Zombie Apes, West is True: LORDS OF SALEM (2012), HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2008) + My own Salem Witch Connections

"Only bad witches are ugly." - Glenda

Much as I love WIZARD OF OZ there's something messed up about Glenda's shallowness. Look at these bangin' old broads (above) bringing tea and cookies, and hell yeah the tea's probably spiked with tannis root but when these sexy evil bitches show up at your door you should be fucking honored. They're not there to get all petty on you with who's good and who's bad in the witch department. Glenda's the ugly one for perpetuating a stereotype started by the church to keep a sister down. In Salem, for example, a horde of hot witches were hung for presumed evil, including some of my ancestors.

If they weren't evil before you hung them, they are now, o paranoid projector of your own subconscious devils!

Now they're coming back, in my DNA, arm in arm with every kid whose life was ruined for getting caught expanding his mind in the Reagan-era 80s. Fear us, then, o descendants of the evil and corrupt Salem and Texas judges, all smug in your hypocrite robes and stetsons. We are watching you as you sleep, through Meg Foster's crystal blue orbs. And your time shall be soon.

In other words, sons of sinuses blocked and lungs a-resinated, hail the new flesh and toad of newt, hail MacBeth, Vane of Cawdor! All hail Val Lewton, the Cramps, Bob Dobbs, Nic Cage, Sammy Davis Jr., Lamont Cranston, D.H. Lawrence, and Mike Watt.

LORDS OF SALEM (2012), Rob Zombie's nearly abstract, post-vaguely-modern 70s devil film, tosses cauldron-ward the old 'conspiracy to impregnate unwitting chick with the devil's child' thing already tossed a few years earlier by Ti West (HOUSE OF THE DEVIL - 2009), adds the actual Salem and spoon of film references, heats to overflowing, goes in the other room to change the record, and never comes back (1). Does it work? Well, what is it trying to do? If it was trying to do for devil movies what SCREAM did for slashers, then it failed. If it wasn't trying to do that, if it was trying to be a SHINING for New England instead, then why the tattoo parlor ambiance, the vintage punk thrift store symbolism, the EXORCIST-cycled dialogue, (they're bringing "cunting" back here), why the carny ride haunted house tableaux that go nowhere, as if we're meant to see them and walk on through to the next ghastly static scene? Aside from the goofball cranberry juice elevator flood, and the climactic gold room of dusty corpses, Kubrick would never be so obvious. So what is this film trying to do? It's being Rob Zombie, the Kubrick of the Daytona trailer park, the neo-pagan who goes on a killing spree at Burning Man, and everyone mistakes it for performance art. Dude, they were so high. But is that even a real movie?

Left to its own devices, without all the post-modernist jazz, the film does generate some great hypnotic power. The opening witch ceremony builds brilliantly to a palpable abandon, the psychic force of the gathered actresses, heavily and picturesquely filth-encrusted, creates a combined psychic release. Compare this with most lame attempts to create a Satanic ceremony, where snarky directors and half asleep actors gather in black robes, read Latin, light candles and splay a virgin on the dais, all because they haven't done research on altered states of consciousness. Or like Ken Russell they just show flashes of weird sick images and Jesus mixed with a dosed pupil...

Only bad witches are ugly...

Zombie does well in portraying this ugly, but for ugliness to have any shock value we need a stark contrast of beauty. In THE SHINING, the movie Zombie apes, the beauty comes from the devouring omniscient ambivalence of the Colorado Rockies, they loom around like the Overlook is in the mouth of a giant arctic Venus flytrap, and from the awesome geometric splendor and unfathomable coldness of the cavernous hotel interiors. A gold-flecked theater shows up at the end or SALEM, referencing Overlook's 'Gold Room' and MULHOLLAND DR.'s Club Silencio. And though it's quite a show it conforms always to images of evil that are speckled with the cruel dust of the demonization process begun a thousand years ago by the Catholics. As Moncure Daniel Conway's Devil Lore book notes:

