The Devil's Rejects-Dark 70's redux

Last week,I went with my sister to see The Devil's Rejects and despite the first ten to fifteen minutes of the movie being shown with the bottom part of the screen cut off(prompting an audience member to yell"Hey,Asshole!" when the guy in the projector booth started to fix it during the film),it was quite an experience. I can't say I loved or hated this movie but I sure wasn't bored or freaked out.

What hooked me was how incredibly 1970s the whole thing was-I grew up in that time period(was about 11 years old in 1978 when this movie takes place)and the smallest of details were accurate-Baby Firefly's sing-song taunt of "Chinese,Japanese,Dirty Knees-Look at these!"(I think my sis was right about Sheri Moon Zombie having a fetish about showing her ass-did a hell of alot of that),another character's declaration of"I'm Willy Wonka and this is my chocolate factory!",the music choices,even the ice cream favor of "tutti-fucking-frutti"(do they even make that anymore?)brought up a whole heaping scoopful of memories.

At that age,I wasn't seeing movies like that(there was an incident where some of my older cousins told my mom that they were taking my brother and me to a Bad News Bears movie but we went to Enter the Dragon instead-love that part where Bruce was fighting the Slasher hand guy in the mirror maze)but DR has alot of the feel of those early to mid seventies indie exploitation films to the point where it could be easily mistaken for one. Rob Zombie was majorly influenced by the Texas Chainsaw Massacre style of "let's put on a show in the barn with Dad's home tools"and does some rather clever referencing of Mark Twain and Groucho Marx.

The highlight of the film is a showdown with the cops set to "Freebird" which really makes the movie and is one of the more memorable images I've seen onscreen this year. I didn't see House of a Thousand Corpses so I can't tell if DR is a sequel or a prequel(not going to watch it either way)but when Zombie comes out with another movie,I will be first in line. Speaking of lines,check out the title link for some interesting qoutes from the film.