I’ve been meaning to watch I’m Not There since its 2007 release.  I finally got around to it.  While it’s no longer on the New Release list, I thought it was interesting enough to warrant an examination and a review.

The Accident/Picking a Story

Bob Dylan was white hot and everywhere.  Then he had a serious motorcycle accident that broke his neck in several places, cut up his face and forced him into a long period of recovery that slowly gave way to a phase of relative seclusion.

Maybe.

We really don’t know what happened on that Triumph.  The big accident story is one version of the truth.  Others say that an uncoordinated Dylan barely made it out of his manager’s driveway before accidentally falling off the bike and that he sustained only minor injuries.  There’s a version of the story with an oil slick.  One claims that a sun-blinded Dylan panicked at high speed.

He wasn’t hurt.  He was hurt.  He was severely injured.  He was on life support.  There’s probably some conspiracy nut who thinks the real Bob Dylan died and that a doppelganger replaced him (just like Paul McCartney).

Who knows?  It happened or it didn’t.  It was minor or nearly fatal.  Maybe we should just ask Bob.

Well, people have asked Bob.  And he’s given at least three different explanations of the accident himself.  When it comes to accuracy in reporting on the events of his life, Bob Dylan isn’t particularly reliable.

If you’re going to make a movie about Bob Dylan, you’re going to need to make a choice about the motorcycle accident.  You’ll tell a story, even if it isn’t the story.

But the accident is just one part of a bigger life and many of the other parts are just as ambiguous.  You’ll be picking and choosing potential realities every step of the way, trying to stitch something together into a cohesive biography of Dylan that wraps him up for the audience as an interesting, understandable figure.

Maybe.

A Different Approach to Biography

Todd Haynes found his preferred way of dealing with the motorcycle wreck in I’m Not There.  He made a series of other choices, too.  But he didn’t try to create the retelling of Dylan’s life.  He didn’t even really try to create a retelling of the story.

Haynes decided that Dylan isn’t in the pieces and that one over-arching tale couldn’t really explain the man in any accurate sense.  He didn’t bother trying to make a straight biopic.  In addition to the mystique and mystery surrounding Dylan, you can also attribute the decision the fact that Todd Haynes makes movies that remind you that he’s a Brown-degreed semiotician.

I’m Not There doesn’t feature an actor playing the part of Bob Dylan.  Instead, it has six actors playing fictionally-named versions of Dylan.  Bob is a little black kid who thinks he’s Woody Guthrie.  Bob is a 20th century version of poet Arthur Rimbaud.  He’s an actor named Robbie making a movie about a folk singer named Jack Rollins who later becomes Pastor John.  Dylan is also Rollins and Pastor John, by the way.  The Jude Quinn version of Dylan goes electric–and shows us that Cate Blanchett can portray a man.  Oh, and there’s also the Bob who’s an aging Billy the Kid.

None of them is Bob Dylan.  All of them are Haynes’ understanding of elements of Dylan or vehicles he uses to explore parts of Dylan’s story.

In the end, we don’t get a Walk the Line-style biography of the Bob Dylan.  We get an intentional blur of fantasy, reality, history, the director’s choices and little cogs that may or may not be pieces of Bob Dylan.

If you think that seems more like an academic exercise than a summer blockbuster, you’re right.  But don’t let those who’d take a wrecking ball to every ivory tower and who’ve used terms like “artistic” and “intellectual” as pejoratives in their criticism of I’m Not There fool you.  It’s well-made and very watchable.  It also hints at something other biographies tend to ignore.

Life is Complicated

By eschewing the Dewey Cox-parodied model of music biopics, Haynes gets close to some truth about Dylan.  He’s not the byproduct of a single epiphany.  He’s not a clean story.  If you’re looking for a movie that will give you a whole, understandable Bob Dylan…  Well, he’s not there.

Consider Walk the Line.  It’s a great movie.  Joaquin Phoenix (who’s now in theaters reminding us, interestingly enough, that he’s still here) creates an utterly believable Johnny Cash.  But do you think for a moment that his portrayal gave us the Johnny Cash?

