by MARK SLUTSKY

Rob Zombie made a bloody splash in the cult and horror film world in 2003 with his debut feature, House of 1000 Corpses, and since the movie did pretty well in the mainstream world as well, he's come up with a follow-up. The Devil's Rejects is a gory, preposterous orgy of wickedness and mayhem, an over-the-top ride of vicarious viciousness and total amorality featuring serial-killing clowns, dead-eyed cops, country singers and neon-lit brothels. There are stabbings, shootings, crucifixions and several assaults with a staple gun. There's lots of blood and lots of beards (this being a '70s period piece). It's pretty good!

The movie returns to the subject of Zombie's first film, the sadistic serial killer Firefly family. As The Devil's Rejects begins, cops have surrounded the Firefly farmhouse, driving Otis (Bill Moseley) and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) out and capturing Mother Firefly (Leslie Easterbrook, in the role Karen Black played in Corpses). At a motel, Otis and Baby rendezvous with Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig, bearded in clown make-up and one of the scariest guys ever) before kicking off their bloody flight from the law. And as it turns out, the lawman on their trail is Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe), the vengeance-crazed brother of one of the family's victims. The depravity of the fugitives causes the sheriff to get a little bad himself, and the line between the killers and the law is blurred... Well, that's the point Zombie is trying to make, but honestly, the Firefly crew still comes across as a lot worse than the vigilante sheriff. I mean, he's not a particularly nice dude, but these guys still have something like 75 murders under their belts.

A conscious throwback to the grisly, disgusting-looking slasher films of the '70s (think Texas Chainsaw Massacre) as well as an ode to criminals-on-the-run flicks (think Bonnie and Clyde), The Devil's Rejects is, by and large, totally fun and pretty hilarious - you can tell everyone is going for it with real gusto, and the cast's sheer enthusiasm puts most Hollywood horror efforts to shame.

Still, as outrageous as the movie is, it ends in somewhat of an anti-climax, never quite reaching the furious heights it seems to be promising. It fizzles out a bit as a road movie, as the characters don't really get that far, and the two main locales (a motel and a brothel) aren't really different enough. But the last hilarious and absurd scene, scored by Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird," comes close to making up for all that by making anti-heroes out of our grim gang and making the Bonnie and Clyde homage even more explicit.

THE DEVIL'S REJECTS OPENS FRIDAY, JULY 22

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