The great representations of evil, whether imagined by the speculative or the religious sense, have never been, originally, ugly. The gods might be described as falling swiftly like lightning out of heaven, but in the popular imagination they retained for a long time much of their splendour. The very ingenuity with which they were afterwards invested with ugliness in religious art, attests that there were certain popular sentiments about them which had to be distinctly reversed. It was because they were thought beautiful that they must be painted ugly; it was because they were—even among converts to the new religion—still secretly believed to be kind and helpful, that there was employed such elaboration of hideous designs to deform them. (c. 1879)

Of course that damnation is applied equally to the hideous Puritan torturers, re-imagined with big pointy caps and excessive facial hair, but the judge's descendent Sherri Moon bears no ethical resemblance, we have to believe these torturers of witches were genuinely under psychic attack. There's no clear 'side' you necessarily want to be on in LORDS, so you're just admiring all the artsy detail of the tableaux. It might keep our interest if the lead actress is stunningly beautiful, like Jocelin Donahue in HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, or Mia Farrow in ROSEMARY'S BABY, but the leading actress in Zombie's film is of course his wife, Sherri Moon Zombie. And she's gettin' too old for this shit, as the Glenda might say.

Decked out like a Williamsburg hipster, Moon's character, Heidi Hawthorne is an enigma, and way too old to either believe in the supernatural or stop dressing like an extra in ALMOST FAMOUS. She considers herself a badass, clearly, and has a good job as a Salem DJ, but still snickers like a dirt bag middle schooler at any hint of genuine insanity, balls, magic and/or evil--such as when the metalhead from the band Lords of Salem is a guest on her show.

And of course we know why we're supposed to be so intrigued by Heidi: the director still loves her, and presumes us as bewitched as he is. Well we were, Rob, ten years ago she was freakin' sexy as all hell, but we're fickle. And that's part of the problem when you cast your wife in everything you do: sooner or later she's going to be too long in the tooth to play the babe and you're going to be the one to have to tell her, and then you'll have to start auditioning younger leading ladies, and dodging hurled frying pans.

The films Zombie likes--the devil movies and Kubrick's work-- are present in the style, tone, and look of SALEM, but he doesn't seem to know how to read deeply into them, to figure out why he likes them, so he imitates the surface and adds his tattoo parlor aesthetic and crosses his fingers. He goes for an Antonioni/Miike vibe in longly held static long shots of Heidi walking her dog on a lonely street or in a park in late afternoon or playing records with her bearded buddy, but fails to inject genuine observation and complexity into these long looks, or even killer POV unease, rendering them little more than attempts to make Salem the goth Austin with just a hint of Detroit decay. He misses the chance for some great 70s-80s Italian synths in the score, and instead goes for an annoyingly minor key two-note piano. He misses the chance to make Heidi interesting, to make her recovering drug addict persona resonate. She even drinks at one point, super dangerous from any kind of addict. And her apartment is way too clean for someone in recovery, and why isn't she smoking or chugging coffee? I got a headache just watching her get up and walk her dog without a coffee first. If Heidi's an addict I'm John Paul Jones (the Zeppelin bassist, not the seaman, you got a dirty mind).

 Moon Ages: From top: 1000 Corpses, Rejects, Salem

I mean no disrespect to Sherri Moon. I love her in DEVIL'S REJECTS, like a sister. Her line after bluffing a room of hostages with an empty gun ("it's all mental!") is my personal mantra. There she displayed a great relish in evil and had great stringy-sexy hair and a flash of eye and nice curves and an ease with using them to drive a man so crazy he forgets to defend himself. You could see why Zombie married her. Her thin lips weren't even an issue then, but looking at them now, they're even thinner, and she seems tired, and way too old to be riding on a goat in neon flames, or going down on strange priests in the midday pew. She seems to be a middle-aged woman trapped in a tricked-up spiral of horror iconography, like her next stop is working a booth at a Philadelphia monster convention. Man, I know how that feels. I've made out with lipless women before, and it was like kissing a skull. You think I'm fucking lippist now, but if not me, whom? I'm no fan of collagen or botox, but just cuz some girls overdo it out of insecurity doesn't mean it should be shunned by those who need it, even if only to get back to their former level of lip fullness. Her later skull make-up helps, making her look like some death metal kid who got caught in the rain on his way home from the Stockholm punk club.

