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THE DEVIL'S REJECTS (2005) Director: Rob Zombie Hacktors: Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, Sheri Moon Zombie, William Forsythe, Ken Foree, Michael Berryman. Rating/5: Cutting Remarks: This film has cost me sleep. No, really. For a few days after seeing this movie for the first time, a few scenes stood between me and Sleepsville, playing over and over like some hellish loop-tape. For that reason alone, The Devil's Rejects thoroughly deserves worship.       I loved House Of 1000 Corpses for its surprising ability to disquiet the viewer, but this one takes savagery to a new level. Besides being more explicitly gory and sadistic, it also takes Corpses' slightly surreal, dream-like qualities and visuals by the scruff of the neck, bringing them sharply into focus. The Devil's Rejects is very much about reality: you'll find nothing supernatural here. No Dr Satan or his axe-wielding Professor. Not even a mention of them. Instead, Zombie takes his three main characters - Otis (Moseley), Baby (Moon Zombie - now that's a great surname!) and Captain Spaulding (Haig) - and flushes them out of their previous House, out on the road, where they're on the run from insanely vengeful Sheriff John Wydell (Forsythe), whose brother was murdered in the first movie. While Zombie still has a winning way with contrasting seemingly inappropriate music with violent visuals, he has drastically toned down the stylistic exploration which characterised Corpses.       First of all, the trio have their extremely wicked way with a country band, in the desolate Kahiki Palms motel. To get an idea of this sequence, recall the early motel room scenes in From Dusk 'Til Dawn and multiply it by, say, 666. Extremely malevolent, dread-stirring stuff which isn't easily forgotten - especially one horribly matter-of-fact execution by bullet.       The titular rejects (as they've been christened by the press) eventually hole up at a brothel town owned by Spaulding's brother Charlie (a very welcome Foree, with Berryman as a sidekick), where the evangelical Sheriff Wydell closes an iron fist around them. What happens next - and by God, I won't spoil it - makes you question your own morality, as you find yourself mentally goading Wydell to do these bastards some serious damage. Having said that, you occasionally get the impression that Zombie himself sees Otis, Baby and Spaulding as his heroes: that's partly why The Devil's Rejects is the most disturbing horror movie since House Of 1000 Corpses. Of course, evil-doers becoming heroes is common in the slasher genre, but here the trio's exploits seem so pointlessly cruel that you really take a dislike to them: a great achievement by Zombie. The innocent are sadistically fed through the wringer, while the wicked... well, you'll have to wait and see what ultimately happens to the wicked.       Okay, so is it all completely brilliant? Not quite. The surprisingly familiar (some might say cliched - actually, f**k it, I'm saying it's cliched and beneath Rob Zombie's usual unique vision) ending, along with the fact that we don't learn much new about the Rejects themselves prove to be the sole disappointments, but not to the extent of ruining the overall effect. Hell, no. They merely render The Devil's Rejects a flawed masterpiece. This is a powerhouse of a film, with a gaping abyss where its heart should be. In a world where alleged horror movies float in and out of cinemas like vapour, The Devil's Rejects etches itself on your brain with a white-hot brand. Thank Satan for a horror movie that f**king horrifies. DVD Details: The new two-disc set is the stuff of a madman's dreams. For one thing, there's a two-and-a-half hour documentary which details every single day of the movie's 30-day production, as well as some pre-production and casting. Titled 30 Days In Hell - Making The Devil's Rejects, this has to be the most detailed look at a horror movie's production since Full Tilt Boogie, which documented From Dusk 'Til Dawn. There's plenty of insight from Rob Zombie himself, plus interviews with the film's major and not-so-major players. As you might expect from the notoriously bullshit-shy Zombie, it's not a candy-coated affair either, which seeks to present film-making as an orgy of air-kissing perfection. We see Sheri Moon seemingly become temporarily deaf when a shotgun goes off too close to her ear, then wince as Mary Woronov berates Bill Moseley for stabbing her shoulder instead of the blood-pack he was meant to hit. There's also the odd awkward moment when the laidback Zombie is forced to flex his authoritorial muscles, disciplining the odd crew member in a very polite fashion.     One of the doc's big revelations is that a whole day of shooting eventually went to waste, when Zombie jettisoned an entire scene in which a hospitalised Dr Satan (from the first movie) attacks a nurse played by Sin City's Rosario Dawson. Zombie is admirably honest about the ins and outs of his movie's genesis: in particular the continuity nightmares which ensue when you shoot a script wildly out of its natural running order. There's more of this info from the writer and director in his amusingly dry audio commentary, while a second commentary features Sid Haig, Bill Moseley and Sheri Moon Zombie having a right old chuckle like the family unit that they are. Back on the subject of the doc for a second, its presentation is only lacking in the sense that its five parts are each given disc chapters, but there's no actual menu. Small point, but a menu would have made for some nice window-dressing.     Wonderfully, we get to see the ditched Dr Satan sequence. While it's fun, it also confirms that Zombie made a wise decision in getting shot of it. Not only would it have popped The Devil's Rejects' clammy reality bubble, but it's just... not... that... good. There are several other deleted scenes, none of which have horrific content: it's generally funny little tangents of dialogue which the movie certainly didn't need. There's a nice one, though, when Michael Berryman's character Clevon expresses his fear at Sheriff Wydell's righteous rage, only to be told to shut his mouth by Charlie (Ken Foree). Furthermore, a dialogue scene in which Wydell is driving the Rejects off to his torture house, would have worked nicely if the continuity hadn't been all out of whack.     Remarkably, there are still more extras, including a brief but inevitably affecting tribute to the late Matthew McGrory, who played Tiny Firefly in this movie and House Of 1000 Corpses. Brian Posehn, who stars in Rejects as the loveable roadie Jimmy, does a hilariously awkward stand-up routine while caked in blood. We see a couple of Captain Spaulding TV spots in full, plus 15-minutes of fictional character Morris Green's '70s TV chat show which isn't very funny and qualifies as extras overkill. Factor in some trailers, make-up tests, bloopers and other tasty morsels and you have, appropriately enough, one hell of a DVD package. Pure ambrosia nectar for the Zombie-ite! Release Dates: The Devil's Rejects is out now on unrated DVD in America. It hits UK retail DVD on December 26, 2005. 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