Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a negative review of Rob Zombie's sophomore flick, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS... however this negative review could be read as a glowingly positive one considering that the below reviewer hates the film for identifying with the evil villainous main characters. I personally think Sid Haig and his group were the only truly successful and interesting thing about HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES. I am, personally, psyched to see this film, but then again I'm morally repugnant, so... Take it for ballast, squirts! Enjoy the review!

As the end credits began to roll on THE DEVIL'S REJECTS, writer/director Rob Zombie's follow-up to his HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, my friend turned to me and asked what I thought of the film we had just seen.

"It's a piece of shit," I shrugged. "A torture show."

I stand by my first impression. It is a piece of shit and it is a torture show. But why? Why did Rob Zombie, who has built several successful careers out of his passion for the horror and exploitation genres, miss his mark so badly? And why does everyone who tries to create some kind of homage to seventies exploitation films – movies that were usually slapped together under rushed and less than ideal circumstances - fail with ten times the resources at their disposal?

I should begin by saying that if nothing else, Rob Zombie has made a superior film to HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES. The most succinct criticism of HOUSE that I heard was from a friend who said she felt like she spent the whole movie waiting for it to begin, then was disappointed when it never really did; the mish-mash of gimmicks, gags and gross-outs failed to gel into anything cohesive or meaningful. And like a lot of 'everything-PLUS-the-kitchen-sink' experiences, at the end of the day not only did it not make a lot of sense, it just wasn't very good.

THE DEVIL'S REJECTS continues the adventures of the murderously unhinged Firefly family first introduced in HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES – played by Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon Zombie (aka Mrs. Rob Zombie), Leslie Easterbrook (pinch-hitting for Karen Black) and cult favorite Sid Haig. In addition, Howard Stern regular Matthew McGrory returns to make what is a bit too convenient a cameo appearance as brother Tiny.

It's essentially a road movie with two major detours; the first takes the band of killers to a desert motel where they torment, torture and ultimately murder a family they meet there, while the second occurs in a western-themed bordello where the Firefly clan are confronted by their arch-nemesis: a lawman (William Forsythe) whose brother they murdered in the previous film.

Whatever negative things can be said about the THE DEVIL'S REJECTS – and there are plenty – it does have real forward momentum, an actual plot and a consistent and frequently arresting visual style. Unfortunately, it's all in the service of a film that is crude and sniggering at its best then cynical and downright offensive at its worst. It's the cinematic equivalent of the tasteless drunk at a party who starts out entertainingly enough but soon ruins everyone's good time to the point where folks start wondering just when he's going to get taken outside and have his ass beaten for him.

And that's depressing on a number of levels. It's depressing because some of the technical efforts to re-create the look and texture of the gritty exploitation movies of thirty years ago come so close to working. It's depressing because the movie features several very good performances by some talented and interesting actors who continue to be criminally overlooked and underused by Hollywood (Sid Haig, Ken Foree, Geoffrey Lewis, and William Forsythe, to name a few). It's depressing because it's yet another genre movie in which torture, rape, violence and humiliation are presented in as graphic and unforgiving a manner as possible and then later employed as cheap punchlines. But mostly it's depressing because Rob Zombie was, by his own account, given free reign to do anything he wanted for this movie and this was the best he could come up with.

For his second feature, Zombie turned to the notorious drive-in fare of the seventies for inspiration - a school of film hardly known for its political correctness. Plenty of those movies came under fire upon their initial release and would likely find no warmer a welcome were they to be released today.

And yet, unlike THE DEVIL'S REJECTS, even in the worst of the drive-in trash there is almost always some kind of moral code in play, at least on some level. Good versus Evil is the most basic dramatic conflict we as humans have; you can play it straight or you can play it loose, but when you choose not to play at all you tend to end up with something less than compelling. THE DEVIL'S REJECTS is proof of it.

It's practically a rule that exploitation movies have 'anti-heroes' as protagonists, and THE DEVIL'S REJECTS attempts to follow in that tradition by putting its family of killers center stage. But Zombie lacks a grasp of the essential components required to create that kind of character with any degree of effectiveness. An anti-hero may not represent conventional, cut-and-dried concepts of heroism, but they have to stand for something; otherwise, what's the point?

Zombie has created a singularly remorseless and unpleasant cast of characters (they don't even appear to like each other very much!), but no one here is written with any real dimension or depth. They aren't helped by the dialogue, which is comprised entirely of sick-joke verbal showboating, campy pop-culture references or some combination of the two. The end result makes for one or two clever exchanges but mostly it just calls attention to itself. It's safe to say any art or interest found in the characters can be attributed solely to the contributions of the actors themselves, since their performances are pretty much all their characters have got going for them. Old-school exploitation vets like Haig, Lewis and Forsythe have all done more with less in the past, and though they could probably play these roles in their sleep and still walk away with the movie, all three deliver such energetic and even nuanced work, you can't help but wish the filmmaker shared their level of commitment.

Perhaps most annoyingly, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS – even more so than the campier HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES - plays into a trend that has been ruining horror movies for several decades: the idolization of the monster. With the emergence of sequels, T-shirts, toys and Halloween costumes tied to mainstream horror, characters who were once figures of fear have been transformed into bizarre and unlikely cult heroes.

This is different from the long-idolized 'classic' monsters like Chaney's Phantom, the Wolfman, Im Ho Tep or even King Kong. A closer look at that rogues' gallery reveals a common underlying humanity, a pathos to their respective situations that makes them deserving of a certain empathy despite their monstrous behavior. Is this same level of sentiment really appropriate to contemporary movie monsters who, by and large, are merciless, one-dimensional wisecracking serial rapists and killers?