The Lords of Salem *** (2012, Sheri Moon Zombie, Meg Foster, Bruce Davison) – Movie Review

Wife and muse of the director, Sheri Moon Zombie stars as Heidi Hawthorne, a radio DJ in Salem, Massachusetts, who’s running a jokey talk and music show along with her buddies Whitey (Jeffrey Daniel Phillips) and Herman (Ken Foree).

One day Heidi’s sent a wooden box with a note saying it’s a gift from The Lords and containing an old-style vinyl record that starts to play backwards and sends her a bit weird, giving her scary flashbacks to the town’s witchy past 300 years ago. Later the record plays normally and becomes a local radio hit. The record turns out not to be made by an aspiring local band but comes from The Lords of Salem, a bunch of Manson-style hippie witches, who are planning a bloody return at a rock gig.

With Lou Reed’s Venus in Furs, the Velvet Underground’s All Tomorrow’s Parties and Mozart’s Requiem on the soundtrack and Mrs Zombie turning into Jesus on a mound of naked witches at the climax, writer-director Rob Zombie’s horror movie is gob-smacking stuff, taking no prisoners. Made on a low budget of $1,500,000, it still looks great, in fact quite astonishing throughout. Filming in Salem with beautifully crafted cinematography and no CGI effects, it’s an all-for-real total eye-ball attacker. You might want to take some dark glasses because this one is going to hurt.

It’s astonishing that Mrs Zombie is entirely credible in her star role, but she is, and charismatic too. She holds the centre of the storm stylishly. Mr Zombie ensures that there’s a movie buff’s cast to support her too. Bruce Davison co-stars as a troubled witch hunter, giving the intense, grave, smouldering turn that this needs.

And a marvellous cast of old-timers play the witches. Judy Geeson, Dee Wallace and Patricia Quinn are eerily effective as three wicked sisters (shades of the witches in Macbeth), who at first seem to befriend Heidi then want to turn her life into hell. It’s great to give Geeson, Wallace, Quinn, Meg Foster (head witch) and Maria Conchita Alonso proper screen time and they repay the favour with major interest.

Mr Zombie holds back on the gore, especially considering he’s the man who made House of 1000 Corpses, while piling on the movie references – think Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, Eraserhead and Altered States, and even making nods to The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and A Trip to the Moon (1902). After a long, restrained build-up of atmosphere and tension, helped enormously by guitarist John5’s eerie score, a film that’s been more arty than chilling, knows it needs to deliver.

So the last 20 minutes goes into psychedelic overdrive as Mr Zombie throws in everything he knows to scare and entertain us. This may not be exactly subtle, and strangely the rest of his movie has been very restrained and subtle, but it is damned entertaining.

Fans of seventies Hammer horrors, Ken Russell films and old movies (that’s all of us, right?) generally need look no further than this for a wholly unexpected treat.

(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/