The Lords of Salem

With the exception of Eli Roth, no other filmmaker in the 2000s has divided horror movie fans more than hard rocker turned director Rob Zombie. People either love or hate his brand of grungy, white trash nihilistic cinema where he identifies with the antagonists rather than the protagonists, be it the Firefly clan in House of 1000 Corpses (2003), The Devil’s Rejects (2005), and 3 From Hell (2019), or Michael Myers in Halloween (2007) and its sequel (2009). With The Lords of Salem (2012), he created his first traditional protagonist only to place her in an unconventional film. Enjoying the most creative freedom he had since Rejects, he eschewed the gore and extreme violence of his previous films in favor of a heavy atmosphere of dread. Freedom from the constraints of a studio franchise (Halloween) emboldened Zombie to push himself as a filmmaker, creating a fascinating phantasmagorical experience.
 
Heidi LaRoc (Sheri Moon Zombie) is a disc jockey at a local, popular Salem hard rock radio station where she co-hosts a show along with two others – Herman “Whitey” Salvador (Jeff Daniel Phillips) and Herman “Munster” Jackson (Ken Foree). She lives with her dog in an old apartment building and one day spots a new tenant in the apartment down the hall. When she asks her landlady (Judy Geeson) the identity of the new inhabitant, she is told that no one lives there.
 
One day at work, a mysterious record shows up in an old wooden box, addressed to Heidi, by a band called The Lords. She listens to it with Whitey and the music causes her to have a vision of a 17th century-era coven of Satan-worshipping witches. She finds herself inexplicably drawn to the apartment down the hall and once there, finds herself confronted by disturbing visions, including a nightmarish beast in an otherworldly landscape. Heidi’s mind unravels over the course of the film as The Lords record really puts the zap on her, blurring the lines between reality and nightmare.

Right from the get-go, Zombie does a wonderful job capturing the cool, crisp autumn days in the Northeast via the cinematography, drawing us into this world. He utilizes a warm, amber filter for night scenes and muted colors, creating a grey, cold look for day scenes. For the first third, he adopts a slow burn approach, not revealing too much, gradually building the dread, letting us get to know Heidi so that we care about happens to her in the latter two acts of the film. He populates the film with Kubrickian low-angle shots of hallways and breaks up the story into days of the week, a la The Shining (1980). He also shows a knack for striking visuals as evident in the fiery, apocalyptic inferno that is the 17th century witch trials, illustrating the Puritans meting out their religious brand of ‘justice.’
 
Sheri Moon Zombie has gotten a lot of flak for her acting prowess and the fact that she almost exclusively appears in her husband’s films, usually in a supporting role, whether it be significant (Rejects) or smaller (Halloween). In The Lords of Salem she is cast in the lead role, the responsibility of carrying the film placed squarely upon her shoulders. Because Moon’s acting ability is inherently tied to her expressive looks and may not have the broadest range, she benefits from Zombie’s ‘less is more’ approach. Heidi doesn’t have a lot of dialogue and, once the effects of The Lords record take hold on her character. She spends most of her time reacting to the strange things going on around her. Sheri does a commendable job of showing a woman plagued by horrible visions of faceless surgeons pulling her intestines out, struggling to make sense of what is happening, and displaying increasingly erratic behavior.
 
Veteran actor Bruce Davidson is excellent as a Salem witch scholar that figures out the connection between The Lords record and the Salem witches. Zombie regular Jeff Daniel Phillips is also memorable as a disc jockey that works and is close friends with Heidi. There is a nicely understated romantic tension between the two characters, suggesting a longstanding friendship, evidenced by the familiar shorthand between them.

As with his other films, Zombie acknowledges horror films from the past by casting its royalty with the likes of Dee Wallace, Judy Geeson, and Ken Foree in crucial roles, and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos by Barbara Crampton, Michael Berryman, and Sig Haig. This isn’t simple stunt casting or a knowing wink to fellow horror genre fans, rather actors playing bonafide, lived-in characters.

The Lords of Salem is a captivating film with Brandon Trost’s atmospheric cinematography giving it a much richer look than its meager $1.5 million budget would suggest. Zombie gets the most out of his locations, choosing those that give a real sense of place including, most crucially, the apartment building that Heidi inhabits. Everything has a lived-in look, from the clutter in the D.J. booth where Heidi does her show to Davidson’s bookcase-dominated home.
 
