The Lords of Salem: F

I like Rob Zombie. I liked his Halloween remake and Devil’s Rejects. I thought House of 1,000 Corpses was interesting and I would even call myself a White Zombie fan. That being said, I don’t know what the fuck he was going for with The Lords of Salem. I respect that he is challenging himself as an artist to create something a little different but this film was not fun to watch.

If you think you would like a slow moving, relatively unoriginal story punctuated with Zombie’s sensational carnival/sacrilege vibe, maybe you’ll dig it.

Oh, and are you a fan of hallucinatory dream sequences that climax as the protagonist suddenly wakes up? You are? You’ll love this movie!

What starts out as a semi-creepy ghost story quickly reveals itself to be a Rosemary’s Baby ripoff. By the end, we were convinced the title of the movie should be I Love My Wife: A Film by Rob Zombie. Zombie’s wife plays Heidi, a radio DJ who lives in Salem (Basically 3/4 of the movie is close-ups of Mrs. Zombie looking sexy/nauseous/confused). She unknowingly plays a song on the radio that casts a hex on all native female Salemites and appears to summon some witches (who were actually fucking witches, wtf?!) who avoided execution during the famous Salem witch trials in the 1600’s.

Okay. Seems legit. There are some naked nasty witches stalking Heidi in her apparently haunted apartment complex.

Then that stuff all stops and the story shifts to focus on a Satanic conspiracy to impregnate Heidi with the anti-Christ. Aaaaaaand: Cue Rosemary’s Baby plot. Tenants of the apartment complex are secret Satanists aiding in the pregnancy plot. Heidi’s health mysteriously declines. Anyone who is suspicious is tricked or murdered. A hallucinatory love scene between Satan and Heidi occurs. Heidi wakes up panicked multiple times.

Zombie garnishes the unoriginal story with some over-the-top imagery. There are demented bishops jacking off. Close-up of Zombie’s wife crying. Topless nuns escort a demon through the halls of a temple. Close-up of Zombie’s wife screaming. A dying priest gets a blowjob. Close-up of Zombie’s wife suddenly waking up. Some of this stuff was interesting to watch but it seemed like Zombie was trying to sprinkle in the perverse in an attempt to make up for the entire movie being poop.

Yawn. The pace was slow. The characters were boring. Nothing new to see here.