Cash was undoubtedly shaped by a sharecropping youth and a brother’s tragic death, but we have no way of knowing if those movie-pivotal facts were really the driving force behind the rest of his oft-tortured life and his many actions.  Walk the Line was one construction of known facts about the man in black.  It made for a great story, but the influences portrayed, the motivations and the man at the center of the movie were the culmination of series of choices about how to create one story.  You could tell the Cash story a million different ways.

Haynes settled for six, seven or eight (depending on how you count ‘em up) versions of Dylan in I’m Not There.  That’s still far from definitive, but it’s closer to accuracy.  That’s not just a matter of mathematics.  It’s the recognition of something we know about ourselves and those closest to us that we often forget when looking for the life stories of the famous–people are complicated.

If someone wanted to tell your story in a movie, would you feel comfortable with the cherry-picking and oversimplification that dominates most biographies?  There’s more to a life than what shows up on screen for a few hours–even for those of us who don’t have Dylanesque mystery, name recognition, popularity and cultural significance.

If Hollywood ever comes knocking on my door, I’ll let them put my story on the silver screen.  But I’ll ask them to get Todd Haynes to direct.  I’d rather be a multi-dimensional mish-mash of fictionalized exemplars than a streamlined encapsulation of myself.

I’m Not There isn’t a perfect movie.  It’s not as challenging or as pretentious as some critics would like you to believe, but it’s unnecessarily murky at times (the Richard Gere as Billy the Kid sequence, in particular) and can occasionally be a little heavy-handed.  However, if you go into it with a willingness to pay attention and the realization that you’re not going to get a standard biopic, you should enjoy it–even if you’re not sure that Haynes got the motorcycle accident right.

Brilliant and undirected in Good Will Hunting.
Scared yet resolute in Saving Private Ryan.
Resourceful shitk*cker in The Bourne Identity.

Unique roles, good acting = Matt Damon.

But there are other actors who are revered for their skills who seem to take on the same role on an annual basis.

Julia Roberts as the likeable fish out of water.
John Cusack awkwardly navigating a relationship.
Jennifer Aniston looking for love in all the wrong places.
Ben Stiller snarkily keeping his anger in check.
Katharine Heigl (see Jennifer Aniston)

What fun is acting if you are either playing yourself or always playing the same role?

Are there any actors you’d like to call out for recycling a part?

Although the film can’t be categorized as your classic “road movie” it definitely has that feel as the characters spend a good amount of time traveling, whether it’s to a lecture on campus, a party at the chancellor’s house, Grady’s in-laws, or to rescue James Leer (from his parents/grandparents and himself). Wonder Boys takes us on a journey, exploring with richness and depth the relationships between men, women, generations, and even pets.

As I was reading the novel, I was thinking more and more about the movie and how visually it really captured the spirit of the story, with particular emphasis on the use of bridges. Watching the DVD commentary, I was impressed with director Curtis Hanson and how much thought he put into using bridges as a backdrop during major scenes. I’ve since read in subsequent interviews that when he first saw Pittsburgh he was really affected by the city and especially by how many bridges there are. He felt that the bridge symbolized so much in the film for the characters in terms of getting from here to there. Growing and maturing and expanding as a person with help from the people around you who you least expect. It’s also about transitioning from who you were to who you are (or who you’d like to be). Grady is middle aged and yet faces the prospect of fatherhood for the first time. James is a young college student just starting out, feeling his way around, trying to find out what kind of man he is. These two men share with each other that feeling of being adrift in your own life and after sharing a pretty crazy weekend, they also find their way (or at least they’re a little closer to finding their way).

The bridges in the movie were a brilliant addition and they serve the viewer well in taking us ‘along for the ride’. Hanson’s creativity so compliments Chabon’s writing that you wonder what it would be like if they came together for say, the movie version of Kavalier and Clay?

Chris Chambers – Stand by Me
Chris was the ultimate friend; fiercely loyal, honest, and flawed. You know he’d have your back in a fight and even if it scared the heck out of him, he’d go into battle with you. Once you earned his trust you know you had a friend for life. He was the type of guy that commanded respect without asking for it and yet he was also sensitive and insightful.

Red – The Shawshank Redemption
What better friend than a guy who could get you things. Red was the ultimate bunkmate (although technically him and Andy never shared a cell) mostly because he was quiet. Red is the type to quietly observe the crowd, forming his silent (and very accurate) judgements and only befriending those who are worthy of his friendship. By acquiring the rock hammer for Andy, he unknowingly became his accomplice in his great escape… but more importantly he saved Andy’s life – his friendship offered hope.