If there is one erroneous aspect of this film, it’s the reliance on the tired cliché of Satan-worshipping witches. Witchcraft is pagan in nature. While a large number of witches don’t worship any god or goddess, there are those that do…but not Satan. It could be that he is used in film because it is an easily identifiable embodiment of evil, even outside of the Christian faith. Zombie did such a great job in all other areas and seemed to be interested in bucking tradition, then fell back on a stereotypical portrayal that is disappointing, but hardly surprising as this has been done in countless horror films.
 
Zombie tones down the gore in favor of disturbing imagery reminiscent of Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), creating an overwhelming feeling of dread and unease. In that sense, The Lords of Salem is a refreshing outlier in Zombie’s filmography as it dials back the aggressive, extreme horror films of such films as 31 (2016) by shifting gears to more supernatural-based horror, as demonstrated in the showstopping finale. Zombie pulls out the strangest imagery that he’s ever produced and marries it with his trademark downbeat ending, scored to chilling effect with “All Tomorrow’s Parties” by The Velvet Underground and Nico. The Lords of Salem is not a scary movie per se… instead Zombie creates a more chilling, unsettling experience. It appeared that he was maturing and evolving as a filmmaker but when it barely made back its budget, he went back to what he knew best – extreme horror with hillbillies and white trash with 31. That being said, he is still capable of throwing audiences the occasional curve ball as he did in 2002 with the odd career move of making a studio-backed film adaptation of the much-beloved 1960s family sitcom, The Munsters. True to form, by design or not, Zombie’s work continues to fascinate fans and detractors alike.

DVD of the Week: Halloween: Unrated Director's Cut

Remaking a classic horror film is almost never a good idea. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Dawn of the Dead (2004) and The Hitcher (2007) are examples of recent remakes that are inferior shadows of their original selves. And so it came with great disappointment when it was announced that John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) was going to be remade and Rob Zombie would direct. Known mostly for his music with White Zombie and a successful solo career, he’s branched out into making films like The Devil’s Rejects (2005), a down ‘n’ dirty homage to outlaw cinema of the 1970s. Why would a self-professed horror film buff like Zombie even try to remake a revered classic like Halloween? Hubris? Fanboy wish fulfillment? Or, did he figure that this film was going to be made one way or another and rather than let some hack do a crappy job he could at least bring his stylistic touches and point-of-view to the table.

Remakes succeed or fail on the kinds of choices the filmmaker makes and Zombie spends the first two thirds of the film examining what turned Michael Myers into an emotionless serial killer. All the signs are there at an early age: Michael (Daeg Faerch) tortures and kills small animals, his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) is too busy trying to support her family by stripping, his stepfather (William Forsythe) is an abusive, homophobic bully, and his sister is too pre-occupied with her boyfriend to care about her brother. To make matters worse, he’s relentlessly picked on at school.

Pretty soon, Michael graduates from killing animals to viciously dispatching everyone who treated him horribly. The ten-year-old boy is eventually transferred to a sanitarium where he is put under the care and supervision of Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell). The scenes between Loomis and Michael are some of the strongest in the film as the good doctor attempts to understand the young killer’s psychology and how he uses masks to hide what he perceives as his ugly self. Aside from his mother and Loomis, Michael communicates with no one and this only gets worse as the years progress.

Daeg Faerch, the young boy who plays Michael, is fantastic and very convincing as the disturbed killer-in-training. It’s all in the eyes which look dead and only get worse as he gets older until nothing good is left. It’s a very impressive performance. Zombie has an uncanny knack for casting. Malcolm McDowell is the only actor who could possibly replace the late-great Donald Pleasance. He brings his trademark intensity to the role while also providing shades to his character. Loomis starts out as altruistic with Michael but when he realizes that the boy is a lost cause, he turns his many sessions into a tell-all book and begins flogging it on the lecture circuit. It is only once Michael escapes the sanitarium that Loomis has a purpose again and makes it his single-minded mission to find and capture his former patient.

