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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
Originally Posted by jacob_b
(Post 11675087)
Here's what I wrote on IMDb after I saw it the second time (had to see it again). It got rave reviews in Toronto and usually those film festivals are right on the mark, so not sure why there's a lot of crap against this film. It's not for everyone, but for those that keep bringing up the white trash aspect, he did go away from it and gave us a character to really enjoy and like (the old author).
My first question is, knowing that Sheri Moon Zombie has used a body double before during her ass shot in Devil's Reject, did she actually decide to do the nudity this time? I'm actually quite surprised how often we saw her ass in the film as well as how much nudity was in this film. I got mixed thoughts on this film. First off, John 5 did an AMAZING job with the score. That was probably one of the best scores in movies and the best part of the film. Going to be such a shame he doesn't get an Oscar nod for that. Love the movie or hate it (and judging by how much the movie made in theaters, not many will have heard the score) he deserves a lot of credit. The film also had a very artistic vibe to it in the sense of style. Love or hate Rob's films, he finally went away from his typical "white trash" background and gave us something different and visual. This is a movie that you would want to go in sober because the visuals will make you have a horrible trip and scare you. Before hearing his interview and after seeing the film, I thought he had a lot of control and did things his way. There was lots of nudity, lots of religious attacks, and just some straight up f'd up *beep* However, I heard that he had to rewrite stuff during the morning of the shoot and take some stuff out because of the budget and time as he only had 4 weeks to finish the film. That makes sense because one of the worst parts about the film was some stuff just wasn't explained and just thrown in randomly. And I'm fine with not everything being explained, it happens in most films. But some of the evil characters were just strange, made no sense, and took one away from the film. Now, onto everyone's favorite punching bag, Mrs. Zombie. I, for one, loved her in House of 1000 Corpses. She is hot, no question about that. She's an ok actress as she does have her moments. And hey, it's Rob's film so why not have your hot wife in it to make her happy and spend time with her. I just think, had she taken maybe one of the early witch spots and they got a different lead actress, I wonder how that would have been. She didn't ruin the movie for me (like how she did in H2 the theater release) and overall, the acting in the film was pretty good (we finally got a character that wasn't all evil and greedy). I'm also really amazed because before the film hit theaters, it went on the festival circuit and there was a lot of great buzz and a lot of people calling it Zombie's best film yet. However, now that it is out in theaters, the movie tanked. I really wonder what happened. I understand, this movie is not for everyone. It's very different and out there, which is good because I'm tired of the paranormal stuff and random killings, which is out by the dozens this year. So this was a nice change of pace. I really thought it was going to give Evil Dead a run for the money as well, until I heard about the limited release. I give it a good 7-7.5 rating. The religious moments, some of them were a bit too extreme for me. Then some of the characters like the small midget just didn't flow with the film. A bigger budget and more time, this film may have been better. That would explain why the film "dropped off" really bad the last half of the film. It definitely has a "OMG I have to finish filming and I don't know what to do" vibe. On to Sherri, I like her quite a bit. She isn't going to win any oscars, but she does well in her roles in these movies. She is awesome in House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. I love Baby Firefly and she brought alot to that role. It also doesn't hurt that she is smoking hot. I like her in LOS, she fit the role well I thought. |
Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
Originally Posted by Josh-da-man
(Post 11676024)
I haven't seen this movie yet, but after viewing the trailers and reading some reviews, is it fair to say this movie was Zombie's attempt at an Argento pastiche?
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
This came and went pretty quickly. It was in my local multiplex for like a week and now it's showing almost nowhere for miles.
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
Even though I was on the fence about it, I ordered the UK DVD yesterday.
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
What the fuck did I just watch?
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
Originally Posted by dex14
(Post 11820947)
What the fuck did I just watch?
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
Originally Posted by OldBoy
(Post 11820954)
oh shit...that bad? i have it coming tomorrow from Netflix...
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
I really enjoyed it and glad I blind bought the BD. This is something I will watch several more times. BD looks and sounds great too. I would gladly double dip for more packed release in the future.
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
Shock rocker turned pastiche director Rob Zombie returns to multiplexes for the first time since his much-maligned Halloween II with Lords of Salem. After evoking the grimy brutality of the 70s with The Devil's Rejects, The Lords of Salem is a psychedelic ode to the nominally artsy 70s pictures Zombie to which Zombie has now chosen to pay homage. The storyline concerns Heidi Hawthorne, a Salem shock-jock and recovering addict who's a descendent of none other than Johnathan Hawthorne, who is connected to dark and gruesome secrets of the town during the Salem witch trials. But after receiving a record full of spooky music to play on the radio, Heidi begins to suspect her connection may be more than a name or even just blood...
