Lords of Salem

Horror movies, perhaps more than any other genre are capable of being grand in their failure, or being failures in their grandiosity, flat-out good, and flat-out bad. In part, genre movies have always had an uphill battle because they simply don’t get the funding. Your proposition of a reboot of a sitcom is a lot less of a risk than a Satanist cult horror drama and, consequently, the budgets show the difference.

• Plan 9 from Outer Space is flat out bad.
• Basket Case is good but shows its seams for lack of budget
• The Blair Witch Project is good-ish and beautifully hides its lack of budget
• The Conjuring universe is meh, but the studio uses marketing and high-budget stars to own the segment

In search of a spook-tacular movie over the Halloween weekend, we notice that Rob Zombie’s film “Lord of Salem” was available for free on Amazon Prime video, so we gave it a try. I had seen Zombie’s first film (“House of 1,000 Corpses”) some time in the aughts back in San Jose with my horror aficionado friend, Mice. At that time, it dead met my expectations: low-budget, schlocky, bloody, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” style horror. But in “Lords of Salem,” both Lauren and I were surprised by its relatively high (for the genre) quality. While it’s still not good, it’s a hint that with his formidable mental index of the horror genre, Zombie may well have a great horror movie in him.

What shifted LoS from schlock-horror to step-toward-greatness horror, in my opinion is:

• Literate themes focus
• An adept eye for visual composition
• Awareness and healthy respect for the drama-horror films like “The Omen,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” and “The Exorcist”

Literate Themes

Cruising along through the movie, I was pretty cool on it until this conversation that happened between the protagonist (“Heidi”) and her landlady (and her two “sisters”) at around the half-hour mark. One of the sisters played by Patricia Quinn (“Magenta, a domestic” for us “Rocky Horror” fans) delivers this insight while reading Heidi’s palm:

MEGAN: The right hand is the hand of the future…this is the line of Fate. This is the only line of concern to me. The length of your life is inconsequential. It’s what you do with your time that matters.

HEIDI: OK well what is my destiny?

LACY: It reads your fate note your destiny.

HEIDI: Is there a difference?

MEGAN: With destiny, you can premeditate the outcome, but fate – fate leaves you no choice. It is predetermined by forces stronger than ourselves.

Suddenly here, inexplicably we have a hint that not only is our protagonist Heidi in danger, she may very well be doomed. Now we’re entering the realm of cosmic horror: on account of nothing she did, owing to no error she made, owing to no sarcophagus she opened or tomb she defiled, Heidi may be, in effect, cursed. Here we’re touching on the themes of “Oedipus” or “Macbeth.” Was Macbeth’s will ever his own, would he have been happy with his lot had he not met the witches? Same to Oedipus: if his prophesied fat had not been communicated, could he have avoided it?

Eye for Visual Composition

It bears saying that Sheri Moon is also Mrs. Rob Zombie and he clearly loves and adores her. They have a farm together. They rescue livestock. And he loves to film her (and, oftentimes without much clothing). She is his muse and his favorite actor.

Additionally, Zombie has an art school background that was visible in his band, White Zombie’s, videos from the mid-90’s

to the animated acid trip sequence in “Beavis and Butthead Do America:”

to his horror film oeuvre.

Left to his own devices, Zombie’s art style is (or was) a sort of San Diego lounge, Queens of the Stone Age, desert-people aesthetic with the elements of Ed “Big Daddy Roth,” neon, Barstow biker bar strip club decor, LA dive bar. All these elements go through his visual arts blender and create staggering images like the following.

And this shot which I now realize was composed in an old-school men’s room:

This might have been made for little money, but it’s not “cheap” for lack of consideration or artistic vision.

Minding the Works of Masters

As far as I know, Zombie is not a film school graduate. Rather he comes from the punk DIY arthouse loft aesthetic of “imagine awesome visual images (see above) and film it.” But he’s clearly an autodidact, he’s taken lesson from the best horror films, particularly of the mid-to-late-70’s and used them to form the style of LoS.

Homage to The Omen

Homage to The Wicker Man

Conclusion

All told there’s something more to this movie that makes it better than bad horror films. The fact that there’s still some fairly vibrant discussion about it so many years later suggests that multiple people are finding something eerier and more disturbing than “a Rob Zombie horror movie” portends.

The pace is semi-glacial, the acting is not stellar, some plot threads just die or evaporate (apparently budget was an extreme constraint), yet somewhere in this I can see a very scary movie working to be born. Zombie might not have hit that goal with this offering, but I think he might have an iconic Omen or Wicker Man-grade fright-fest in him.