Doc Brown – Back to the Future trilogy
Imagine having a zany, older, brilliant scientist as your best friend! Such was the good fortune of Marty McFly. He friendship with the doc allowed him to time travel, ride a hoverboard (why don’t these exist yet??), see and alternate version of how his life could have turned out, and be a part of the wild west! Writing this now, I think Doc Brown is my number one pick for my new BFF!

The cast of the 40yr. Old Virgin
Just imagine that the one goal of all your friends was to get you laid. Nuff said!

• Pick out a fistful of horror movies I haven’t seen.
• Watch them.
• Write a review of one every other day until Halloween.

It’s simple with a relevant holiday theme.

Jeepers Creepers was first up on my list.  It doesn’t lend itself to a simple review.

Here’s what I knew about Jeepers Creepers before sitting down to watch it:

• It was something of a surprise mini-hit during its theater run.
• It was popular enough to spawn at least one sequel, with another one lurking in the future.
• Someone deemed the movie important enough to release a “special edition” DVD.

Here’s what I didn’t know:

Victor Salva wrote and directed it.

This was a complication.  I knew that I’d filter every frame of Jeepers Creepers through my understanding and opinions of the writer/director.

Just in case you didn’t know it, Victor Salva is a child rapist.

Victor Salva’s first feature, Clownhouse, was in the can.  The movie told the story of a little boy who was victimized by a crew of sadistic felons in stolen clown garb.

The cops were more interested in another Salva movie–a little homemade video he kept in his house.  It featured Salva, the former daycare worker, and the twelve year-old star of Clownhouse engaged in sexual activity.  Salva used his longstanding relationship as a trusted adult with the child and his position as a director to create an opportunity for abuse far more horrific than anything his creepy clowns did to the child’s character.

Salva pleaded down eleven felony counts to five and got what he wanted–a relatively light prison sentence.  He did less than two years of a three-year stint before getting out and resuming his career in movies.

His first post-prison movie was Powder.  He wrote and directed the story of a supernatural albino high school boy who found himself the target of derision and bullying.  I thought its scenes of actors portraying high school kids tussling in the rain and a magnet force prying away the buttons on a pair of Levis were more than slightly unsettling, considering Salva’s history as a pederast.

The Disney-produced Powder caught the attention of protesters who couldn’t believe that the family-friendly conglomerate would allow a child rapist to make features.  Somehow, despite the protests and the lukewarm reviews, Victor Salva managed to hang around Hollywood and to make Jeepers Creepers.

Once upon a time, Salva was a kid who loved movies.  He particularly loved Jaws and saw it over five dozen times.  Later, he discussed his childhood fascination with the movie.  He didn’t relate to the human characters in the movie; he was focused on the shark.

He related to the monster because people thought it was ugly and frightening.  Salva saw himself as a reviled outsider–a fat, gay kid in a world of less-than-tolerant people.   He said:

When someone in the movie pointed and screamed, ‘Arrrrgh, he’s so hideous! He’s so ugly!’ I thought, ‘No, the monster is the most interesting thing about the movie. I wonder what he’s thinking and feeling.

I think those comments may shine a light on the way he makes movies.

If he finds a sense of kinship with the villains, Clownhouse makes sense and is even consistent with the unspeakable behavior in which he engaged.  He took something children are at least theoretically believed to love and trust, clowns, and turned them into predatory monsters.

Powder becomes weak apologia in which Salva the outsider tries to show us just how hard it is to be a misfit.  He begs for sympathy or makes excuses with the lead character–a freakish albino with strange powers who stands in for the fat kid trying to figure out how to survive in a world that doesn’t understand him.

What about Jeepers Creepers?

The Creeper comes out of hiding every twenty-three years to feast for twenty-three days.  He chooses young people, high school/college students, as his victims.  That’s all we really know about the villain.  He’s a strong, unexplained evil force hellbent on maiming killing kids without justification or developed backstory.  You never grow to hate the creeper or to understand his motivations.  They defy explanation.  The Creeper is a teen-seeking monster who can only keep to himself for so long before he must feed again.

