The Lords of Salem

A radio disc jockey--part of a popular late night team--living in Salem, Massachusetts, never emotionally recovers after listening to the music of a vinyl record by a band simply called The Lords. When she begins a mental deterioration, and a historian begins to research her past, there could be a link to the curse of burned-alive witches.
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Well, if I take anything away from The Lords of Salem, it is that the female cast—as the filthy, unwashed witches (led by a game Meg Foster)—really get into their roles around that ritual fire where they relish in spitting upon and ridiculing God while devoting themselves wholly to their Lord Satan. It kicks off yet another polarizing Rob Zombie horror project that divides genre fans (by gauging the response on the imdb horror board and basic critical opinion, feelings are certainly in the middle; some hate it, some love it, and a few are mixed about how they feel, but the sentiment primarily goes from one end or the other of the like/dislike spectrum), with the witches shedding their robes, unveiling naked bodies covered in dirt, their teeth unattended to, and totally dancing around and waving about their hands, chanting and offering a cheerful celebration to Satan. It tells us exactly who they are and what they stand for. Their relation to the film’s lead female character, played by Zombie’s wife, Sheri Moon, will make itself known as her contribution (involuntary or otherwise) to their “uprising” eventually reveals at the end.

I can admit to you that undeniably my favorite part of the film was basically the radio station sequences where we see that Sheri is part of a three person team with a popular metal show that looks at occult and music with horror-type overtones. The way that the three play off each other is really fun to watch and listen to, and the chemistry between them helps substantially when Sheri’s character starts to fall apart. The Lords have a hand in her downward spiral (or upward spiral if you support the witches and their chosen deity), and the radio team can do nothing about it. Foree, much to my surprise, does have a radio voice! It brought a smile to my face to hear him in “radio voice”, and his comment to the team about being careful not to get a “DWS” (Driving While Sexy) also seems so Foree.

I have to say John 5 providing the score was a nice choice. It gives The Lords of Salem a melancholic quality—the setting and Sheri’s rather unfulfilled life. It also adds a feeling of menace when Zombie needs it while inside the apartment complex Sheri lives; and the vinyl record (its return always a pleasant sight for this 36 year old) tune provided by The Lords especially filling any room or airwaves with a strong feeling of impending doom.  I think the setting in Massachusetts was a nice touch, too, even if it is modern 70s (???) contemporary Salem, after spending some brief moments with the witches centuries previous. I could also sense the autumnal cold of Salem with winter on the horizon, perfect bait for October viewing. I never understand why Zombie’s movies (for the exception of The Devil’s Rejects, which always felt like a summer movie) were always being released in April or thereabouts instead of October when his work would be more relevant and appeal to its audience during the appropriate season. Zombie, for the most part, is OCTOBER, not April, June, or September. I always will feel money was left on the table for House of 1000 Corpses, Halloween, Halloween II, and, especially, The Lords of Salem.

These days, good actors can come relatively cheap. I know that sounds rather horrible, but let me explain myself. Zombie benefits exponentially by the character actors that populate his films. And they are the kind who don’t come with heavy price tags, and their names, while favorable to us horror/genre fans who admire and appreciate them when they show up, just don’t carry the weight of a ridiculous paycheck needing shelled out. Like Brad Dourif and Malcolm McDowell in the Halloween films, or Sid Haig and Bill Moseley in The Devil’s Rejects. In The Lords of Salem, Bruce Davison takes the honors of performer who leaves his mark in a part that really won’t leap from the page of a script or plot outline, but his work, nonetheless, excels because he doesn’t force the issue but allows his likable attributes to organically shine from himself into the character. I will try to explain this a bit better. His character understands that writing a novel about the Salem witches will be looked at through a lens of potential mockery, with public opinion perhaps treating his work with a rather cynical smirk. Understanding that he would be dismissed as some scholarly loser, still Davison’s author/historian takes the material seriously yet doesn’t allow the typical reaction to his work to burden him down or diminish his sense of humor. Zombie has also allowed Dee Wallace to get a little more screen time in The Lords of Salem, than the customary “she shows up to collect the check for a day’s work” part, and this time it isn’t a mom part, thank goodness; instead, she is this flighty, energetic tenant in Sheri’s apartment complex (when we first see her, she’s inebriated and kookily chatty) soon to be one of the “new witches” who joins in a beatdown of Davison (one of the most disturbing scenes in the film, as he was the one who uncovers the rebirth of the powerful influence of Satan’s witches in his great city). Judy Geeson (Inseminoid) as the apartment proprietor isn’t expected to knock us off our ass in her performance but she doesn’t really have to, either.

