I loathed Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses; it was dumb, ugly and messy, such that I put off seeing the sequel, The Devil's Rejects, for many years despite hearing very positive things. It's a sequel so drastically improved that even Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper gave it Two Thumbs Up on their At The Movies TV show, and it has earned esteem from many gore-hounds as one of the best horror films of the 2000s. Though Zombie's work since hasn't exactly made him a director to watch, The Devil's Rejects is a rare bright spot of his filmography. The infamous Firefly family from the first film spend the movie on the run from the law, and Zombie manages to craft a frenetic, ultra-gory horror flick that does away with the first film's irritating gimmicks, opting for simply effective brutality. Developing Baby, Otis and Captain Spaulding rather than just portraying them as mindless psychopaths certainly adds to the film's success; this is a horror flick with a wild, vibrant personality.