The Lords of Salem Information

The Lords of Salem is a 2012 American independent horror film written, produced and directed by Rob Zombie, and starring Sheri Moon Zombie, Bruce Davison, Judy Geeson, Patricia Quinn, Dee Wallace, Jeff Daniel Phillips, and Meg Foster. The plot focuses on a troubled female disc jockey in Salem, Massachusetts, whose life becomes entangled with a coven of ancient witches. The film also includes brief cameos by horror icons Michael Berryman, Udo Kier, Clint Howard, and Camille Keaton.

The film started shooting on October 17, 2011 and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2012. Rob Zombie's novelization of The Lords of Salem was released on March 12, 2013 and the film was given a limited release on April 19, 2013. The film received mixed reception.

Plot

In Salem, Massachusetts, Heidi (Sheri Moon Zombie), a recovering drug addict, works as a DJ at a hard rock station with her co-workers Whitey (Jeff Daniel Phillips) and Herman (Ken Foree). She receives a strange wooden box containing an album by a band named the Lords of Salem. At her home, she and Whitey listen to the record which is of a woman's voice reciting a mysterious chant. Heidi has a vision of witches birthing a baby then damning it. The vision stops once Whitey turns the album off.

The next day, Heidi interviews Francis Matthias (Bruce Davison), who has written a book about the Salem witch trials. The station then plays the Lords of Salem record, which causes all of the women in Salem (other than Heidi) to enter a trance. After the show is over, Matthias tells his wife that the band's name, The Lords of Salem, bothers him. That night, Heidi's landlord, Lacy (Judy Geeson) insists that Heidi split a bottle of wine with her and her sisters, Sonny (Dee Wallace) and Megan (Patricia Quinn). Megan, a palm reader, tells Heidi that she is fated to succumb to her dark sexual desires: "the only reason you exist." Disturbed, Heidi leaves the party. Later, Heidi notices her dog is acting strangely. She enters the supposedly vacant Apartment 5 and experience visions of a demon and a nude witch that demands that she lead the coven again. Heidi wakes up in bed and assumes the events in Apartment 5 were a vivid nightmare.

Troubled, Heidi visits a graveyard church where she is sexually assaulted by a priest. She then wakes up in one of the pews, with the assault seemingly another dream. Heidi flees the church but is faced with a ghostly entity who tells her that he has been waiting for her. Meanwhile Matthias researches the Lords of Salem. He discovers some music in a book he is reading and, after asking his wife to play the notes on their piano, realizes that it is the same music heard on the record. Matthias tracks down the author, who tells him that in the seventeenth century one Reverend Hawthorne (Andrew Prine) accused a coven of witches of creating the music to control the women of Salem. As a result Hawthorne killed the witches, but not before one of them, Margaret Morgan (Meg Foster)"?the witch Heidi encountered outside Apartment 5"?cursed both the Salem women and Hawthorne's descendants, calling his bloodline "the vessel by which the devil's child would inherit the earth." Further research demonstrates that Heidi is a descendant of Reverend Hawthorne.

Heidi's radio station announces they will be giving away tickets to the upcoming Lords of Salem concert. The record is played once again, which causes Heidi to have more strange visions that upset her. Upset, she spends the night at Whitey's home, but experiences more disturbing visions before waking up in her own apartment. Heidi begins smoking heroin again. While she is stoned, Lacy, Sonny and Megan take her to Apartment 5. Instead of an apartment it is a huge opera house with the demon at the top of a staircase. She approaches him as he screams, but later finds her way back to her bedroom.

The next day, Matthias tries to tell Heidi the truth about the Lords of Salem and her lineage. Instead, Lacy and her sisters kill him. Heidi hears his murder, but does nothing. At the concert, Heidi joins Lacy, Sonny, Megan and the ghosts of Margaret and her coven in a satanic ritual. The Lords' music causes the female audience members to strip off their clothes. In the midst of surreal visions, Heidi blissfully gives birth to a strange creature atop the corpses of the naked audience members. The next day, Heidi's station reports on a mass suicide at a rock concert, as well on the disappearance of Heidi.

