[HorrorScience] The Devil's Rejects (2005)

Two weeks ago I decided to start a minicycle within HorrorScience intended to analyze films directed by the renowned singer and now also a film director Rob Zombie. On that occasion, the one chosen to start the cycle was his last production to date, The Lords of Salem, and I have now decided to continue in no specific order and analyze what is considered by the public and critics to be the best of his films and his second feature film as a director, The Devil's Rejects, either The Devil's Renegades as it was known in Spain.

This film is the sequel to his first film House of 1000 Corpses, which I will analyze for the next installment of the cycle, and focuses on three members of the psychotic Firefly family who appear in the previous film and who are now not shown as the antagonists of the film but as antiheroic protagonists, with Sid Haig, Bill Moseley and to continue the tradition Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, who is a constant in all of the director/singer's films. Since its premiere, the film has gained fans around the world and is currently considered a cult film within the genre.

When Rob Zombie wrote House of 1000 Corpses I had a vague idea of ​​a story in which I could reuse some of the characters from the film. Upon receiving the proposal from Lion's Gate to make a new film, Zombie began to think seriously about that new story, and decided to develop it, but this time making it more terrifying and giving his characters greater realism than in his previous production. He also stated that he wanted to "create something that is almost a western violent. A kind of road movie«. Those who have seen or see this film will agree with me that it has achieved this.

The film tells us what happened several months after the events that occur in the previous one and is set sometime in the 70s, beginning with Firefly, a family of murderers being attacked by a group of police officers led by the county sheriff, John Quincy Wydell (William Forsythe), who has the mission of capturing them because they are accused of torture and murder of more than 75 people. In the exchange of gunfire that occurs, some police officers end up dying, and it is after one of them throws a tear gas bomb that the law enforcement gains the advantage and ends up capturing or killing all the family members with the exception of Otis (Bill Moseley) and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) who manage to escape.

Next we will see one of the most recognized characters that Zombie has created, the Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), whose name is Cutter and who is watching the sheriff on television threaten to find all the murderers and eliminate them. Because of this he decides to flee, and on the way he calls his brother Charlie (Ken Foree), who works as a pimp, to ask for shelter. During his escape, Cutter's car will run out of fuel and for this reason he will end up violently stealing the car from a woman and her son.

The sheriff interrogates Mama Firefly, who was captured after the shooting at the beginning of the film and where her suicide attempt was thwarted because she had no more bullets left, but she answers all his questions in a bad way and jokes about Sheriff Wydell's deceased brother, who was killed in the previous film, so John ends up violently attacking her and vows to wipe out her entire family one by one.

Otis and Baby arrange with Cutter to meet at the Kaliki Palms Hotel, which is the typical roadside hotel on most highways in the United States. It is in that hotel that Baby flirts with a man who turns out to be a member of a country music duo called Banjo & Sullivan, and she and Otis They end up kidnapping the two members of the gang and their wives, for the simple reason that they have nothing else to do.. And this film shows us a violent and cruel family, which has no other motive than the pleasure that torture and murder gives them, and whose members are shown as predators in a constant hunt for human prey.

Along the way, they murder the band's technician, and then torture everyone, also forcing one of the women to strip naked out of pure perversion. Otis then decides to go out to look for some weapons that they left buried in the desert, and takes the two musicians with him to help him dig, leaving Baby with the women in the hotel room where they are staying and where they have kidnapped everyone. Along the way, the musicians try to overpower Otis, but he ends up killing them both, and even He removes the skin from one of their faces and then uses it as a mask.. While this was happening, Baby has fun torturing the women, and at one point one of them tries to ask for help, which infuriates Baby who kills the other woman and begins to chase the one who fled, although at that moment Cutter arrives and stops the woman who had just escaped with a blow.

Later Otis arrives, already with the weapons he had gone out to look for, and wearing as a mask the face of one of the musicians, who was the husband of the woman who had tried to escape and who is now the only one left alive from that group. Otis and Cutter argue strongly, but Baby intervenes and they finally decide to escape from the hotel to go to Charlie's brothel, but not before placing the skin of her murdered husband's face on the woman as a mask..

In the morning the hotel maid arrives and begins to carry out her daily cleaning duties, and when she enters the room where the murderers had stayed she finds the terrible scene of one woman's crime, and the other woman who still has the skin mask on and who tries to call for help and runs desperately towards the road, only to end up being hit by a truck.

I won't tell you what happens from here on, and if you want to find out, I encourage you to watch the movie and then comment what you think. I have also omitted several details so as not to spoil the entire story.

The Devil's Rejects It is clearly influenced by the famous Tobe Hooper film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and draws from it both in the fact that it is set in the 70s, and in the characters who are a family of murderers. The mask made with the skin of the face of one of the murdered musicians is also a clear reference to the most emblematic character in Hooper's work and one of the most important cult characters in the history of cinema: Leatherface. Otis also has an extreme physical resemblance to one of the worst murderers in the history of the United States and the director's personal fetish, Charles Manson.

La calidad de The Devil's Renegades es innegable. Las escenas están perfectamente ejecutadas, se respira un ambiente tenso y violento durante todo el metraje y la sensación de western and road movie que quería lograr Rob Zombie está presente en esta película desde el inicio hasta su excelente desenlace. Y sobre este final, que cierra de manera eficaz la historia de la familia Firefly, es que Zombie dice lo siguiente, y que pongo como texto oculto para que abras bajo tu propia responsabilidad ya que si no has visto la película puede arruinarte el final:

Mostrar comentario de Zombie sobre el final de The Devil’s Rejects

Ese siempre fue el final y todos y cada uno de los actores se quejaron al respecto. Yo quise hacerlo así porque parece que ya nadie más hace una película sin planear una secuela. Para Lions Gate fue como «La franquicia… se nos terminó». ¿Pero sabes qué? Ese es el problema. Siento como si ya no hubiera finales definitivos. Todas las películas terminan con la posibilidad de una continuación y eso me vuelve loco. Me hace sentir como «¿Por qué usé estas dos horas? Ni siquiera termina».

Datos curiosos:

• La casa de campo en Sable Ranch en Santa Clarita, California, que se usa como casa de los Firefly en esta película es la misma que se usa como casa de los Sawyer en The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. Tanto los Firefly como los Sawyer son familias compuestas por violentos asesinos seriales y caníbales. Ambas familias tienen un miembro deforme, ambas viven en Texas, y ambas películas fueron filmadas en la misma casa, que fue construida en 1989 específicamente para la filmación de The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III.
• La intención original de Rob Zombie era crear los efectos especiales del film solamente con las técnicas que estaban disponibles en los años 70, pero por falta de tiempo decidió usar efectos especiales digitales, mayormente para crear gore.
• Karen Black, famosísima actriz dentro del género de terror fue quien interpretó a Mamá Firefly en House of 1000 Corpses, y para volver a interpretar su personaje en esta secuela pidió una suma de dinero mayor a la de la última ocasión, suma que Zombie no pudo permitirse y razón por la cual el personaje en esta ocasión fue interpretado por la veterana actriz Leslie Easterbrook.