In a perfect world, there would be a giant shit-storm surrounding the level of violence and depravity exhibited in Rob Zombie’s sophomore splatter gem, The Devil’s Rejects, propelling its box office numbers to the levels it deserves. As it stands, however, we appear to be mired in an age doubly cursed vis-à-vis zealous outrage over exploitation cinema. On one hand your average modern movie patron seems increasingly hard to shock; on the other, notwithstanding the occasional “outing” of a cartoon character, the Religious Right appears to have written off heathen Hollywood’s cinematic output as a lost cause, preferring instead to focus on the sexual transgressions of network (and recently cable) T.V., e.g. ‘Nipplegate,’ and Desperate Housewives.

One can’t fault Zombie for trying, however, and personally I’ll just have to satisfy myself with the handful of walk-outs observed during both screenings I attended of Rejects, the most accomplished affront to good taste and the status quo in recent memory. Zombie’s effort at provocation is strenuously thought out, culminating in the giddily gratifying ending sequence, a bloody catharsis cut to the full-length version of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” That Rob Zombie intends to shock, is not, of course, the surprise here, but instead, the revelation that his talent as a filmmaker has nearly reached the level of his ambition.

The Devil’s Rejects crosses the murderous Firefly clan of Zombie's intriguing but inferior House of 1000 Corpses with the look and feel of an exploitation western/road movie. Shot in a sun-drenched super 16mm aesthetic, and incorporating a cast of appropriately seasoned B-movie talent, Rejectsemulates the sweaty southern terror of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and an entire era of genre cinema. Rejects’ genre mixing and slicker-than-life dialogue put this project firmly in Tarantino territory, and although no one is quite as adept as QT at stirring the cinematic stew, Zombie’s efforts pay off, due mostly to the confidence of his direction.

The film’s opening sequence—in which the titular outlaws, under siege in their house of horrors and clad in heavy iron armor recalling the Teutonic knights of Alexander Nevsky, trade gunfire with county sheriffs—is nearly as exhilarating as its last. Zombie’s camera glides, zooms, and freezes, at once suspending and heightening the tension of this pre-credit face off. The credit sequence itself is, as it should be, as memorable as anything in the film, and perhaps the best example of Zombie’s self-assured direction. Otis (Bill Moseley) and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) escape and commit a murder/car theft, depicted in a series of eerie freeze frames set, ingeniously, to the tune of the Allman Brothers Band’s “Midnight Rider.” If QT and Wes Anderson can lay claim to dusting off and revitalizing obscure Motown grooves and forgotten Stones classics, Zombie proves equally adept at affording FM radio clichés entirely new and unforgettable contexts.

It’s no secret that American Horror cinema of the 00’s has been marred by the same affliction as any other genre, namely an incessant drive to “re-imagine” proven properties. Hence, we get big, slick remakes of the gritty low-watermarks of the golden era of modern horror such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead. Without digressing into yet another predictable tirade against remake-ism, it seems important to point out that attempts to recreate these particular titles with high production values, Jessica Biel, and giant marketing campaigns seem especially offensive to the spirit of the originals, in a way that is not applicable to remaking The Manchurian Candidate, for example.

What the recent glut of remakes fail to comprehend aesthetically, and what Zombie clearly gets in his latest homage to the era, is that these original films—despite the fact that the best of them received belated critical justification—were initially reviled and detested as repugnant filth, low exploitation fare perceived as inhabiting the same murky waters as pornography. Indeed, the financial backers of Chainsaw were reportedly mobsters drawn to the easy profits of low budget porn production. Dawn of the Dead, for all the recent accolades retroactively applied to Romero’s insight as social satirist, was released unrated, unable to procure an ‘R’ from the MPAA of 1978. The films’ absence of known actors, grainy, low-budget, ‘realist’ aesthetics, and morally ambiguous directorial choices lent them an aura of taboo, a mythology bolstered by their controversial status during the height of the Eighties video boom—particularly in the UK, where many titles were banned, and subsequently known as “Video Nasties.”

Like trying to stage a second Woodstock, recreating the perfect storm of attendant circumstances surrounding these films is simply impossible. In contrast to the slew of remakes, Rejects works as homage to these films while finding ground to stand on its own two feet for a number of reasons. Zombie’s tack is first to create new—no matter how “borrowed”—stories and characters. Perhaps it’s an unfortunate testament to how low the bar has been set, but today a surprising amount of “originality” can be bought simply by giving your film a different title from one already in existence. Particularly in the realm of post-Psycho horror, accusations that one film is a “rip-off” of another are as irrelevant as they are obvious.

Where in the days of Chainsaw it was enough to pepper a few horrific episodes throughout the lead-up to its climactic assault, Zombie is hip to the constant media bombardment to which today’s viewer is already subjected, upping the ante from the first frame. There is little downtime between doses of ultraviolence, and what little there is is spent uneasily “enjoying” the downtime of the “Rejects” themselves; see Otis screw a prostitute; see everyone’s favorite demented clown Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) snort some blow; for comic relief, hear Charlie (Ken Foree) deny involvement in bestial necrophilia. If The Devil’s Rejectswants so badly to get under your skin that at times you feel it trying a trifle too hard, it may very well be the case that in order to push across something like true shock to today’s apathetic, net-savvy spectator, it’s necessary to err on the side of saturation. As the point is made in regard to the filthiest-joke-ever-told in the current documentary, The Aristocrats, people simply aren’t as fazed by this stuff as they used to be.

Once again, God bless The Devil’s Rejectsfor trying. It strives sincerely at every turn to unsettle the viewer, to push you into uncomfortable areas of identification; confronting you on a visceral level with the dynamics of sadism, while interrogating the nature of spectatorial “pleasure” derived therein. Not unlike the structure of A Clockwork Orange, Rejectsforces identification with subjects who perpetrate acts of sadism on innocents, then inverts the equation: we continue to identify with the “baddies” as society—here the vigilante Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe)—exacts its own sadistic justice/revenge. The formula is simply the obverse side of that most American of genres, the Western. As recounted by the outlaw, this iteration complicates a number of facile assumptions about violence—real or depicted, denounced or sanctioned.

Certainly there are films (Maniac springs to mind) equally as grim and antisocial, which seem neither interesting nor intelligent enough to warrant much of a defense. It’s ultimately Zombie’s handle on the craft of filmmaking and his demonstrated understanding of the flashpoints of his chosen genre that allow The Devil’s Rejects to resonate not only with its obvious cinematic referents, but also with the kinds of arguments raised by Robin Wood and Carol Clover—critic/scholars who have sought to recuperate value in “low horror” from the knee-jerk condemnation with which it has traditionally been met. Whether or not you buy such arguments, it’s clear that the issues of cinematic sadism and spectator pleasure/complicity are far from settled. The Devil’s Rejects deserves credit for ‘having the goods’ worthy of revitalizing the debate. If only anyone were paying attention.