The original Halloween focused on the mystique of Michael while the remake shines a light on the areas of his life not explored in Carpenter’s version. What happened to Michael as a kid that made him into a monster? Zombie’s film answers this question and really gets into his head and explores what motivates him. The remakes of The Hills Have Eyes (2006) and The Hitcher failed because they were simple rehashes of the original with no new insight. Zombie doesn’t make that mistake. We get to hear Michael talk in great scenes with his mother and with Loomis that humanize him and also show his gradual de-humanization. They are simple, yet effective scenes with two people talking and are a nice breather from all of the carnage.

The first two thirds of Halloween (2007) are unrelentingly bleak and grim but also very gripping stuff. The last third condenses Carpenter’s film but fortunately Zombie doesn’t try to ape its style, opting instead to choose unusual camera angles and interesting compositions of the frame for certain scenes. He also mixes up how the many killings are depicted. Some are shot traditionally, others with hand-held camera in a very claustrophobic way, and one of the more interesting ones is when Michael kills a nurse in the sanitarium. It is captured in slow motion with the sound replaced by a jarring alarm that is surprisingly effective.

Zombie’s remake works because he takes the Halloween mythos and expands on it in all kinds of fascinating ways. He makes some really intriguing choices, like not making Michael supernaturally strong but rather a big guy who is naturally tough. Zombie also opts for gritty realism like he did with The Devil’s Rejects and it is a smart choice that works. Whether you love or hate Zombie’s take on the material, you have to admit that it doesn’t resemble Carpenter’s film in any way. It is easily the best Halloween film since Part III, although that isn’t really saying much when you consider the quality of the subsequent sequels.

Special Features:

The first disc features an audio commentary by writer/director Rob Zombie. He points out the various locations they shot in while also drawing our attention to where he took footage out and why. He also talks about the music choices he made and why he picked a certain song that appeared in the film. Zombie spends a lot of time talking about the challenges he faced on certain scenes. He also points out the new footage in this cut and why he put it back. The filmmaker delivers another solid commentary that is well worth a listen if you’re a fan of this film.

The second disc starts of with 17 deleted scenes with optional commentary by Zombie. Unlike some auteurs, he is refreshingly ruthless with his footage and so we have a lot of scenes that were cut, including more of the strip club where Michael’s mom works. There’s also more of Loomis talking to a young Michael. Michael also attends a parole hearing that features a character played Tom Towles. Adrienne Barbeau even shows up briefly in a scene with Loomis. Zombie does a good job explaining why these scenes were cut.

Also included is an “Alternate Ending” with optional commentary by Zombie. This one is more sympathetic to Michael but wasn’t satisfying enough for the director and he went with the other ending which is much more visceral.

“Bloopers” features footage of McDowell cracking up with Sheri Moon Zombie take after take. It turns out that the veteran actor is a real goofball and looks like he’s having a blast making his fellow actors laugh.

“The Many Masks of Michael Myers” takes a look at how they constructed the iconic Michael Myers mask. They created several versions, including clean ones and then gradually grungy ones to symbolize the passage of time. We also see how the put together the various ones that Michael makes in the sanitarium.

“Re-Imagining Halloween” is a three-part look at various aspects of the making of the film. Zombie wanted to shoot it in the style of 21 Grams (2003) and The Constant Gardener (2005). He wanted the three acts to have their own distinctive looks: the first part was all hand-held cameras, the second was very static, and the third act used lots of steadicam work. The film’s production design is examined. They take a look at the various sets and briefly talk about the specific look Zombie was after. The makeup effects are also featured. This involved a lot of work as Michael kills a lot of people. Zombie wanted them to look realistic and we see how some of the kills were done.

“Meet the Cast.” Zombie says that the casting process is the most exciting part of the filmmaking process for him because it is the first time the film feels real. He talks about why he cast the actors that he did and, in turn, they talk about their approach to the characters and a bit about working on the film.

“Casting Sessions” is a collection of excerpts of audition footage of the cast members. It gives us a chance to see what convinced Zombie to hire them.

“Scout Taylor-Compton Screen Test” features more footage of this young actress testing for the role of Laurie Strode. It is easy to see why she was cast as she nails the role.

Finally, there is a theatrical trailer.

My Best Post Blog-a-Thon: The Devil's Rejects

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is part of the My Best Post Blog-a-Thon being coordinated at the He Shot Cyrus blog by elgringo.

