MOVIE REVIEW: 3 From Hell: The Rejects Return

For those of us fortunate enough to see Heavy Metal Maven turned Horror Movie Auteur Rob Zombie’s latest foray into madness, 3 From Hell on the big screen the images are likely still playing on an endless loop in our nightmares. However, the violence that fills almost every second of the 2 hours and 2 minute running time is more poetic than gruesome. 3 From Hell is the third installment of the Devil’s Rejects Trilogy that began with Zombie’s cult classic House of a Thousand Corpses. The film opens with grainy, documentary style scenes showing the bloody outcome of the shootout with Wydell’s deputies that ended in the final scene of The Devil’s Rejects. The three infamous outlaws drive headlong into a hail of gunfire set to the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic “Freebird” sustaining the nearly fatal wounds that make their capture possible. This is where 3 From Hell begins.

The original cast return to their respective roles as Rejects including Sid Haig as the iconic clown, Captain Spaulding albeit to a greatly diminished degree. The elderly actor and horror fan favorite has recently suffered with some serious health issues apparently beginning as far back as the inception of 3 From Hell. Rob Zombie said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, “…three weeks out from shooting, I got a call from Sid Haig. He had been in the hospital, and he had just had surgery, and he was now recovering in a rehabilitation facility. I’m like holy sh!t, this is serious business. So, I went to see him and he had changed drastically from the last time I saw him. Because Sid, he’s big and burly, and now he’s tiny as a skeleton. So I was like, oh man. I kind of realized, yeah, he’s in rough shape. So, at that point, I was kind of f#-ked.” It became obvious that his script would have to undergo a massive rewrite, including the execution of Captain Spaulding and the introduction of replacement Reject and half-brother of Otis Driftwood and Baby Firefly, Winslow Foxworth Coltrane aka “Foxy”. This role went to Zombie alum Richard Brake. Brake had worked with Zombie and company on his previous horror masterpiece, “31”, but is probably most well known as The Night King from seasons 4 and 5 of Game of Thrones. Many of the scenes intended for Sid Haig ultimately went to Brake’s character. Bill Moseley and Sheri Moon Zombie returned to the roles they made infamous in the first two Rejects films.

As Otis Driftwood, Moseley is the perfect amalgamation of Charles Manson and Johnny Van Zant, cold-blooded serial killer with rock star swagger. His character arc is perhaps the most intriguing of the three beginning as a platinum blonde satanic cultist in House of a Thousand Corpses becoming a more brutal killing machine in Devil’s Rejects leading to a man the system created through the ten plus years spent in prison before his escape left a pile of blood soaked, bullet riddled bodies in his wake. Zombie’s third installment in his Rejects trilogy makes the most chilling social commentary as we see the violently reprehensible trio of outlaws become something of folk heroes in a society full of individuals just as bad and in many cases worse. Rob Zombie’s lovely and talented wife, Sheri Moon Zombie’s character, Baby is the most blatantly victimized of the three as she is beaten by other inmates at the prison where she is serving her multiple life sentences. Baby is repeatedly denied parole and mistreated by the prison guards, one guard in particular, played by horror movie royalty, Dee Wallace Stone seems to have some unresolved, misplaced feelings for Baby resulting in some of the films most brutal scenes. Mrs. Zombie’s character has undergone some extremely cathartic events since last we saw her in that bullet shredded Cadillac convertible. Much like her brother, Otis prison has not been a very rehabilitative experience for Baby. Although she hasn’t visible aged very much at all, Baby’s body is now adorned with jailhouse tattoos depicting attributes of her fractured psyche. The warden responsible for the treatment of the two surviving Rejects is played to sadistic perfection by Jeff Daniel Phillips. He brings a ghoulish glee to the coke snorting, ultimately doomed, adulterous prison official rocking a handlebar mustache and mutton chop sideburns.

Rob Zombie’s penchant for assembling ensemble casts of the best character actors from bygone eras calls to mind the early films of the master of mayhem and filth, John Waters. 3 From Hell is no exception boasting the likes of Clint Howard, Danny Trejo, Austin Stoker and Chaz Bono just to name a few of the stellar cast. These may not be A-list stars, but they are talented artists all who have made their bones and carved out careers that have spanned decades, more importantly they fit Rob Zombie’s force of nature style of film making. His gritty, down and dirty productions are quite often hard to watch, the violence has a realism to it that is certainly not for the squeamish. However, these are exactly the elements that make these films stand out among the other more tame horror fare. 3 From Hell, as is true of most of Rob Zombie’s work, maintains an inexplicable air of discomfort from start to finish, while transversely thoroughly capturing the audience’s collective attention. Like driving by a fatal highway accident, you don’t want to see but, you can’t look away. Zombie brings a confrontational element to his work, he confronts that dark side of human nature that compels us toward the most heinous elements of the human experience. It’s a voyeuristic pleasure that we dare not contemplate in anyway but the most vicarious manner.

From a less esoteric perspective, 3 From Hell is a pure artistic triumph, contextually revisiting the narrative while juxtaposing past and present plot threads. Zombie pays homage to Sid Haig’s contribution to the overarching narrative without seeming self indulgent or derivative. The climactic scene in the Mexican village builds to a crescendo of chaos and visceral tension that literally culminates in flaming carnage. There is a brutal beauty to this film, thematically operatic and biblical in scope. Rob Zombie’s current opus is part 70’s newsreel footage, part Sturges, part Peckinpah and part Leone; visually stunning in its disturbing images, strangely gorgeous in its grainy grandeur and completely engrossing. Admittedly Rob Zombie’s films are not for everyone, but for those of us who have a taste for the macabre and an appreciation for abomination there is no better way to spend a couple hours in a darkened cinema full of like-minded miscreants. So if you weren’t one of the hardcore Zombie Zombies who saw 3 From Hell in its extremely limited three day run, you can watch it in the safety of your own home when it is released on Blu-ray DVD on October 15th. 4.5/5

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Written and Directed by Rob Zombie

Starring- Sheri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Richard Brake, Sid Haig, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Kevin Jackson, Mariano Mendoza, Richard Edson, Pancho Moler, Dee Wallace Stone, David Ury, Clint Howard, Danny Trejo, Emilio Rivera