Is this Salva’s way of addressing the twisted, sick parts of his brain that led him to rape a kid who trusted him?  Is he telling us that the evil inside of him “just is”?  Or, even more frighteningly, is he warning us that the destructive compulsions that put him into prison can only lie dormant for so long before they’ll override his sensibilities?

Maybe this is a case of a “cigar just being a cigar”.  Perhaps it’s just an almost-decent B-grade horror movie and the Creeper story is shallow because Salva didn’t write a great script.  Maybe the victims are kids solely because kids are the target audience for these horror movies and Salva needed to pitch something marketable.

I suppose Salva’s movies and his crimes could be unrelated.  A horror movie that takes the idea of kid-friendly clowns and sets them loose as terrorists targeting a boy might not have anything whatsoever to do with the fact that a friendly Salva was simultaneously abusing his position of trust to sexually violate the kid who played the Clownhouse boy.  Powder could just a be a vaguely shitty movie about a powerful outcast.  Jeepers Creepers could be one of millions of semi-forgettable fright flicks.  In Jeepers Creepers II (which I won’t be reviewing), Salva’s camera’s attention to the detail of tanning shirtless guys may be nothing more than acceptable eye candy.

I have my doubts.

And that’s what makes Jeepers Creepers scary.

If I could divorce myself from the knowledge of the writer and director being a child rapist, I wouldn’t have much to say about Jeepers Creepers.

The opening portion, in which an unknown pscyho in a truck that looks like ‘Mater from Cars engaging in Duel-like activity with a brother/sister teen duo is relatively good.  Then, like most throwaway horror flicks, the whole thing begins to fall apart, circling the drain faster and faster until it reaches a lame conclusion.

Jeepers Creepers has a posse.  Some people absolutely love it and consider it one of their favorite movies.  I don’t understand these people.  Sure, the movie has a few “BOO!” moments that might make one shudder in his or her seat, but there’s nothing that new, great, interesting, creative or impressive.  The Creeper’s scariness shrinks the more we see him and the teenage stars are really nothing more than speaking props.

The production values are decent.  The movie isn’t horrible relative to its genre.  Then again, horror is littered with extremely bad movies and very few great ones.  Perhaps it shines a little only because the options surrounding it are so very dull.

If you’re looking for a way to scare yourself before Halloween, don’t bother watching Jeepers Creepers.  The scariest part of this movie is a name in the credits.

In July of 1972, US bombers were working to crush Quong Tri from above as the South Vietnamese embarked on what was to become a failed two-month effort to wrest control of the northern Binh Dinh province. Plus, Jane Fonda was in country.

Barbarella wore fatigues and boonie hats. She straddled Charlie’s anti-aircraft guns–the same kind that fired shots at those planes over Quong Tri. The Oscar-winner from Klute went from being Henry’s girl to being Hanoi Jane. She even took to the airwaves, with NVA assistance, to decry America’s military activity.

That happened about a week after the release of a Francine Parker documentary, FTA. FTA is an acronym with at least four potential meanings. It was “f*ck the army”, “free the army” and “Free Theater Association”.   It could also mean “freedom, travel and adventure” (perks touted by army recruiters at the time).

The documentary tracks a travelling anti-war road show featuring Jane Fonda and her Klute co-star, Donald Sutherland. This folk-singing, joke-telling collection of performers put on a series of shows near military installations and attracted a large number of soldiers–including many who were openly expressing their discontent with the war. American Independent Pictures distributed FTA. It had been in theaters for a week when Fonda’s controversial date with Charlie began to claim headlines.

AIP summarily pulled FTA from the theaters in the wake of the Fonda controversy. Some people say that AIP just didn’t want the hassles that would come by being associated with Fonda. Others claim that threats from increasingly unpopular White House were behind the decision.

Regardless of the reason, FTA disappeared from theaters. They didn’t just lock the prints away. Someone had them destroyed. FTA vanished. The only people to see the movie for years were those with bootleg copies.

Eventually, a complete print showed up somewhere, allowing for a 2009 DVD release.

OCTOBER 2010

Today, we’re stuck in another seemingly endless land war in Asia. Circumstances are radically different but just like then, there’s a large component of the population who’d like to see the combat end.