I have read about and watched enough of Sheri Moon to determine that her performances in Zombie’s films offer quite a bit of scrutiny, derision, and even optimism during her tenure starting with her humble beginnings (Tobe Hooper’s The Toolbox Murders (as the opening victim)) until The Lords of Salem. She could have just been satisfied as a proud psychotic, her voice descending into squeaky, infantile mocking towards victims unable to escape her villainy, but with Halloween and Lords, she seems motivated to prove her critics wrong. With Baby Firefly, she could get under your skin to the point that if you were able it’d be easy to want to punch her in the face. That was the whole point to that character; she flaunted her psychopathy unapologetically and enjoyably. It takes a great deal more effort, however, to earn an audience’s sympathy. She was a victim of circumstance and bad choices (and bad taste in men) in Halloween as a mother with a monstrous killer child (harboring a quiet rage that would spill out upon animals and eventually a school bully) and girlfriend to a cretin with a nasty, odious attitude. In Lords, she is “chosen” to give birth to a “special” child, and the record with music that trances and controls signals a mental deterioration and eventual reprisal of drug addiction she had tried hard to keep in check. Lords is her most complex part, and this role perhaps would have been especially noteworthy if it had someone with a bit more range. This is simply the way that it is though…as long as Rob Zombie directs the film; his wife will receive a significant part. I admire her desire, though, to prove her critics wrong, but I’m still not quite sold that she will truly ever be able to carry a film on her own. Davison, even in his short screen time, has an effortless skill that doesn’t cry aloud, “working hard to convince”, while when I watch Sheri it’s “please believe that I can do this”. She has a character with some mileage and baggage; it’s a character that I do think would be appealing to a lot of actresses who wish for such a challenge (a former drug addict, no real love life, with a decent gig on the radio, trying to make it day to day the best she can, soon contending with dark forces desiring her for their grand plan, set in motion centuries ago). All of this said, Lords could be Sheri’s most prominent part and best role she’ll likely ever receive in her career. The film itself has good and bad, but I don’t consider Sheri the problem this time, so that’s something in her favor, I guess. The corn rows hair style and chest tat, as well as, her unique looking flat (with the silent film tributes so obviously a trait of a Rob Zombie film he never resists), fur coat, and knee high socks, add color to her character and look. The Andy Warhol photographic art for the Lords film posters have been a product of debate in the marketing strategy for its limited theatrical distribution, but I was a fan of the posters that were produced. I definitely wanted to include one of them for my blog review I liked them so much.

Fate predetermined by forces stronger than ourselves as described by a palm reader who can see Sheri’s purpose in life is a type of foreshadowing that depicts itself in Zombie’s finale (leaving many, including myself, baffled and puzzled). A good portion of this film is about the build towards the finale, so I think the jury returns a sour verdict because the fate of The Lords (and films in general that operate as a build towards the ending, like the sexual act reaching its orgasm) hinges on what ultimately happens to the heroine.

Around the 33 minute mark, I think Zombie’s film hits its stride. This is Zombie’s “The Shining moment” where Door #5 opens and Sheri’s character “turns the corner” never to quite return. Sheri sees Hell (or at least that what it looks like to me), with the “gatekeepers” and the beast, eventually told by Lead Salem Witch Foster that she would be their vessel (their “blade”) towards a great reawakening.

