Pointless, gruesome, at times visceral, shockingly humor filled sadism, unusual editing choices, amazing country and rock music and startling composition, a true throwback and all lead by three utterly despicable characters gives you Rob Zombie’s sophomore effort ‘The Devil’s Rejects’.  It also makes for a fantastic film full of blood, guts, tits and action. 

That out of the way; One of the main issues I had with House of 1000 Corpses was my utter lack of interest in the “victims”/supporting characters.  That isn’t an issue AT all this time around. 

I’ll start off with mentioning master comedian Brian Posehn, who is hilarious as he can be and that my friends is pretty damn hilarious, even with this material.  He’s not the only awesome supporting character though.

Brian plays the roadie to Banjo & Sullivan, a country-folk group on their final tour traveling with their lovely wives.  Geoffrey Lewis and Lew Temple play Roy Sullivan and Adam Banjo.  Both bring some really great fun to the roles, while being scared out of their willies, they’re able to bring a presence that you somehow give a damn about them.  This made me question if it was a combination of the actors and Zombie becoming a better director or not.  It’s really hard to say.  He makes so many mistakes as a director in certain choices, that I can’t pinpoint if he had a hand in the strength of the performances or not. 

Portraying Banjo and Sullivan’s wives are Priscilla Barnes and Kate Norby.  Both women are quite sexy.  Especially that Priscilla Barnes… age has not affected her at all.  For a woman about to turn 50, she looks quite delicious actually.  The scenes between her, Norby and Sherri Moon are chilling, but mesmerizing and actually amazing film-making, if you like the kind of stuff that you don’t want to watch, but can’t resist it. 

Norby also has the most messed up death sequence I believe I’ve seen in a long time.  It’s just so demented and cruel.  Which of course also means it’s awesome.

The other spectrum of supporting characters came in the whores at new character Charlie Altamont’s. 

E.G. Daily is Candy, the main one and this former teen queen and current cartoon voiceover master got to deliver some of the most intentionally funny dialogues in the whole film and looked great while doing it.   She’s joined by Deborah Van Valkenburgh and two others (I believe one being porn star Ginger Allen) and they also are fantastic in their small, but ‘important’ roles.

There are various other small and supporting characters that are also strong enough to push along the film. 

Two of them are VERY important though and they are Danny Trejo and Page Falkenberg (aka Diamond Dallas Page) as Billy Ray Snapper and Rondo, The Unholy Two, a pair of bounty hunters.  They are brutal and scary and excellent.  Great characters played by two very cool gentlemen.  I’d be very interested in seeing Rob Zombie have his next film or a film in the near future be about these two, something showing where they go and if they get even bigger bounties.  It’s could be awesome 70’s style action film that takes place in Seattle.

Of course, supporting roles are still just that, you still need for your stars to be strong enough to carry the film.  Well, there’s NO lacking in strength when you’re talking about William Forsythe, Sid Haig, Bill Moseley and Ken Foree. 

Forsythe is extremely powerful especially.  It’s quite the chilling performance he delivers.  Ken Foree blew me away.  Other reviews have found him miscast, but I found perfect in his role, especially after playing a good, nice guy for Nickelodeon for about 5 years.  Of course this takes nothing away from the true stars of Haig and Moseley.  This is completely their vehicle, along with Sherri Moon and they carry it. 

Of course, all of this praise will mean nothing to plenty of people.  It’s still an overtly violent film, full of naked bodies, perversion, evil, torture and it’s hard to like the characters you can actually sympathize with when you it’s inevitable they die, that’s how these movies go.  

If those type of movies don’t bother you, then Rob Zombie has achieved a little gem here full of lots of backstory, songs from Terry Reid, an underscore by Tyler Bates and awesome acting.

Like any gem it has its flaws, from camera and editing choices to script and story telling choices.  But also like a gem, it still shines, as long as you let it and look at in the right light.