This time, though, Hollywood isn’t talking about it the way they did forty years ago. Sure, you’ll hear occasional comments from the best-known left-leaning creatives from time to time, but no one is bringing an anti-war vaudeville show to the towns near military bases.

After watching this documentary, I’m not sure that we’re missing much.

FTA consists of two different elements. The movie is a fifty-fifty split between interviews of US soldiers who felt a strong distaste for US activity in Vietnam and the group’s campy stage show.

The interviews are interesting. It’s amazing to see enlisted Marines decry violence in the name of imperialism and to express their doubts and disappointment. None of them says anything earth-shattering, but hearing from them provides the viewer with a clear glimpse of the period and the concerns of those who were charged with the responsibility to carry out an ultimately failed plan of attacks.

The unhappy soldiers and Marines aren’t necessarily spot-on in terms of their analysis, but they got the basics right about Vietnam. They saw the writing on the wall long before the last chopper pulled away from the embassy.

The other half of the movie, the part that documents the actual FTA touring show, is almost unwatchable. Fonda and Company wanted to create a counterpoint to the Bob Hope USO shows of the day. Instead, they did something that looks, sounds and feels a lot like something put together by a bad junior college theater class with a vaguely politically aware high school student serving as head writer.

The folksy songs are catchy, but in an irritating way. The jokes and jibes are delivered earnestly, but they’re dull and obvious. The skits won’t make you smile.

The hearts are in the right place. Whether you agree of disagree with the sentiments of FTA, you can tell that those involved felt like they were doing the right thing. They believed.

They just didn’t have a very good show.

Sutherland is the sole exception. If anyone comes out of FTA looking good, it’s Sutherland.  He has one inspired bit as a sportscaster announcing a firefight between US and NVA forces. He also brings some pathos to the affair with a reading from “Johnny Got His Gun”.

There’s a chance that earlier FTA shows may have been better than those from the Pacific Rim show featured in the movie. An interview with Fonda included on the DVD release reveals that the group originally featured Peter Boyle and Howard Hesseman.

They parted ways when Fonda decided to tackle the issue of the group’s racial composition, responding to a black/white cast imbalance. She says the cast changes helped FTA to connect with the black GIs. That may be true, but it’s too bad Hesseman and Boyle couldn’t still be a part of the act.

In terms of moviemaking, FTA is a very straightforward documentary. There’s no omniscient narration and no one really speaks over the footage. There are a few smart shots and the camera finds occasional artifacts that do a good job of underlining key points. Parker’s primary gift to viewers is a snapshot of a time that’s quite different than today.

I can’t imagine Sean Penn and Will.I.Am embarking on a tour outside of US military installations today. I can’t visualize them sitting down for rap sessions with soldiers or coming right out and making unmistakably strong statements about the Army and its policies. Today, the Dixie Chicks can lose half of a career by expressing disappointment in a President. Jane Fonda will always be Hanoi Jane to a large percentage of the population. Getting as loud and as straightforward as the FTA team is bad career mojo.

The DVD’s interview with Fonda circa 2009 is a must-watch. In it, she admits to a political immaturity in the early 70s and there are moments when you can tell that the beliefs of “the movement” that fueled FTA still move her.

It was this love of the genre that made a viewing of Australia inevitable. I’m not a Baz Luhrman superfan, Hugh Jackman has never really impressed me and I think Nicole Kidman is the most frustrating actress of her generation. All of my instincts begged me to stay away, but I finally broke down and stuck the 2008 non-blockbuster, Australia, in the DVD player.

Something Interesting

The most interesting part of the entire movie occurs prior to the first credit. Before the first notes of the swollen score, a warning appears on the screen. It states:

Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders should exercise caution when watching this film as it may contain images and voices of deceased persons.

I may have seen other movies that featured this caution, but this is the first time I noticed it. Here’s the scoop:

Apparently, the Aboriginal people of Australia and the indigenous population of the Torres Straits have a series of bereavement and mourning rituals that include certain avoidance practices. When a member of the community passes away, they cease to use the name of the deceased for a prolonged period and avoid or destroy all photographs or recording in which the deceased appears.

It can be quite distressing for these folks to inadvertently encounter an image or recording of the departed during this period of mourning, known as “sorry business.”

