The Devil's Rejects (2005)

Having seen rocker-composer Rob Zombie's directorial debut, "House of 1000 Corpses" a few years back and having thought it a thoroughly amateurish effort to shock, I was very surprised to read the many favourable reviews for the above flick when it was released.  Since I like gore movies as much as the next sicko, I thought I'd better find out what I was missing.  The answer: not a lot.  While possibly Mr. Zombie (I love the sound of that) has learned a little bit about movie-making and scripting, I can only say that while even more repulsive than his first movie, this one doesn't show much improvement.  The story follows on from the first, with the remaining members of the murderous tribe on the run after a police shoot-out and being pursued by an equally brutal sheriff.  The lead villains have no redeeming qualities as they slay and brutalise anyone who crosses their path, but there are no heroes either.  What the film does have going for it to endear it to genre buffs is the appearance of a number of cult actors: as the patriarch of the killers we have Sid Haig out of "Spider Baby" (and his character name like many of the others is lifted from Groucho Marx -- don't ask me what that's about); we also have major roles for Ken Foree from the original "Dawn of the Dead" and Michael Berryman from the original "The Hills Have Eyes". And that is just the start of the amusing cameo roles.  Mr. Zombie is self-evidently a horror afficionado; it's just a shame that he doesn't know how to make a film that does more than horrify.