Problem 3: Pastiche Without Purpose

Maybe SCREAM auteur Wes Craven had it easier since he focused on 80s slasher films, so ignored horror history prior to HALLOWEEN and after SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Zombie goes back to the silent era's HAXAN through to the occult crazy 70s, Kenneth Anger's LUCIFER RISING, ALUCARDA, every Spanish and Italian Exorcist rip-off ever made, then buzzes THE HOWLING, and various old films Heidi watches while asleep in her apartment like KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL and CAPTAIN KIDD.

Burnin' down the Streets of Everyone

There are a million ways these textual links could have been made to resonate, such as having Heidi actually evince some knowledge of classic film trivia, to be able to quote them or talk about them, to fold quotes into her lexicon. Instead they seem like they were all left behind by an ex-boyfriend.

That's what made SCREAM so unnerving; these characters knew what was coming, like we all did who were kept awake at night after scary movies all through the 80s, vowing in our anxiety that we would never drop the knife by the killer's prone body. SCREAM used the dread inspired by earlier movies, which had by now settled in our collective dream unconscious, and re-activated it.

Zombie can only admire that unconscious from a safe distance. He's a fan not a player, the R-rated Tim Burton, i.e. for a director he makes a good set designer. They both gravitate towards familiar narratives-remakes because they have no gift for story structure or pacing -- they just want to create their fantasy bedroom. Luckily Zombie is free of the awful whimsy-packed orchestral pomp of those Danny Elfman scores Burton uses. Now you think I'm whimsist!? Fuck yeah, because it pollutes the real madness. Whimsy is the way an insecure artist of the macabre chews your food for you.

Oddities / seems such a lonely world

Sadly, what the mise-en-scene of Heidi going through her day most resembles is the Science Channel's ODDITIES. I've got nothing against the Oddities store but the customers and employees all seem too desperate to be genuinely abnormal. They cover themselves with tattoos and piercings and wear red white and blue dreadlocks and tall stovepipe hats and fang implants but when push comes to shove perhaps some of them might be overcompensating for an inner lack of... what? balls? crazy madmen nastiness? True insanity? Nic Cage only needed one symbol of his individuality in WILD AT HEART, but he's 'really' a badass. Some people choke themselves with symbols of badassedness and yet run when they encounter the real thing. They would have freaked out going to CBGBs when they saw the filth and smelled the smells and viddied the icky crustpunks, and been too scared to use the bathroom, but then they'd be wearing the T-shirt proudly for the next 20 years, nodd knowingly when the bathroom shows up at the Met, and recall the good old days when music mattered... man. Now you think I'm a faddist. It's just that I'm really crazy. And I don't trust carnies, even though I love their haunted house rides.

CBGB's: What... a dump.

Rob Zombie's clearly a real wild man, but he covers every inch of the territory with his signature hillbilly blood chic until you wonder what lack of true insanity he's hiding.  None of it looks like a real place, with age and use proper to an old city like Salem, the way the sticky thickness of 30 years of rock band promo stickers and graffiti are layered like redwood rings at CBGB's. And that much detail all 'of a piece' as they say, isn't scary. Carpenter created the first HALLOWEEN with a blank white mask, a trash bag full of painted leaves, "a couple of knives" and a few suburban houses.  Zombie had carny parents. He lived on the road. Carnies are excused from needing to vouchsafe their authenticity, and their oddities pay the bills, a carny's oddities are excused for that reason, like sheepdogs for a sheepherder. And who cares if the more obnoxious gawkers get sewed screaming into the next exhibit? They are the artists Zombie understands, ala the Firefly films. But Heidi is a tourist.

