October 29th, 2012: The Devil's Rejects

"It has to be the sickest, the most twisted, the most deranged movie so far this year. And I'm giving it thumbs up because it's very good at what it wants to be." - Richard Roeper, 2005

The Devil's Rejects is Rob Zombie's follow up to House of 1000 Corpses.  Lions Gate Entertainment made back all their money for Corpses the day of its theatrical release.  As a result they talked to Zombie about making another movie. While he was writing the script to his previous film he had other ideas for stories involving the same characters.  One of these ideas involved the story that eventually became The Devil's Rejects. 

Zombie had quite the dilemma of getting an R rating for the film.  After sending it through seven times receiving an NC-17 for each submission, the MPAA finally told him that they had a problem with the overall tone of the story.   
After discussing a certain scene (one of the most uncomfortable), 2 minutes were edited and it finally earned an R.  The 2 minutes were restored in the dvd release.

ROTTEN TOMATOES RATING: 53%

The Devil's Rejects may be considered a sequel but it has never felt that way to me when watching it.  It's been said that Sheri Moon Zombies has mutual feelings. Sure it's the same family from House of 1000 Corpses but this movie is night and day from Zombie's first film.  The scenes are much more disturbing and at times can almost make you feel too uncomfortable.  I'm really not surprised this movie had problems with the MPAA.

Zombie wanted to make the characters more horrific and less cartoonish, he certainly did with The Devil's Rejects.  I love this movie and thought about not watching it this month since I already watched Corpses, but it's completely different.  I also traded in my DVD to eventually upgrade to blu-ray, as I knew that I would end up buy it at some point.  Over the weekend I finally picked it up and couldn't resist.  I apologize to those of you who don't enjoy Rob Zombie films, but if you haven't seen this, you should give it a try.  It's definitely one of the best horror films in the last decade.

-Colby.