Fuck Mondays: Rob Zombie’s “Lords of Salem” Was Fucking Terrible (NSFW)
These are the tits you get to see.
If you’ve come here wondering whether or not you should sit down and give Mr. Zombie’s latest foray into horror a chance I’ll save you some time and let you know right off the bat that no, you should not. Not because it’s too edgy or horrific or what have you, but because it was fucking awful. As a group, we’ve watched (and loved) a lot of terrible movies. It takes a special kind of movie to make me actively tell people to avoid it at all costs. Especially when that movie contains a bunch of cool visual elements, a so-so story and is helmed by a director with a pretty decent horror pedigree. If you’re expecting anything remotely resembling House of 1000 Corpses, The Devils Rejects or the two Halloween remakes you will be sorely, sorely disappointed.
If you’re expecting to see Sheri Moon Zombie’s tits you will also be sorely, sorely disappointed. Oh this movie has tits, a LOT of them in fact. They’re just not the kind you want to be seeing. Unless you’re into either incredibly old and/or fat lady tits. Then this movie is basically your new spank bank. Here are some of the tits you’ll get to enjoy ->
This screenshot is from the first 5 minutes of the movie and at this point I was like “Ok Rob, you’d better have some sort of pay off for making me see that.” Spoiler alert: he does not.Spoilers: I guess I should provide some context for that happy old naked lady covered in dirt. I’m going to tell you the outline of this movie in chronological order since the movie jumps back and forth between present day Salem and Witch Burning Salem. Back to the old lady. She’s Mary Something-Something, the leader of the coven of witches famously burned alive during the Salem Witch Trials. When she’s getting burnt she curses all the women of Salem and puts a super special curse on the family of John Hawthorne (presumably because he was CEO of Witch Burning, also in reality spelled “Hathorne”). She says that Hathorne’s family will bring about the birth of the Antichrist. That’s all you need to know about the past.
Enter Sheri Moon Zombie who’s a spunky, recovering drug addict, late night radio show host in Salem named Heidi Hawthorne. She doesn’t buy into a lot of this supernatural mumbo jumbo and when speaking with a historian of the Witch Trials (who later needs the help of another historian to uncover even basic details of the trials) seems to be completely oblivious to the history of her town. This is especially confusing since her last fucking name is Hawthorne, the same as one of the judge’s of the Salem Witch Trials. You’d think that at some point if your last name was say… Hitler, you’d look into your family tree to see if you were related to that Hitler. There’s even a scene where the historian guy traces the lineage of Heidi and finds out that yes, oh my fucking God, the girl who lives in Salem with the same last time of one of the judges of the Witch Trials of Salem are related. This is supposed to be a fucking shocker. Anyhow, a record from the band “The Lords” shows up at the radio station, they play it over the radio and because it is haunted music it makes all the women of Salem (who’s families are actually from Salem) go crazy. The all kill themselves or die or something and maybe the Antichrist is summoned or birthed by Sheri Moon or something. None of that is really clear but then the movie is over.
Doesn’t sound so bad does it? Well it is. First of all, Sheri Moon is a pretty terrible actress.
Here she is in rehab group therapy, giving zero shits and maybe napping.
Now, I’ll grant her that the script really doesn’t give her that much to work with. All of the characters behave like they’re constantly stoned out of their minds and all of the dialogue seems forced and generally awful. However, Sheri doesn’t really manage to ever seem convincingly flakey, or addicted to drugs, or possessed by the devil or exhibit any other behavior that she’s supposed to. I don’t know if this is Rob being unable to direct his own wife or if she’s really that terrible. Judging from the fact that her only film credits are her husband’s movies though, I’m willing to guess it’s because she’s really terrible.
Next are the problems with the story. As you have no doubt guessed from my little synopsis up there, there are a lot of problems with the story. There are massive plot holes all over this movie which is extra strange since so much of the plodding middle of the film is devoted to “uncovering the secrets of the mysterious going-ons about town”. A few minutes here and there explaining why things are happening the way they are would not have saved this film, but would certainly have helped. The story itself is alright I guess, pretty standard “ancient curse coming to fruition in modern times” fare. If not for the plot holes the story serves it’s purpose.
That brings us to the pace of the film. This movie is painfully slow, it alternates back and forth between present day Salem, Witch Trial Salem and the batshit visions of the main character. The visions have some nice visual elements but mostly seem like rejected ideas from White Zombie music videos. I think what they’re trying to show is the Devil infecting Sheri Moon’s mind and possibly uterus but what you end up with is just a jumbled mess that somehow is also slow and boring. Oh yeah, Sheri Moon wakes up startled from these visions seriously like five or six times. As a viewer you’re thinking “Oh fuck, this time it’s for reaaaalllll….” but right up until the last scene (and even then it’s ambiguous), it never is. It’s always just a dream. Nor is any of it really that scary.
Finally, in the last 10 minutes of the movie, Rob goes full art-film bull shit. It starts cutting back and forth between naked ladies in masks, stop motion melting crosses, weird little baby devil fetuses and a whole host of other stupid shit. I think this is supposed to be the part of the film where you get all freaked out but instead you just feel like you stumbled onto the student experimental film channel at 2:00 am.
In conclusion, bad acting, bad script, not scary, poorly paced, filled with plot holes and it’s not even that gory. This one got away from you Mr. Zombie, better luck next time. But hey, at least now I’ve seen this:
Above: Something I would have rather not seen.
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