On Demand picks

September 17, 2011

THE DEVIL’S REJECTS **½ (Comcast Movies: Free Movies) The second film to be directed by the heavy-metal rocker Rob Zombie is actually a pretty good, if almost completely scurrilous, homage to the cheap drive-in revenge films of the 1970s. Fans of the genre will be in B-movie heaven picking off the cameo appearances, but the main plot, about a kill-crazed clan of psychos, wallows too heavily in sadism. Fans would say that’s the point - so let ’em. (PG; runs through Sept. 20) TY BURR

JENNIFER’S BODY ** (Showtime on Comcast) Not a disaster but a meh: A teen horror comedy that’s neither funny enough nor terribly scary. The script by Diablo Cody (“Juno’’) swaggers but doesn’t bite, and Megan Fox is too generic to make her demonically possessed high school queen bee very interesting. Amanda Seyfried is more fun as her nerd-grrl pal. “Heathers’’ it ain’t. (R; runs through Sept. 22)

TY BURR

ED WOOD ***½ (Showtime on Comcast) By all rights, this should be a camp trifle, filled with the cheesy awfulness that marked the output of the legendary shlockmeister (“Plan 9 From Outer Space’’) and the bizarre repertory company he gathered around himself. But it turns into a tenderly affecting take not only on Wood’s demented mix of optimism and denial, but on the maniacal hopes and drives and aspirations behind all the movies Hollywood ever made. (R; runs through Oct. 4)