Review of The Lords of Salem (2013) by Stefani S — 03 May 2014

Rob Zombie has been a very mixed bag director for me. I didn't like The Devil's Rejects, I strangely enjoyed his remake of the first Halloween, I enjoyed The Haunted World Of El Super Beasto, and I absolutely hated his version of Halloween 2, which for me was the absolute worst entry of the Halloween franchise (Even the terrible Curse Of Michael Myers was fucking better!).

So, you can imagine my reservations about watching another Rob Zombie film, especially for how painful an experience the Halloween 2 remake was (Who the fuck thought putting Scout-Taylor Compton in the lead role was a good idea? Sorry about the ranting, but that film was fucking terrible!). That being said, I must say that I enjoyed The Lords Of Salem...for all the wrong reasons. The Lords Of Salem is one of the wackiest, most ludicrous, weirdest, and one of the most unintentionally funny horror films I've ever watched.

The plot is set in Salem and follows a woman named Heidi, who is a DJ on a popular radio show who receives a mysterious record from a group that is dubbed "The Lords Of Salem." The record is comprised entirely of a five-note piece that causes Heidi to have flashbacks of Salem's history, specifically regarding the witch trials in the late 1600's and an evil woman named Margaret Morgan and her fellow followers of Satan.

Slowly but surely, Heidi's life begins to fall apart as strange things begin to happen around her and to Salem itself, perhaps to fulfill Margaret Morgan's prophecy about the women of Salem and the other things that would occur in her vengeful wrath against Salem.

The film has a lot of elements going for it that could have made for a truly scary horror film - perhaps even a modern classic of the genre. The plot is quite interesting, there visuals are grimy and atmospheric, the imagery is awesomely weird, and the music is creepy and fits the bill for such a horror film. However, it's Rob Zombie's own direction and writing skills that turn into an unintentionally campy horror film that throws out any chance of being taken seriously within the first five minutes of watching it.

When it comes to the acting, I was baffled by the over the top delivery from almost every actor in the film, which was made more noticeable during the Satanic ritual scenes that are shown in the film in which a bunch of old and ugly women shriek at the top of their lungs about worshiping Satan, strip naked (Sorry ladies, your time to be naked on the screen seems to have passed long ago, and I mean LONG AGO), rub dirt on themselves, dance around a fire, and a number of other things. Almost all the other acting seen in the film is also utterly ridiculous, especially from the three evil sisters who live in the apartment building as Heidi, and there's a scene in which one of them spouts off the line, "Have you come to stick your nosy cock inside her head and fuck her brain, Mr. Matthias?" I shit you not, that is an actual line of dialogue. I can't make this shit up. Sheri Moon Zombie, who plays Heidi, while normally subdued in her performance, could also be quite over the top when her character is having visions and being possessed...which of course is also pretty damn funny.

While any chance of being enjoyed as a serious horror film is destroyed, the film has a very outrageous intensity in its creativity and energy that wouldn't possibly allow me to hate it. It's far to entertaining and gloriously weird for me to hate this film, hence why I gave it such a high score even though I should be panning it. But dammit, I had way too much fun to care.

If you enjoy weird and campy horror films, The Lords Of Salem is one to watch because it is a hell of a hoot and a pure honest to goodness, what-the-fuck kind of film in which you will probably never see anything like it. It's definitely only for people who like really weird films.