Cole Slaw

Unfortunately, that brief warning was more interesting than the rest of the big, bloated flick.

I’ll spare you from a recitation of the plot. Basically, Australia is the story of a little native boy, a fish-out-of-water white woman who shows her toughness in the Outback, and a gruff, grizzled cattle drover set against the backdrop of World War II and the Japanese bombing of Australia.

It features everything you’d expect from a big, romantic epic. Sweeping scenery shots, an over-the-top score, a beautiful woman whose porcelain features belie her steely determination, the rough-and-tumble against-all-odds local love interest, big explosions, big weather and dramatic deaths. It also provides our white protagonists an opportunity to defy convention by landing on the right side of what was a horribly wrong policy regarding the native population during the period.

I can understand those who hate movies made from components like these. I really can. From a more objective perspective, I might even agree with them. However, I really do love this sort of thing. As such, I should adore Australia.

But I don’t.

Australia is cole slaw.

I like cabbage. I like salad dressing. I like little slivers of carrots. I like all of the stuff that goes into cole slaw. It should be my favorite food in the world. Yet, I hate it.

Every year, I try it again. I just can’t believe I don’t like it. It doesn’t make any sense. Every year, I discover that I hate it more than I did the year before.

That’s Australia. I should like it, but I don’t. Not even close.

With Australia, though, I think I know why I’m turned off. When people make cole slaw, they’re making it because they believe it will be a tasty side dish. They’re not making it as part of some culinary homage to the cole slaw of the past. Luhrman’s Australia is an intentionally exaggerated version of old Hollywood epics and its resulting insincerity steals any movie magic it may have otherwise possessed.

Australia is a 20th century Gone with the Wind for the southern hemisphere. It’s also a long reference to another 1939 Hollywood production, The Wizard of Oz. Whether Luhrman is trying to honor those films or to make some other point about their composition is meaningless to me. The movie tries too hard to channel its forefathers and plays like a collection of pieces that aren’t quite properly joined.

Remember, this is coming from a guy who actually enjoyed a movie featuring Anthony Hopkins in a bearskin coat wearing a chalkboard around his neck and slurring profanity. When you lose to Legends of the Fall, you really LOSE.

The Devil’s Rejects (2005)

Attack of the F-Bombing Super Fan

I remember the movie fan.  She was in her late teens or early twenties.  She was excited.  My brother-in-law went to a late showing of The Devil’s Rejects and she approached us as we left the theater as if we were old friends.

“That was awesome.  Awesome.  Wasn’t it great?”

Well, that wasn’t her exact opening to the conversation.  In reality, she punctuated every sentence with one or two variations of the F-word.  She wielded the F-word like a grammatical Swiss Army knife.  It was a noun, an adjective, an exclamation, a verb and I think she even found ways to use it as an adverb.

Our reaction to her rave review, which probably consisted of no more than a slight nod of acknowledgment or a mumbled “yeah” was enough.  She turned the talkativity dial to 10.

“I liked House of 1,000 Corpses.  I know lotsa people didn’t, but I did.  A clown?  Awesome.  But I know people thought it was crap.  Whatever.  This one.  Man.  This one was so awesome.  This one was perfect.”

She explained that she was excited to watch the next installment of the Saw series.  She talked about the soundtrack to The Devil’s Rejects.  She babbled on and on about Rob Zombie’s overall awesomeness.  She recounted her favorite kill scenes.

Eventually, she decided to find someone who was slightly more communicative and she bounded off, energized by two hours of on-screen carnage, sadism and a rip-off ending to a movie that took everything including the kitchen sink, coated it in retro slime and dumped it right into the theater.

We weren’t as thrilled with The Devil’s Rejects.  My brother-in-law and I both enjoyed it, though.

I can’t explain his rationale.  This is mine.

A Bad Movie

Sometimes, horrible ideas, horrible execution, poor choices, ham-fisted technique and a general lack of talent can somehow merge to create something good.  That is the story of The Devil’s Rejects, a movie justifiably maligned by most critics and just as justifiably loved by people including the stranger in the theater.

