The Devil's Rejects - Page 2

Some knuckle-dragger spammed the boards with a bunch of White Power bullshit. The threads got deleted, but the titles stay on the main page of the boards. So I bumped existing threads in each forum to get rid of them.

Oh, okay. I'm glad I missed that, then.

Every time I see Devil's Rejects my opinion changes. Zombie writes such terrible dialogue. Except when he doesn't. There's a lot of scenes that are legitimately hilarious (critic scene, PJ Soles scene) but for every one that works, there's one that feels it's trying way too hard. What makes this movie work for me in the end is the incredible amount of disgusting detail (you can smell this movie, particularly Capt. Spaulding) and the really vivid characters that are truly fun to hang out with. More specifically, the fact that they're still fun to hang out with after the really depraved hotel room scene. I'm not a fan of Rob Zombie's shooting style, but it works better here than it did in Halloween. 

His overuse of the word "fuck" is beyond silly, and something a 13 year old boy would think is cool (Hey let's use this word as much as we can!), but I enjoy the movie for being basically an exploitation movie released in this day and age, and in a wide release too.

 

I know Zombie really stresses the whole "Let's make the villains seem kind of sympathetic, and turn the hero into the villain" towards the end, but I was never sold on that, and if anything, I was glad that Wydell went off the line and showed them the kind of pain they had been causing other people.

I don't think it's that you feel bad for the characters, or even feel negatively towards Wydell. For me, it's that I was disappointed to see the party end. I do like how they mirror the rabbit scene at the end of House of 1000 Corpses with Wydell letting Baby go and chasing her (even calling her a rabbit). Felt like one of the few acknowledgements that the original even existed.

 

Also, I had forgotten how horrible some of the CGI is. Some of the blood looks like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Yeah, I remember Zombie saying that the movie wasn't really a sequel when he was making it, then there's the rabbit scene you mentioned, along with the fact that the main character is the brother of one of the cops from the original. There's bits in there to let us know it's a sequel, but he changes just enough of it (the albino no longer an albino, but now looking more like Charles Manson, and the ranch looking completely different, with cattle!) that if you hadn't seen the original, you wouldn't realize it's a sequel.

 

That party scene was pretty cool, and I liked how it was juxatposed by Wydell's slow descent into insanity. There's a deleted scene between E.G. Daily and Bill Mosley that I wish was still in the movie, where they discuss a menu and what he wants her to do. Pretty funny too.

 

The worst CGI is that gunshot to Lew Temple's neck. Man that looked shitty.

DEVIL'S REJECTS is helped by how awful HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES is. I like the film, but as the years go by I wonder just how muc of that is down to the quantum leap in quality between Zombie's first movie and his second. William Forsythe is kind of amazing in it, though.

^

 

I agree with everything you just said. HOUSE is such a bad mish-mash of everything an adolescent mind might want in a horror film (kind of like THE HAUNTED WORLD OF EL SUPERBEASTO), and REJECTS is an actual attempt at making a film.

The film is what it is. But along the lines of what Patrick said, I have absolutely no idea how I feel about it. Whatever Zombie was going for, he seems to have nailed it, if only by accident (that's a for real "if"). I wrote a Sam Strange about it, but I didn't get to touch on how funny the film is. I don't understand how the same film can successfully contain that hotel stuff, which is about a bad a thing as I care to see, and the Tutti-Fruitti/chicken-fucker scenes, which are both fucking hilarious.

 

It's all about Captain Spaulding. I couldn't watch the movie without him (I know this for a fact because I couldn't sit through the Halloween films). I know he's supposed to be evil, but Zombie always chooses to make him soft like in the carjacking scene where he just punches a lady you know the others would gut. Once he gets with the gang it's all laughs, so Wydell has to take over the evil/crazy. But you're kind of rooting for Wydell. But then you're not because he crosses the line. But then you remember the hotel scene, and it all gets very confusing morally. Not gray, confusing.

 

Like it's confusing what Rob Zombie wants us to feel about all this violence. The way he films it, I can't figure out if he's trying to hurt us didactically or if he really just loves gritty, mean-spirited gore. I also can't figure Zombie's stance on the "Free Bird" send off. With other filmmakers, I think I'd know if it was supposed to be heroic or ironic, but with Zombie I really have no idea.

The Haunted World Of El Superbeasto really sang to me because it's so juvenile. I loved it, and the songs make it hilarious. Velvet Von Black, the Nazi Zombie song, and the Catfight song are legitimately great. It really surprised me with how much I ended up liking it when I blind bought the Blu-ray for cheap last year. Plus all the visual gags are awesome. The Oktoberfest Zombie that's shown real quick during the celebration of The Nazi Zombies gets me every time. Along with the Jack Nicholson and The Fly characters in the bar.

 

I agree with Sam about Captain Spaulding in The Devil's Rejects. It's his show. Shit, his first scene is both hilarious and disturbing.