Starring: Sheri Moon Zombie, Bruce Davison, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Dee Wallace, Meg Foster
Director: Rob Zombie
A Radio DJ receives a gift from “The Lords” a mysterious record whose music triggers flashbacks of Salem’s mysterious and witch filled past.
First things first, I am a huge Rob Zombie fan. House of 1000 Corpses is cult perfection, Devils rejects a more serious western take that is blissfully fun. Both Halloweens yeah I dug them. El Superbeasto? Tom Papa is hilarious enough said. I consider Zombie to be a visual original. To say I went into Lords of Salem with a certain level of expectation is an understatement. Zombie starts off initially in stellar form with the titles next to a goats head, setting the tone for what I hoped to be Zombies best yet.
The film can be summed quit easily a coven of witches perform a ritual to Satan, cut to present day we have a radio DJ who receives a record from “The Lords”. When she plays it she gets headaches and sees the coven was burned alive. She relapses into drug abuse and is abducted by modern day witches due to being related to the man that had “The Lords” burned. She goes to a concert of “The Lords” where the leader of the coven appears.
There are a handful of scenes that are uniquely Zombie; sadly the pacing and story are his weakest endeavor yet. The crazy humor and disturbing violence that has been his stamp before has been replaced by a slow burn that never quite delivers. The scariest thing to see in the film is full frontal elderly nudity which is displayed with reckless abandon. I appreciate Zombie throwing the fan boys a few scenes of his scream queen wife Sheri Moon’s ass crack, yet not enough to compensate for the abundance of saggy, wrinkled and folded flesh that is on display.
Rather than creating a finely tuned horror story, Zombie has instead decided to use this venue to show the acting range of his wife. Sheri Moon proves she is more than just Zombie’s better half but to watch her slowly lose her mind and sobriety can only go so far. It is a horror film and I personally go to horror films to be scared or at the bare minimum get startled. Lords of Salem chooses to be utilized as an acting reel for Sheri Moon.
Zombie teases with glimpses the man in the mask in front of the church, the fellatio dream in the church, the midget demon, blood coming out of the walls. It’s as if Zombie was trying to go Kubrick and have small scenes of horror like the shining while the main character slowly loses their mind. While The Shining had the Overlook and isolation, Lords has old naked women and a drug problem.
What is most shocking of all is that with a few small edits this could have been a PG film, Outside of a wonderfully shot scene of the legendary Dee Wallace (Cujo, The Mom in ET) Bludgeoning a man with a pan, which is all shot from the victims perspective the film is mostly violence free.
Slow pacing, a complete lack of scares and my own expectations caused this to be the most disappointing movie I have seen all year. You can’t have a movie where the scariest thing the villain does is praise Satan.
The boogie man is real and its Rob Zombies own track record. Lords of Salem isn’t up to par with his previous efforts. This could be cut down to the greatest music video in history but as a feature it disappoints.
Grade – 59