Where Zombie's in-your-face stylings were for better or worse the norm in his his previous films, The Lords of Salem adopts a slightly more slow-burning, self-consciously artsy approach. Does it work? Not really. It is interesting? Up to a point. Brandon Trost, Neveldine and Taylor's kinetic DP (Was this shot digitally?), unites with Zombie for a film which, while it could hardly be called restrained, is nonetheless very deliberate. The many slow and icy shots recall Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (I never, ever though Kubrick and Zombie would come up in the same sentence), a number of highly baroque and European-flavored sequences recall the extreme stylized colors of Dario Argento, a number decidedly psychedelic sequences recall Alejandro Jorodorosky or Kenneth Anger, and the film tips its hat to such demonic possession favorites as Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist with their themes of evil lurking behind modern suburban facades. The film is certainly visually impressive and shows a progression from Zombie's scattershot early films, but it still feels like a postmodern pastiche that isn't the sum of its many parts, missing the subtext of the films it admires and co-opting only their visual tricks. Zombie's own wife Sherri Moon plays the lead (Continuing his perverse fascinating with showing off her ass to the entire world.), and as is Zombie's custom, a handful of past exploitation favorites put in appearances as well. Zombie tries to connect Heidi's possession with the malaise of her everyday existence and obvious parallels with her addiction, and give the film some semblance of emotional resonance with Jeffrey Daniel Phillips' performance as Heidi's unrequited suitor, who's genuinely interested in her well-being. But while these genuinely interesting elements bubble under the film's surface, Zombie doesn't seem to be able to bring them to the fore in any interesting ways, instead opting for easy shocks and ominous music which implies far more than the film delivers. But the film is totally confused as to what it wants to be, and Zombie isn't a strong enough writer to pull the disparate elements together. Many elements are appropriately disgusting-many elderly nude witches, an incredibly gratuitous implied murder of an infant, Zombie's usual gory murders, but as the film descends further into surrealism, it increasingly sacrifices not only logic, but also impact, more interesting as a perverse and eventually numbing exercise in blasphemous imagery that may shock religiously-minded viewers, but otherwise serves little discernible purpose. Makeup FX artist Brandon Trost creates a menagerie of weird-looking things-monstrous dwarves, innumerable phallic symbols, long satanic claws, medieval torture devices-but Zombie has none of the talent for subtext like the filmmakers whom he so obviously admires. Divorced from any actual context, these increasingly bizarre, but the film doesn't have the kinetic energy to be a blast of fun, and is too juvenile and thin to be taken seriously as much of anything resembling art. The film ultimately ends up as a series of increasingly bizarre, sometimes interesting images which ultimately don't amount to much. Zombie may be a horror fan himself, but his rampant excesses, while more controlled this time out, still prevent the film from looking like much of anything besides a giant jigsaw of genre movies past. Stylistically interesting up to a point but ultimately hollow and vulgar, The Lords of Salem shows that Zombie may have come a ways as a filmmaker in as far he no longer inspires snickers from some critics, but the resulting final product feels at best like the director need a producer and a co-writer to reign in his perverse tendencies. Perhaps if Zombie returns to the Universal Gothic stylings which he so clearly professes to love and cuts back on the splatter and vulgarity the next time out, he'll finally strike gold. |
Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
I just finished this up and was shocked at how much I liked it. Don't get me wrong, the narrative is a mess, but I think that's the point. It's style over substance and it actually reminded me of Ti West's "House of the Devil." It's as if both of these films can exist in that same twisted universe portrayed in the film(s). "Lords" is definitely a "slow burn" of a film. Overall, it had more of a Ti West sensibility than a Jodorowski vibe.
I do remember hearing that the cut screened at festivals was a longer cut than what originally hit theaters and home video. I'd love to see a longer cut of the film. I just put the novel on hold at the library. |
Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
Wow, this flick was a real scrotum. Laughable at times (very). I almost fell asleep multiple times.
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
I got the novel and it's a trip that they refer to Sheri Moon's character as "She." Then again, I've only read the first few pages. I like where this is going. :)
The novel seems to be the director's cut. |
Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
I'm interested in reading the novel because I've heard it expands upon the film enough to actually make it more appreciable on subsequent viewings.