There some indications here that Zombie can make the post-modern jump, and that's what's frustrating. He jumps but doesn't stay on the other side long enough. He just decorates the jump-off point in a real punk rock black and gestures off into the fog. But in one great scene, Heidi is chilling at her friend's house and suddenly she's coughing up blood, and faceless doctors appear in the room and Charles Laughton's voice on the TV jibes with the demons almost as effectively as in MYRA BRECKINRIDGE or the films of Nicolas Roeg or Alex Cox. "This just may be to your benefit," Laughton says, as the merciless CAPTAIN KIDD (above).  Later her bonding with the weird fat devil baby whose lopsy-topsy mutatedness is a perfect dark evil mirror to Laughton's leering image onscreen, mirrors that of TV and viewer, umbilical extension cords plugged right into us and hell, and with its embryonic red eyes and slit middle you'll wonder if he's a metaphor for an abortion or if his froggy face is supposed to be the ski mask in TORSO, and the priest looks like he might be a reference to the stitched-into-eternity Dr. Freudstein in Lucio Fulci's HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981)... but we have no clear idea why or if it's conscious.

Top: Salem / Bottom: House by the Cemetery

My Mary Easty/ Rebecca Towne Nurse Connective Genealogy 

(on my Dad's Mother's Mother's Side)

I have to mention, as always when discussing Salem and genealogy (characters here are descendants of the hung witches and/or judges and executioners) that it's fascinating on a personal level for me because the one side of my family tree that kept immaculate records is from Salem, having arrived in Boston in 1631 (with fellow passenger Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island):

The family of John Perkins 1583-1654 - freeman 18th May 1631
Married Judith Gates, born Newent, Gloucestershire, England
Children:
1. "Quartermaster" John - b. 1614 0 d. Dec, 14, 1686
2. "Deacon" Thomas 1616-1686 (not the witch hunter, he died before that)
3.  Elizabeth 1618-1700 / married William Sargent (5 children)
4. Mary 1620-1700 - "She was accused of witchcraft, sentenced, but the execution delayed and the citizens recovered from the delusion." (+5 more)

The Family of Elisha Perkins (born - 1656 - Topfield) died - 1741 in Methuen
Married Catherine Towne - 1680
--
Children:
(9 total), including: John (third son) born Aug. 12, 1685 - died June 22, 1750
married Mary Easty (whose mother Mary Easty and Aunt Rebecca Towne Nurse were hanged for witchcraft)

I have other relatives farther up the years worth mentioning: Joseph and Ichabod Perkins, who "were in Capt. James Jones' Company which marched to Concord at the alarm of Paul Revere in 1775. And 34 other Perkins of Topsfield and Ipswich and cousins of Goulds fought in Revolution (MP)." Etc. I didn't even know Ipswich was a real place! I wish there was a reason for me to research a paper there, and find the population to be a hideous bunch of fish god cult worshippers.

This branch of my family tree owned a lot of property and decent fortune up in the Boston area, but lost it all when it was inherited by two brothers who whored, gambled, and drank away in a few years what it had taken their forefathers five generations to accrue. If women had been allowed to inherit property, I might be a rich scion making my own damned horror movies today! The same streak of olde Enlgish alcoholic mysticism that would help me be a 'good' horror auteur prevents my actually getting it together to do so. My whole freaking life is jerry-rigged in this fashion.... how is that, o Rationalization Guru?

Top: Horror Hotel / Bottom: Alucarda

I know that in all likelihood these ancient aunts of mine were not really witches, but falsely accused by the children of a family wishing to possess the Perkins' wooded bordering acres. But like most Fordians I say "Print the Legend." Maybe my ancestors and the other witches were likely just sexually repressed settlers who found an outlet for their pains outside in the darkness at night, dancing and humping trees. But that's not fun to imagine, and what else gives history any interest aside from the possibility for something still unknown, something still hidden from us by the dry, dusty historians who get to mould our past? We wouldn't even care today if they were just falsely accused of, say, adultery. So if they weren't necessarily witches back in the day, time has made them so, time and three dozen and one horror movies, everything from crisp little low budget Brit thrillers like HORROR HOTEL (1959) to bombastic nonsense like Ken Russell's THE DEVILS.

From top: THE DEVILS, SALEM, SHINING, SHINING, SALEM, SALEM, ROSEMARY'S BABY, Ruth Gordon publicity shot.