In regards to exposition, Zombie doesn’t leave us empty-handed. Davison visits the author of “The End of the American Witch” and is informed of the diary of Reverend Hawthorne (supposed to have been portrayed by the late Richard Lynch, but due to his physical condition he had to be replaced by Andrew Prine (in itself inspired casting)) and what it somewhat entailed. Hawthorne, as he and his men were “roasting alive” Margaret Morgan and her brood, rambled in text about how his bloodline is cursed to carry the Devil’s child (explaining Sheri’s purpose), while the women of Salem, generations afterward, would soon be overtaken by the music (the repeating, ominous bar on the vinyl record sent to Sheri) they devoted to their Lord Satan, possessed and recruited as the witches had always envisioned. Davison’s research into Sheri and the further background of Hawthorne and the Lords of Salem leads him to a fate most unkind. The trio that have befriended Sheri in her apartment complex are harboring a dark secret that comes uncaged once Davison enters their orbit. Morgan’s plan long ago is made manifest and no one will threaten its uprising, particularly someone scholarly like Davison who might try to snatch away Sheri from their grasp to help her combat the wheel set in motion.

I think the Rosemary’s Baby aspect comes into play when Sheri, having picked up some smack and smoked it not long after, is stoned and the trio is now at an advantage while she’s lost in her stupor. This is that moment when the pregnancy can come to fruition and lead to the spawn of Lucifer getting its birth (and it is a fugly bastard, too) as planned by the Lords. She is led to Room #5, where this grand cathedral all of a sudden appears (this is quite a remarkable room, seemingly alternating according to Satan’s desire), with a theatrical score fit for kings accompanying Sheri (in white face and sweater, a look of abject misery expressively worn) as the approach towards her impregnator commenced. I don’t know what is up with those umbilical cord-like strands that reach forth as Sheri takes firm tugs on them as the creature screeches. It is certainly a bewildering, bizarre moment among many bewildering, bizarre moments. Rosemary’s Baby and The Lords of Salem indicate that runaway train finality, a course that won’t be stopped, any choice in the matter for Sheri is removed; Sheri, like Mia Farrow, is vulnerable and soon unintentionally involved with followers of Satan, under the influence of another with little to say about the end result. Others that might help Sheri are powerless because the wheels in motion will not buckle at resistance.

Unfortunately, the ending loses me…completely. The shit with Sheri riding a goat, getting raptured from behind by a death metal rocker, reacting in agony to an ear-splitting noise that brings her to her knees, and soon bleeding from between her legs as Morgan and witches grope her tummy with their hands doesn’t even compare to all the twisted uses of demonic and Christian iconography  popping up in spurts, with Sheri, her eyes total white, standing atop her sisters (a pile of naked and dead bodies resembling a hill), most of the female populace of Salem who were, dare I say, “bewitched”, as Geeson, Wallace, and Patricia Quinn look up in total exhilaration at what they accomplished while a light of white shines about them in a glow that emanates (interesting choice to light them all angelic white instead of hellish red). It is Zombie unglued, no longer holding to narrative, allowing a “shock to the senses” type of Satanic Stargate to conclude the whole film. Then he allows us to see Sheri with her pooch outside playing, reminding us that prior to the vinyl’s grip over her and the females of Salem that life didn’t always suck.

Jeffrey Daniel Phillips has a nice part here as member of the Big H radio team, caring deeply for Sheri and offers a sympathetic ear to her. She diminishes until the point she needs help walking and by the end, as Phillips leads her to the door of the Salem Palladium, with Foree certainly concerned for her well being. They can go no further, as the door closes on them. That is the point where the film closes its door on coherency.

The ending. Basically the witches win and Sheri vanishes as the janitor of the Palladium discovers the dead bodies of the women of Salem.  Where the witches and Sheri go is anybody’s guess. I just wish I could get the horrific image of flabby old naked women walking in masks down a Palladium hall out of my mind. Where’s a mind sweep when you need one? Good score closes the ending, though, with quite a tune of loss that permeates. This film is really the first directed by Zombie to feature little off-the-wall comedy, although many would consider the finale wall-to-wall unintentional comedy. Whatever the case, it is a step forward by Zombie where he seems little content to be stereotyped as just a horror filmmaker typecasted with white trash characters featuring subject matter relatable to those kinds of people and their personalities. It is also a film that follows a similar change in where natural plots go as Halloween II was taking a different more supernatural approach (with Michael and Laurie “connected”, with Michael seemingly impervious to a lot of abuse and a destructive force that can crush heads underfoot), so The Lords of Salem is another chapter in such a progression.