Cast

• Sheri Moon Zombie as Heidi Hawthorne
• Bruce Davison as Francis Matthias
• Jeff Daniel Phillips as Herman "Whitey" Salvador
• Judy Geeson as Lacy Doyle
• Meg Foster as Margaret Morgan
• Patricia Quinn as Megan
• Ken Foree as Herman "Munster" Jackson
• Dee Wallace as Sonny
• María Conchita Alonso as Alice Matthias
• Richard Fancy as AJ Kennedy
• Andrew Prine as Reverend Johnathan Hawthorne
• Michael Berryman as Virgil Magnus
• Sid Haig as Dean Magnus
• Bonita Friedericy as Abigail Hennessey
• Torsten Voges as Count Gorgann
• Julian Acosta as The Priest
• Lisa Marie as Priscilla Reed
• Gabriel Pimentel as Amon
• Roger W. Morrissey as Beezlebub
• John 5 as Halvard The Guardian
• Piggy D as Butcher Olaf

Production

Lords of Salem is the third film from Haunted Films, the first two being Paranormal Activity and Insidious. After directing the remake of Halloween and its sequel, Rob Zombie stated that he wanted to try something different and original. Also factoring into Zombie's decision was that he was offered complete creative freedom for the project, something that he did not have for either of his Halloween pictures. Zombie had the idea for the movie before starting on the second Halloween movie, however as he puts it "it wasn't really like I was working on it. I was like, 'Oh, this would kind of be a cool idea. Like, Salem radio station, blah blah blah, music,' and then (I) forgot I even wrote that down." After Jason Blum came to Zombie asking for something "supernatural in nature" Zombie was reminded of the Salem idea. The trailer debuted at Zombie's concert on May 11, 2012, at the PNC Bank Arts Center. In an interview Zombie said that the film would be his cinematically biggest film and described it as "if Ken Russell directed The Shining". Lords became the last film of veteran actor Richard Lynch, who died in 2012. Though, due to Lynch's worsening health and being close to blindness, Rob Zombie could not film his scenes properly and was forced to re-shoot the scenes with Andrew Prine. Rob Zombie had confirmed a theatrical release, at least limited, sometime after Christmas 2012.

Response

The initial response at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival was overall positive, with Fangoria and The Playlist giving positive reviews for the film. Horror-Movies.ca gave the film 3.5/5 and stated that although he liked the film, it would not appeal to mainstream audiences. Twitch Film expressed enthusiasm over the film and recommended it to horror fans. Charlotte Stear of HorrorTalk was slightly cooler on the film, giving it three stars and saying "Within Rob Zombie I do believe is a brilliant, original horror movie just waiting to come out but sadly, The Lords of Salem isn't it." Fearnet also panned the film, the reviewer criticizing the choice of Sheri Moon as the main character and focus of the film. Bloody Disgusting posted two conflicting reviews by two different reviewers, one panning it and the other praising it. Nick Schager from Slant Magazine wrote: "Rob Zombie understands horror as an aural-visual experience that should gnaw at the nerves, seep into the subconscious, and beget unshakeable nightmares." New York Post's V.A. Mussetto praised the film: "Movies by Rob Zombie, the goth rocker turned cult filmmaker, aren't for everybody. But he couldn't care less. He makes movies exactly the way he wants to, with no thought of pleasing mainstream audiences. They can like it or lump it. His latest effort, The Lords of Salem, is true to form." Zombie's fifth feature film received approval from Mark Olsen (Los Angeles Times), who admits The Lords of Salem "is like some queasy-making machine, a chamber piece of possession and madness that exerts a strange, disturbing power."

In general, the film has received mixed to negative reviews from critics. It currently holds a 59% rating on Metacritic, based on 21 professional critic reviews. However the film has a 47% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 57 reviews, with the consensus saying, "The Lords of Salem has lots of atmospheric potent, but it's unfortunately short on scares."

Book

A novelization of the film, written by Zombie and contributor B. K. Evenson, was released on March 12, 2013. Zombie and Evenson began working on the novelization after Zombie's manager had been approached by Grand Central Publishing about a potential book tie-in. The idea interested Zombie, who expressed a fondness for movie tie-in novels as a child. Of the book, Zombie has also commented that it "offers a different experience from the film since it can obviously go into much more detail" and that the book is based on the original screenplay for Lords of Salem, which differs significantly from the final script used in the film.

The book also marks Rob Zombie's first time appearing on the New York Times Bestseller List.

Critical reception for the novel has been mixed. The Boston Globe praised Zombie's novelization, saying that the "writing throughout is graphic "? definitely not for the squeamish "? but the pace escalates compellingly". In contrast, Publishers Weekly gave a negative review for the book, criticizing parts of the book as "predictable", "unengaging and not particularly scary".

Soundtrack

In October 2012 Zombie stated that he had hired guitarist John 5 to create the movie's score. John 5 remarked that he wanted to create "material that wouldn't distract audiences but also wouldn't be easily forgotten". Zombie later released the soundtrack's central song, "All Tomorrow's Parties" by The Velvet Underground, commenting that "Every RZ movie has at least one song that gets stuck in your head and changes the way you will forever hear the song". The Lords of Salem's soundtrack was released by UMe on April 16, 2013. Although not on the soundtrack CD, the film makes prominent use of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem and Johann Sebastian Bach's Sei gegrüsset, Jesu gütig, BWV 768.

Tracklist