Another redeeming trait of the film is just how GILF-ish are the three witch sisters (see CinemArchetype #20): Judy Geeson (GOODBYE GEMINI) has still got it and delivers her bloodthirsty lines with relish, as only a saucy older Brit lady can -- you should check out her amazing half-forgotten 70s sci fi TV series, STAR MAIDENS (my analysis here); also slamming it home with crisp hot fire, Dee Wallace (THE HOWLING) and Patricia Quinn (ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW) as the irresistible palm-reading sister Megan. And as the dirtiest and most evil witch coming back from the past, Meg Foster. As we've seen them in younger incarnations their aged state seems temporary, as soon they may drink the blood of the young and become their former celluloid selves. As a great writer once said, "film is black magic."

WELCOME TO ARROW BEACH, 

I also like that Zombie's main idea of 'a devil' seems to be the aforementioned Baby Bok Choi, a two umbilical cord-cabled Weeblo of the highest order, cunting up the idea that Satan is the original Nephilim rebel, the James Dean of our ancient creators, Lord Enki to some, maybe Merlin, maybe Im-Ho-Tep or Amon Ra or Set or Odin, to others. Hey his mother still lives up on the moon! Don't believe me,  feast your ears and eyes here!

From top: Moon Maiden Mummy Mother of Lucifer; alien grey, LUCIFER RISING, 2001, LORDS OF SALEM, TWILIGHT, Aborigine drawing, 2001, SALEM

Also, check out my review of the History Channel's documentary, The Gates of Hell, which I loaded with pretty intense photographs from the 70s occult revival.

As for actual Hell, Zombie does well imagining the way our own death is linked to rebirth and transfiguration instead of just the same old Heaven/Hell polarity. In Buddhist mythology, Hell is the place the dirtied souls go to be cleansed by fire. It's not permanent. Submit to the scraping with compassionate non-attachment and soon you will be clean for admission into paradise. There's a little of that concept floating through Zombie's film, but it would have been better if he'd bothered to have one unsoiled image, aside from the scholar and his wife, living in an apartment that looks like it will resume being a Brentano's as soon as filming is finished.  I'm jealous of course, it's beautiful...

--------

I'm no fan of Ti West after he subjected me to the awful hipster hair and cheap shocks of THE INNKEEPERS (2011), but HOUSE OF THE DEVIL has a few things going for it which Zombie might have gleaned but didn't. The main thing is tick-tock momentum, wherein dread builds through the careful setup of a particular place over a single evening, in linear time with no flashbacks or disorienting cuts across time and characters. The momentum usually starts in late afternoon as the sun begins to wane and cast ominous shadows and the editing seems to slow the progression of time down. Rather than the constant flashing back and forth and sudden wake-ups from nightmares that 'cheat' on situations, tick-tock momentum is a style of storytelling most horror filmmakers never pick up on when they rip off HALLOWEEN but West does and Zombie doesn't. Their films have such similar plots they warrant close comparison. They should get together and compare notes as each has flaws the other doesn't share.

For example, in HOUSE the places seem normal in that sickly unironic way (dig the couch and painting below), all the believable little early 80s-late 70s details, and are twice as creepy because of it. In SALEM by contrast there's something a little too lush, too big to believably be part of a quaint boarding house and unless she has a maid, there's no way a recovering junky like Heidi's character should have such clean floors. And she would smoke cigarettes and drink a ton of coffee, or something other than booze. The girls in HOUSE by contrast are believably tied up in petty matters that seem huge to them because they're poor and/or just starting out taking care of their own finances.

