This Summer, Go to Hell!

I'm going to see The Devils Rejects tonight.


I know, I know, it's mindless violence, but my parents gave me the morals to separate fact from fiction. So, I got to enjoy the wildness, and abstractedness of horror films, and the idea of Halloween. I didn't purchase Fangore magazines or anything like that. But, I was always happy when fall rolled around, because there were imagined ghosts and ghouls behind every tree.

A couple things you should know about me. I love summer because of the beach, and I love the fall because of Halloween.

I've loved Halloween ever since my Dad brought me to a staged haunted house at age 6. He carried me on his shoulders, and banged my head on beams in the darkness of the house. God knows how I didn't get severely injured by an errant nail sticking out somewhere. I've gone to haunted houses ever since then, and my Dad stopped going long ago. I love being scared, and usually I do most of the scaring to myself mentally. My imagination gets the best of me, and I scream like a girl during horror movies, and while going through haunted houses. It makes for some pretty high comedy for my friends though.

I'm trying to keep a one year routine going where I get my peeps together, and we head down to Salem Mass. around Halloween. The town is beautiful enough without the backdrop of fall, but around that time of year it really is a special place. They have real, and fake haunted houses all over the place. And we make a stop at the Salem Beer Works and I can't wait to get another blueberry ale. They put real blueberries into the beer, and they constantly float from the bottom of the glass, to the top from the carbonation. Good times. I love the fall.

Anyways, I loved House of a Thousand Corpses, which was the first movie Rob Zombie ever directed. I used to watch all the old B horror movies with friends back in the day. They were just a laugh a minute with the outrageous gore, and the cheesey dialog. Nowadays, all the horror movies are filled with special effects (C.G.I.), and just plain rubbish. I rented the movie The Bogeyman on On Demand from my cable provider. What a piece of junk that movie was.

Rob Zombie loves all the horror movies from back in the day too, and that's where he's trying to head the genre again. I think this one will be even better than H1000C. Here is the trailer. A quick movie review is below.
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Originally thought to be the sequel to House of 1000 Corpses, Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects is actually a spin-off, and should not be construed as a sequel. The only thing that's constant in Rejects as to House is the main cast of Bill Moseley, Sid Haig and Sheri Moon.

In this violent spin-off, after a string of murders and having killed Sheriff Wydell in House the Firefly family (Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), Otis (Bill Moseley) and Baby (Sheri Moon)) are hiding out. The police surround the Firefly place and after a huge opening shoot out send the family on the run. Mother Firefly (Leslie Easterbrook) is captured while the rest of the gang heads off to Spaulding's brothers place. Ken Foree plays Charlie Altamont, Spaulding's brother, who runs the bordello in the town. A game of 'cat and mouse' becomes a game of 'mouse and cat' and vice versa once again.

Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects is gritty, fierce and unpredictable leaving the audience in constant suspense. For a film with an "R" rating, it's quite brutal leaving little to the imagination- and to think that it's been cut down! Rejects felt like a mesh of various violent flicks from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Bonnie and Clyde to Natural Born Killers, with a late 70's kick. The camera never shies away from the kill, the blood pours out of wounds and the acting only heightens the experience.

The score is magnificent- come on, who doesn't want to rock to some Free Bird in the climatic battle?! You don't like that song? Well then F-off!! Unlike House where Rob wrote original material, this time he picks out appropriate songs for the time and situations to give the movie more of its tone.

Another big difference between House and Rejects is the cinematography and the entire look of the film. House is a fun, dark-colored adventure into the lives of the Fireflys while Rejects is a well lit, rough and stylistically blunt picture. It looked very reminiscent of a Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriquez film with the scenery and the cameras attitude- only it had the touch of Zombie. Rob has shown us that he can better himself and has prospered as a director instead of attempting to repeat what worked in the first film like so many other directors do.

So what's going to happen with this movie? It's truly hard to judge because Rob made the movie what he would want to see, not specifically what we want to see. If you have the same tastes as good ol' Rob Zombie, then you've got nothing to worry about. But if you are looking for some crappy fright fest along the lines of The Grudge remake, packs your bags and run for the hills because the Rejects are going to kick your ass....