Director Howard Hawks once defined a good movie as one with "Three great scenes, no bad ones." Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects has three good scenes, alright. Unfortunately, the rest of them are "meh." The story is really a continuation of Zombie's earlier film House of 1,000 Corpses (2003). It follows the last days of the Firefly family, a group of socio/psychopathic killers responsible for at least 75 brutal homicides. There isn't much to tell about the rest of the film's plot, really. It just concerns them running from the law, killing a traveling band of musicians, getting captured and tortured by a sadistic sheriff, and finally being gunned down by a roadblock. But I did mention three good scenes, so here they are. In the first, one of the Firefly's by the name of Otis murders two members of the aforementioned band in the middle of the desert. He does so while chillingly mocking their faith in God. It plays like an inverse of Michael Parks' "sermon" from Kevin Smith's Red State (2011). The second great scene is when the sadistic sheriff captures three of the Firefly's and tortures them by sticking pictures of their past victims on them with a staple gun. It was fascinating to see the sheriff embrace his dark side and come to the realization that the only way he could punish such despicable creatures was to lower himself to their level. The third great scene was, of course, the final scene where the surviving Firefly's are killed in a roadblock to the sound of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird." So, like I said, it has three great scenes. If you have the patience (and stomach) to sit through the rest of Zombie's gorefest, then you will probably enjoy it.
6/10
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