The girls in HOUSE rule: Gerwig sports some great feathered hair and a cozy college sports shirt and in her late afternoon fast food joint scene with Samantha (Donahue) you feel the ache of an upstate New York fall winter in your bones and want to be able to curl up with her in a fire-lit dorm room and not have to go anywhere, so you feel the sense of desolation creeping up like tendrils of cold around her broke buddy Samantha for needing to take this babysitter job so badly. I went to school in Syracuse, so maybe I relate. The evenings there are so oppressively gray they don't need Satan lingering in the edges to be mega ominous. Mary Woronov and Dee Wallace are on point of course, they were born to this, but the 70s-80s Satanic panic tick-tock momentum vibe of DEVIL is undone with the sudden arrival of a distinctly modern crustpunk (A.J. Bowen), who comes rolling up Gerwig's car like an angry Williamsburg hipster fresh from teeth gnashing class. And another blow follows with the old man played by Tom Noonan who is just way too mumblecore, too naturalistic, with that 'gentle' voice no actor in the 70s or 80s would ever use. Add the boys up alongside the insufferable twerp in THE INNKEEPERS and you get the feeling that Ti West has a stand offish relationship to his male actors. They seem like they didn't get the memo of whatever the film is about, or acting really, about projecting themselves into a room or situation. Ti West should just keep all men out of his films, like I do, until he's emotionally a man himself. (I'm still not, but hey).

The Right: Greta Gerwig 

The wrong: A.J. Bowen

Both the scores do well, though LORDS has moments with kind of making like a Morricone and other times of just sucking with a banal two-note minor key piano. But the hypnotic devil album they play is pretty interesting, it sounds almost like it's trying to break your sound system and leap through the room and crack open a cold-brewed abyss. And a whole slew of great ideas that could be played off the radio as a way to impregnate listeners' minds with Satanic brainwashing come washing across us like a growling Juno synth wipe, but then Zombie shuts that aside, too. Maybe he presumes we've already seen PONTYPOOL? I would love the HOUSE OF THE DEVIL twice as much if it had some Goblin-style synths instead of its creepy but familiar orchestral passages but they're not too bad...

In the end, West may be too cool for his own good, and Zombie is still a music video maker who hasn't yet figured out the rhythms of narrative, but hey, kudos to both for their subject matter and attention to detail, which is impressive in each. West of course wins handily as the post-modern devil pastiche of choice, though LORDS is solid and gorgeous to look at with more consistency in the performances. These old Brit ladies give it their all and make us gradually lose all interest in the by-then scabby and deranged Heidi as she moves forward into the Satanic mass as via airport moving walkway. Indeed I can see this film ruling like hell if 40 minutes were cut out, and the whole thing was timed to the complete Velvet Undergound and Nico like LUCIFER RISING is timed to Bobby Beausoleil's masterfully celebratory soundtrack. But otherwise, what are you left with, in either film, besides admiring Zombie for finding the true Satanic Mass sturm und drang of "All Tomorrow's Parties" and admiring West for his loving recreation of a time and genre and being able to plunge deep and impressively into tick-tock momentum?

West, don't be afraid to put some real men in your films once in awhile, and Rob, that narrative momentum thing will come your way yet. You're already better than the late great Ken Russell. Almost. At any rate, you're already way better at mix-tape movies than Cameron Crowe (see my rant on mix tape movies, Aural Drag). And West, you're the only guy doing tick-tock momentum these days, period. Not even Carpenter still does it. Be proud, as the shrouding darkness crowds the grave mound and the score carpets and the sisters all wake and bait, be proud. Your heritage is ours, brother in the cauldron of Satanic panic culture and 70s-80s homage cinema. So boil the newts and stir that literal baby! Your witches are proof of the black secret by which no witch or cultist ever ages, except between shoots (or after shots).

The problem with it all is, of course, that video itself prevents Satanic magic from actually happening. What soul is worth stealing once its stolen a million times over by the spectral reduction of the camera? Only one place is left where the black arts still occur, the wet hot jungle corridor deep within each of us, as long as we're women.

PS - The dog lives!

---------

NOTES:
1.  A descendent of mine, a Boston seaman in the War of 1812, was also almost eaten 'first, due to his young tender flesh' when he and his crew were shipwrecked on a foodless island. Apparently that's what one did back then, ala the Donners. Luckily they were rescued almost at the last minute before they killed him. I'm sure the rest of the trip was plenty awkward. Anyway, I can joke about it now.... because my family lived through it.