Let’s get rid of the bad stuff right away.  There are a billion reasons to hate The Devil’s Rejects.  Here are a few high(low)lights:

• The casting was more of a tribute to B-movie horror veterans with a little 70s kitsch on the side than it was an effort to create a credible ensemble.
• Zombie overuses the soundtrack in a heavy-handed effort to shove the desired retro feel down the throats of audience members.
• The Devil’s Rejects contains multiple scenes that do little to advance either the plot of the movie or the development of its characters.  The scene with the chicken peddler, for instance, exists only to showcase a series of unfunny jokes.
• The movie’s attempts to balance tension and sadism with comedy fail.  It may be jarring, but it’s not the kind of disconnect for which any sane filmmaker would strive.
• Rob Zombie’s appreciation for the contours of his wife’s butt may be great for their relationship, but it’s not something the audience needs to explore during a horror/road movie.
• The movie’s moral compass isn’t just a little off.  It’s in a room of electromagnets that spun it so hard and fast that it finally ceased to point anywhere.
• The ending is an accidentally comic mish-mash of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and Bonnie and Clyde with a little bit of Thelma and Louise tossed in for good measure.  It’s utterly ridiculous, but not in the “let’s make wriggle room for a sequel” mode of most horror flicks, which is at least understandable from a dollars and cents perspective.

So, The Devil’s Rejects is an amoral mess that frequently insults its audience, features inferior performances and reveals a serious of weird, if not flat-out stupid, directorial choices.

And I liked it.

So Bad, Yet Pretty Good

I didn’t like it as much as the F-bomber, but I did enjoy it.

Why?

I have a tender little place in my heart for movies that try extremely hard, even if they fail miserably.  That’s why I’ve confessed to an appreciation for the ridiculous Legends of the Fall, and its oh-so-earnest attempt to be a stirring epic.

That’s why I like Armageddon, a moronic space movie that merged the Magnificent Seven team assembly strategy with poorly acted romance, Bruce Willis’ Christ-like sacrifice for humanity and Billy Bob finally getting his mission patch.

Everyone involved in movies like those seemed to be giving it their all.  They played it straight, without an ironic wink.  These movies are so sincere in their intentions and so audacious in their goals that it’s hard not to root for them even when their weaknesses are so readily apparent.

The Devil’s Rejects is the Armageddon of horror.  It’s the Legends of the Fall of road movies.

Rob Zombie and his limited-talent cast try hard.  They don’t deliver, but they put forth the effort.  You can tell that Zombie wanted to make a MOVIE, not just another movie.  He built a world with its own rules and its own feel.  He shoehorned Marx Brothers references into the script and he found places to feature actors he loves, even if the audience is unlikely to feel the same way.

Most people hate it because it seems like an utterly pointless and sadistic tale incapable of adding anything to their lives.

Some people love it, completely oblivious to its many, many, many flaws.

Between those two poles, there’s room to enjoy this dusty, broken horror movie without being a Zombie super-fan.

How to Like The Devil’s Rejects

You might not naturally find yourself in that space between oblivious super fans and sane normalcy, so let me give you a few recommendations.  If you follow them, you can enjoy watching The Devil’s Rejects.

• Surrender the idea of emerging from the movie with any thing remotely associated with moral enlightenment.  The Devil’s Rejects is an exercise in atmosphere that preaches an amoral gospel.  Don’t even think about trying to feel good about humanity based on the actions of the film’s characters.  Any of them.
• Focus on the few really tremendous moments in the movie.  The hotel hostage scene is extremely intense and frightening in a way that rises well above traditional slasher fare.  Kudos to Priscilla “Three’s Company” Barnes for this scene.
• Appreciate the fact that Rob Zombie actually manages to take a collection of utterly grotesque and despicable murderers and transforms them into the very folks for whom you’re rooting as they roll down the highway toward their demise.
• Make a game out of finding elements Zombie has either lovingly lifted or cheaply stolen from other movies.  Engage in an internal dialog, debating whether these thefts make The Devil’s Reject an homage to other horror movies or a if they demonstrate a lack of originality on the part of the filmmaker–or both.

And, most importantly…

• Don’t take it too seriously.

I read a review of Saw 3D today in which the critic lambasted the movie for its misogyny and for not somehow living up to the standard established by its Saw precursors.

One of the first comments in response to that review pointed out how silly it seemed to criticize a Saw movie for being anything other than a fairly dumb, gory, somewhat scary diversion.  That response makes a great deal of sense.

