As Wydell grows closer Cutter takes his family to the only other relative he believes can help him- his brother Charlie Altamont (Ken Foree) who operates the local brothel. Nothing is as it seems as family members turn on one another in an onslaught of blood, deception, and utter chaos befitting a film homage to the ‘70s.

With this film has riding for it that Zombie’s previous film is a signature style that doesn’t seem to be a hodge-podge of styles. Corpses was a hyper-real music video experience that was mind-numbingly compromised by the style leaving nothing left but a hollow straight-to-DVD experience, whereas, with Rejects the style compliments the characters and their chaotic lifestyle and journey through oblivion. The two films are as different as apples to oranges and it makes Rejects all the better.

Rejects’ critical success also marks a turn in Zombie’s career as he is finally becoming respected by his genre peers and fans and with his contributions to Grindhouse (2007) and the his upcoming Halloween remake the sky is the limit.