In an effort to appeal to the largest audience possible, Hollywood studios have neutered so many horror films into PG-13 movies that they lack any edge or ability to scare beyond the usual fright tactics. They then release the slightly more explicit R-rated or unrated versions on DVD to exploit devotees who don’t want the sanitized theatrical version. Lion’s Gate, a small, independent studio, flies in the face of this trend by distributing R-rated independent and international horror movies like High Tension (2003) and Saw (2004) that push the boundaries of on-screen violence. Hard rocker turned filmmaker Rob Zombie has taken advantage of this by making and releasing his first two films through Lion’s Gate. The Devil’s Rejects (2005) is a gritty, balls-to-the-wall horror movie cum road picture – imagine The Hills Have Eyes (1977) directed by Sam Peckinpah.

Not quite a sequel to Zombie’s first movie, House of a 1000 Corpses (2003), but rather the further adventures of a few of its characters – the notorious Firefly family. Early one morning, the police raid their farm. In the ensuing chaos, Otis (Bill Moseley) and his sister Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) manage to escape with Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe) in hot pursuit and bent on revenge because they killed his brother (see House of 1000 Corpses). Otis and Baby take a country and western band by the name of Banjo & Sullivan hostage in a motel room. They eventually hook up with their partner Captain Spaudling (Sid Haig) and take refuge at a whorehouse owned by Spaudling’s brother, Charlie Altamont (Ken Foree). They get ready for the inevitable confrontation with Wydell.

When Zombie wrote House of 1000 Corpses, he had a “vague idea” for a story about the brother of the sheriff that the Firefly clan killed coming back for revenge. He did this just in case the film did well enough at the box office and created interest in another film. After Lions Gate made back all of their money on the first day of Corpses theatrical release, the studio wanted Zombie to make another film and he started to seriously think about a new story. With Rejects, he wanted to make it more horrific and the characters less cartoonish than in Corpses. He was interested in making “something that was almost like a violent western” and has cited films like The Wild Bunch (1969), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and Badlands (1973) as influences.

Zombie hired Phil Parmet, who had shot the legendary documentary Harlan County USA (1976) because he wanted to adopt a hand-held camera/documentary look. To prepare for the film, Parmet watched many horror films but when he and Zombie started talking about the approach they wanted to take on Rejects, they actually connected on revisionist westerns like Hang ‘Em High (1968), Monte Walsh (1970), and El Topo (1970). They also looked to films like The French Connection (1971), In Cold Blood (1967) and Fat City (1972) for inspiration. During pre-production, they decided to shoot the film on 16mm and Zombie cited films like Amores Perros (2000) and 21 Grams (2003) as jumping off points for how he wanted to shoot his own film. Zombie told Parmet that he wanted to use two cameras at all time and for certain scenes, like the chaotic gunfight at the Firefly house at the beginning of the film, to have as many as six cameras running simultaneously.

Zombie has populated his cast with an impressive collection of B-horror character actors: Sid Haig (Spider Baby), Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead), P.J. Soles (Halloween), and Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes). They are not cast for kitsch or novelty value but because they have the acting chops to pull off these meaty roles. Zombie cast actors with interesting faces that have character. Every line or glint in their eyes says so much and he captures them in close-ups a la Sergio Leone. And no one personifies a fascinating face more than Sid Haig who plays Captain Spaulding as the scariest clown with evil make-up that includes black lips and horrible yellow teeth augmenting his already grizzled looks.

After starring in numerous forgettable direct-to-video efforts, William Forsythe finally gets a substantial role. Every once in a while, he pops up in a mainstream film, like Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead (1995) and The Rock (1996) usually playing some generic bad guy role. He harkens back to a bygone era of tough guys, like Lee Marvin or Robert Shaw, who naturally exuded a ferocious intensity that is exciting to watch. With his deep, gravelly voice Forsythe plays an unstoppable force of nature that is just as ruthless in his methods as the Firefly clan.