At some point, we need to adjust our movie expectations based on what we know before we buy a ticket, rent the DVD or add something to our NetFlix queue.

If you were looking for a spine tingling, thrilling masterpiece of horror that would somehow provide you with tremendous insights about the human condition while not offending you with sadistic violence and other ugliness…

Well, picking The Devil‘s Rejects was stupid.

Give yourself two hours to disappear into a world of head scratching dumbness, jeans sagging off the butt of Sherri Moon Zombie, Sid Haig with rotten teeth and serial killers eating ice cream on the run.  Try to forget what you know for a while and take The Devi’s Rejects for what it is.  If you do, The Devil’s Rejects is a (and it’s hard to believe I’m writing this) pretty good movie.

You can critique it later.  I did.

Or, maybe you’ll come out the other side of raining bullets and “Freebird” with a strange compulsion to approach strangers and to talk at length about just how much you fucking loved everything about The Devil’s Rejects.

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It’s also something of a family affair.  Bobbie Sue Luther produced the movie.  She also serves as the female lead.  Luther is married to the special effects expert who directed the movie, Robert Hall.
You can bet your severed head that its makers weren’t worried about whether the general public would fall in love with it.  They just wanted to appeal to its micro-niche.

It looks like they did a good job.   A perusal of the surprisingly large world of slashercentric blogs reveals generally positive reviews of the movie and a great deal of appreciation for its spree-killing star character.

The killer villain of Laid to Rest is the highly stylized Chrome Skull, who as his name suggests, has a face covered by a chromed skull mask.  He also has two big chromed blades that look like what the twin gynecologists from Dead Ringers may have owned had they taken gear to the guys at West Coast Choppers for some pimpin’.  Oh, he also has a little video camera mounted to his shoulder with a glowing red light.

The plot involves an amnesiac girl who escapes from a coffin just in time to flee Chrome Skull.  She seeks help from good-hearted but incompetent people.  Chrome Skull kills several of them.  A few of them survive until the final credits, including the protagonist scream queen.  Chrome Skull appears to die, but we all know better.  Two sequels are already in the works.

If you have delicate sensibilities, you’ll never consider picking up Laid to Rest in the first place.

If, on the other hand, you love incredibly gory kill scenes, Laid to Rest may become one of your all-time favorites.

The movie basically exists to take us from one act of butchery to another.  I don’t know if you can actually call the murders realistic, because I don’t know as if anyone has any idea what some of these creative bloodlettings would look life in real life.  I can tell you that you will see eyes filling with blood, entrails and even some face skinning.  If that’s your thing, this is a five-star effort.

I’m not easily offended and I’m not a slasher aficionado.  I’ve subjected myself to so much stupid crap over the years that I’m desensitized to the slaughter action. Though I’m not squeamish, I don’t really enjoy bloody mayhem for the sake of bloody mayhem.  With that in mind, here’s a quick explanation of why Laid to Rest is, by reasonable standards unrelated to the buckets of faux innards used in the production, a crappy movie.

• Chrome Skull may have a look that’s appealing to the gorehounds of the world, but no one ever bothers explaining much, if any, of his back story or motivations.  Classic movie killers like Freddie, Michael and Jason captured the public’s interest and scared folks, to at least some extent, because they had at least some messed up rationale for their non-stop killing ways.  Lacking that, Chrome Skull is just a boring, unexplained robo-man with a creepy mask.
• The stupidity of the non-killing characters reaches a level that far exceeds the average slasher flick victim.  These movies only work when characters make bad decisions, but the characters of Laid to Rest make unfathomably stupid calls at every turn.
• Laid to Rest is poorly written, poorly edited or both.  Ideas and little features that seem to have potential relevance to the story go nowhere.  Trust me when I tell you that they’re not meant to be that way.
• There are only two potential reasons you might care even slightly about the fate of anyone in the movie.  You might want someone to make it to the end so you can learn more about Chrome Skull or you might find the lead actress attractive.  As noted, Chrome Skull remains a dull mystery and Bobbie Sue Luther’s good looks aren’t a point of emphasis.

Laid to Rest isn’t scary.  It isn’t interesting.  It isn’t much of anything other than bloody.    If you need a gore fix, watch it.  Otherwise, steer clear.