The Devils Rejects (and HouseOf 1000 Corpses)
The Devils Rejects

I am right now, listening to Terry Reid. Terry Reid is a much unheard of musical icon for reasons beyond my ken. He may have made a monumental error when replying to the following question,

“Do you want to be in Led Zeppelin?”

thus,

“Nah, but my mate Bob from Birmingham can sing”.

Legend.

His music, nonetheless, is excellent. Rob Zombie chose to use it at pivotal points in his film, ‘The Devils Rejects’, which turned me onto him.

The Devils Rejects (heretofore referred to as TDR), was the follow up to what is indisputably the greatest horror movie of modern times also made by Rob Zombie, ‘House Of 1000 Corpses’. All of this scratchy video, superfast cutting, vocal effects and “eerie” noise (Ring, SAW, etc ) is shit. Show ‘House Of 1000 Corpses’ to yer missus and she’ll be all over you. It’s beautiful. It’s terrifying. It has everything a horror movie should have and keeps on delivering when you really think you’ve had enough.

TDR opens with a shootout, the greatest of all possible starts. The cops have surrounded the aforementioned house and are making idle threats through a megaphone. Otis, Baby and Ma arm themselves to the teeth and start wasting piggies in a chaotic explosion of shattered glass, burst tyres, shotgun blasts and fatal injuries depicted with relish and glee in vivid and elaborate cinematovision!

Otis and Baby escape but Ma is taken captive. Baby notifies Captain Spaulding that the cops are on to them. Captain Spaulding wears clown make-up all the time (as this is his source of income), and steals a car from a lady shopper on the grounds that he has “important clown business” to attend to. He then terrorises her child by telling him if he doesn’t come up with a good reason for not liking clowns by the time he gets back, he will kill his entire family.

Then they meet up in a motel “just like they always planned” (I love the notion of having a contingency plan shoud you ever have to go 'on the lam'). They terrorise, torture then murder some unfortunate passers-by with gourmet-like relish and just as it seems one of them will escape, she is mowed down by a truck cueing up cracked-faced legend Danny Trejo with the following line,

“Have fun scraping all them brains off the road”

Classic.

Danny Trejo, along with wrestling legend Diamond Dallas Page (heretofore referred to as DDP), play a pair of bounty hunters hired by the sheriff to track down TDR clan.

The sheriffs brother (also a sheriff) was killed by TDR in ‘House Of 1000 Corpses’ and Ma Reject shows him pictures of his dying brother whilst he attempts to interrogate her with a knife. Understandably, he’s out for revenge.

The big showdown between this trio of violent miscreants and TDR takes place at a brothel where they are hiding out with a friend of Captain Spauldings. As they drink, smoke, fuck, toot and bubble bath, Terry Reid’s ‘To Be Treated Right’ spins up.

It’s a slow haunting ballad strummed in CSNY, Neil Young-era Buffalo Springfield kind of way and it has a killer middle eight which soars as Otis Reject and DDP crash violently in slo-mo through a window. It is a thing of beauty.

End result of this tussle see’s TDR taken captive, tied to chairs in the ‘House Of 1000 Corpses’, tortured and impaled with a nail gun, doused in petrol and the house set alight.

Enter, Tiny.

Tiny is Otis and Baby’s brother. He’s about 8 feet tall and bursting with tard strength. As a child, he had an accident and most of his skin was burned so his ears and nose and such are burned off, he’s bent over and fucked up looking etc. Tiny likes it when Otis dresses up his young lady victims in babydoll outfits for him to play with before Otis slaughters them and affixes their body parts to his mutant experiment displays.

Tiny rescues Otis, Baby and Captain Spaulding by pulling the nails from their hands in a babbling brook burst of blood and they hit the road again.

Cue Lynyrd Skynyrd, ‘Freebird’ coupled with a gorgeous panoramic vista of the American midwest as their Cadillac speeds them along a cliff-side road to freedom whilst they bleed, contort and generally suffer in profound agony.

How does this movie end, you wonder. Same way it started, baby! With a shootout.

The cops have set up a road block and are armed to the teeth. Otis stops the car about 200 metres or so from the roadblock, gets out his guns, hands them to baby and Captain Spaulding and as ‘Freebird’ hits its squealing guitar crescendo, he guns the accelerator and they all start shooting. It is ‘The American Dream’ embodied.

The film slows down as they take hit after hit then stops a la Butch and Sundance and another Terry Reid corker accompanies the credits to the backdrop of soaring Midwestern plains – it’s gorgeous. You truly feel you have been on a bumpy accelerating ride.

Whilst TDR are evil beyond redemption, you somehow feel sympathy for their plight as they, albeit in a criminally extreme manner, embody the American notion of living free.

Rob Zombie is an under-used cinematic genius for my money. There isn’t a poor shot, line of script, frame of film or musical accompaniment out of place. His portrayal of his love of America as icon is reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah or John Huston.


rafter!
baz
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Fri 18 Jul 2008, 16:08, 2 replies)

Terry Reid
is fucking ACE.

His performance in the Glastonbury Fayre film is superb.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Fri 18 Jul 2008, 16:51, closed)

TDR and H1000C
FTW.

did you know "Tiny" died shortly after completing TDR?

And Zombie's Halloween is shit hot as well
(bamboozled Can hear you getting fatter, Fri 18 Jul 2008, 19:28, closed)