The dialogue crackles and pops with its own profane rhythm. The tough guy-speak works because it is believable and the actors deliver it with conviction. Zombie breaks it up with some very funny bits and truly laugh-out-loud moments of black humor. For example, the Firefly clan uses aliases of names of Groucho Marx characters. To crack this code, Wydell brings in movie critic Marty Walker (Robert Trebor) and they end up getting into an argument about the merits of Elvis Presley movies that is hilarious and helps relieve some of the unrelenting tension that this film generates.

The Devil’s Rejects is a good looking movie that features a lush glow of reds, greens and blues during the night scenes and then Zombie cuts to one with a minimalist single light source with nothing in the background so that we focus on the two actors in the scene and what they are saying. In contrast, the day scenes have a warm, saturated sun-burnt look. The darkest scene in the movie in terms of tonality actually takes place at high noon and this makes it even more sinister because there is nowhere to hide.

Zombie references all kinds of movies and not just the usual horror movies that other filmmakers quote. When he does refer to other films he does so in a subtle way and not in a look-how-clever-I-am way that Quentin Tarantino does. Tarantino is a cinematic show-off who is content to sample his favorite scenes from other movies without showing any kind of understanding about how they work. The Devil’s Rejects is a down ‘n’ dirty celebration of outlaw 1970s cinema complete with a fantastic score of southern rock classics from the likes of the Allman Brothers Band, Joe Walsh and Lynyrd Skynyrd. In case of the last band, the way their anthem “Free Bird” is used in this movie is incredible. What could have been so clichéd comes across as a poignant and iconic scene in the film, befitting the song itself.

Not surprisingly, the film garnered a mixed reaction from critics. Roger Ebert actually enjoyed it, giving it three out of four stars and wrote, “There is actually some good writing and acting going on here, if you can step back from the material enough to see it.” In a later review for the 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes, he referenced Zombie’s film and wrote, “I admired two things about it: (1) It desired to entertain and not merely to sicken; and (2) its depraved killers were individuals with personalities, histories and motives.” In his review for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers also gave it three out of four stars and wrote, “Let's hear it for the Southern-fried soundtrack, from Buck Owens' "Satan's Got to Get Along Without Me" to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird," playing over the blood-soaked finale, which manages to wed The Wild Bunch to Thelma and Louise.”

In her review for the New York Times, Dana Stevens wrote that the film "is a trompe l'oeil experiment in deliberately retro filmmaking. It looks sensational, but there is a curious emptiness at its core.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "C+" rating and wrote, "Zombie's characters are, to put it mildly, undeveloped.” Robert K. Elder, of the Chicago Tribune, disliked the movie, writing "[D]espite decades of soaking in bloody classics such as the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and I Spit On Your Grave, Zombie didn't absorb any of the underlying social tension or heart in those films. He's no collage artist of influences, like Quentin Tarantino, crafting his movie from childhood influences. Rejects plays more like a junkyard of homages, strewn together and lost among inept cops, gaping plot holes and buzzard-ready dialog.”

Horror author Stephen King voted The Devil's Rejects the 9th best movie of 2005 and wrote, "No redeeming social merit, perfect '70s C-picture cheesy glow; this must be what Quentin Tarantino meant when he did those silly Kill Bill pictures.”

This film does not quite look like it was shot in the ‘70s but made by someone who grew up in that decade. Rejects was made by a horror film fan for horror film fans. Zombie has created a truly disturbing horror movie with no real redeemable characters, that is refreshingly unpredictable and this is what makes it so scary, like the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Both movies are feverish nightmares except that in Massacre you felt sympathy for the female protagonist. The Devil’s Rejects does not even have that. You may find yourself rooting for the Firefly family early on but Zombie quickly rejects this notion by portraying them as truly irredeemable people. There is no sappy love story or cop-out ending and this remains true to many of the nihilistic movies of the ‘70s. Horror film obsessives always brace themselves for the wimp out ending — it is the downfall of so many horror films — Rejects does not make this mistake. Zombie has shown a real growth as a filmmaker, creating I daresay a modern horror masterpiece.


SOURCES

Lutman, Danny. "INT: Devil's Rejects." JoBlo.com. July 15, 2004.

"Meet the Rejects". Fangoria. August 2005.

Ridley, Jim. "Sympathy for the Devils." Nashville Scene. July 21–25, 2005.

Tobias, Scott. "Rob Zombie." The Onion A.V. Club. August 2, 2005.