The Devil's Rejects (2005)
Directed by Rob Zombie
The murderous, backwoods Firefly family take to the road to escape the vengeful Sheriff Wydell, who is not afraid of being as ruthless as his target.
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What critics compared The Devil's Rejects to
And since every over-the-top movie needs a way-over-the-top wind-up, why not rip off the ending of Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" — one of the most reverently esteemed movie sequences of the 1960s — and play it for stupid, sloppy laughs?
If the glossy House of 1000 Corpses ’ major point of reference was Tobe Hooper’s Funhouse, the much grungier The Devil’s Rejects thinks a little further back: not just to The Hills Have Eyes , but to bloody westerns like The Wild Bunch and lovers-on-the-lam movies like Bonnie and Clyde.
This is partly the result of Zombie's influences, which include the morally ambiguous thrillers and horror movies from before the age of CGI: the revenge films of Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood, "Straw Dogs" and most especially "Bonnie and Clyde."
"House of 1000 Corpses" may have been a low-rent "Texas Chainsaw" ripoff, but this sequel has echoes of "The Wild Bunch" and "Bonnie and Clyde" with a soupcon of the Manson gang and Spahn Ranch.
You couldn't call The Devil's Rejects an original work: it's a busy pastiche of influences ranging from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Bonnie and Clyde to the 1970s Southern Rock songbook.
Here, the shout-outs are less particular; an era is recalled rather than individual movies (though Last House on the Left and Bonnie and Clyde strongly influence the plot).
Writer/director/editor (with David Kashevaroff) Ti West’s (“The House of the Devil”) 1979 set homage is simply the best of its kind since Rob Zombie’s “The Devil’s Rejects.”
It was Roth’s 2005 Hostel that inspired critic David Edelstein to coin the term when writing about how the Americans-being-dismembered-abroad feature and contemporaries like Wolf Creek and The Devil’s Rejects upped their gore factor to unprecedented levels for multiplex movies.
One could easily envision Rob Zombie delivering the former, and in a sense, he already has: It’s called The Devil’s Rejects (2005).
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At first, it's up to Rosario Dawson to make some calls and bring in Lew Temple, a character actor you might remember from Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects.
A surprising standout is Lew Temple ("The Devil's Rejects") as Ned, an employee Connie thinks of as a shirker who comes through when the chips are down.
However is wife (Mary Woronov, "Eating Raoul," "The Devil's Rejects") is a bit paranoid about leaving her mother alone and he finds that most girls Sam's age shy away from elder care ads.
As the Ulmans, Tom Noonan (2008's " Synecdoche, New York ") and Mary Woronov (2005's " The Devil's Rejects ") play a middle-aged couple who might just be quirky, or might be seriously unhinged.
In its change in style and tone, "The Purge: Anarchy" is to " The Purge " what 2005's " The Devil's Rejects " was to 2003's " House of 1000 Corpses ."
Still, The True Knot remain a chilly and effective creation, cut from the same cloth as the ruthless family killers of “The Devil’s Rejects” but with more daunting powers.
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One hero massacred an entire congregation (to "Free Bird," an idea stolen from "The Devil's Rejects").
Say this for rocker-turned-filmmaker Rob Zombie: He has obviously made the film he wanted to make, and if The Devil's Rejects is too stomach-churning for most audiences, it is still an effective, and sometimes ghoulishly funny, homage to grindhouse flicks like Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes.
If the glossy House of 1000 Corpses ’ major point of reference was Tobe Hooper’s Funhouse, the much grungier The Devil’s Rejects thinks a little further back: not just to The Hills Have Eyes , but to bloody westerns like The Wild Bunch and lovers-on-the-lam movies like Bonnie and Clyde.
Rejects has a frequently bleached-out, dusty look to it, giving it more the quality of a perverted Western crossed with '70s exploitation horror movies like Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes -- and that's deliberate.