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
Originally Posted by hanshotfirst113
(Post 11826146)
Shock rocker turned pastiche director Rob Zombie returns to multiplexes for the first time since his much-maligned Halloween II with Lords of Salem. After evoking the grimy brutality of the 70s with The Devil's Rejects, The Lords of Salem is a psychedelic ode to the nominally artsy 70s pictures Zombie to which Zombie has now chosen to pay homage. The storyline concerns Heidi Hawthorne, a Salem shock-jock and recovering addict who's a descendent of none other than Johnathan Hawthorne, who is connected to dark and gruesome secrets of the town during the Salem witch trials. But after receiving a record full of spooky music to play on the radio, Heidi begins to suspect her connection may be more than a name or even just blood...
Where Zombie's in-your-face stylings were for better or worse the norm in his his previous films, The Lords of Salem adopts a slightly more slow-burning, self-consciously artsy approach. Does it work? Not really. It is interesting? Up to a point. Brandon Trost, Neveldine and Taylor's kinetic DP (Was this shot digitally?), unites with Zombie for a film which, while it could hardly be called restrained, is nonetheless very deliberate. The many slow and icy shots recall Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (I never, ever though Kubrick and Zombie would come up in the same sentence), a number of highly baroque and European-flavored sequences recall the extreme stylized colors of Dario Argento, a number decidedly psychedelic sequences recall Alejandro Jorodorosky or Kenneth Anger, and the film tips its hat to such demonic possession favorites as Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist with their themes of evil lurking behind modern suburban facades. The film is certainly visually impressive and shows a progression from Zombie's scattershot early films, but it still feels like a postmodern pastiche that isn't the sum of its many parts, missing the subtext of the films it admires and co-opting only their visual tricks. Zombie's own wife Sherri Moon plays the lead (Continuing his perverse fascinating with showing off her ass to the entire world.), and as is Zombie's custom, a handful of past exploitation favorites put in appearances as well. Zombie tries to connect Heidi's possession with the malaise of her everyday existence and obvious parallels with her addiction, and give the film some semblance of emotional resonance with Jeffrey Daniel Phillips' performance as Heidi's unrequited suitor, who's genuinely interested in her well-being. But while these genuinely interesting elements bubble under the film's surface, Zombie doesn't seem to be able to bring them to the fore in any interesting ways, instead opting for easy shocks and ominous music which implies far more than the film delivers. But the film is totally confused as to what it wants to be, and Zombie isn't a strong enough writer to pull the disparate elements together. Many elements are appropriately disgusting-many elderly nude witches, an incredibly gratuitous implied murder of an infant, Zombie's usual gory murders, but as the film descends further into surrealism, it increasingly sacrifices not only logic, but also impact, more interesting as a perverse and eventually numbing exercise in blasphemous imagery that may shock religiously-minded viewers, but otherwise serves little discernible purpose. Makeup FX artist Brandon Trost creates a menagerie of weird-looking things-monstrous dwarves, innumerable phallic symbols, long satanic claws, medieval torture devices-but Zombie has none of the talent for subtext like the filmmakers whom he so obviously admires. Divorced from any actual context, these increasingly bizarre, but the film doesn't have the kinetic energy to be a blast of fun, and is too juvenile and thin to be taken seriously as much of anything resembling art. The film ultimately ends up as a series of increasingly bizarre, sometimes interesting images which ultimately don't amount to much. Zombie may be a horror fan himself, but his rampant excesses, while more controlled this time out, still prevent the film from looking like much of anything besides a giant jigsaw of genre movies past. Stylistically interesting up to a point but ultimately hollow and vulgar, The Lords of Salem shows that Zombie may have come a ways as a filmmaker in as far he no longer inspires snickers from some critics, but the resulting final product feels at best like the director need a producer and a co-writer to reign in his perverse tendencies. Perhaps if Zombie returns to the Universal Gothic stylings which he so clearly professes to love and cuts back on the splatter and vulgarity the next time out, he'll finally strike gold. |
Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
I got the blu-ray but won't open it until October for the Horror Movie contest. It doesn't look like there is much special features on the back, which is a bummer. And has anyone heard the commentary?
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
^ You bought it? I weep for you.
I got this out of Redbox and feel as though I wasted time I could have spent watching a horror movie that's more worthwhile. I think I got the jist of it, but who knows. Very self-indulgent film making. |
Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
I'm a sucker for anything Rob Zombie and Sherri Moon's ass :)
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
Originally Posted by jacob_b
(Post 11869790)
I'm a sucker for anything Rob Zombie and Sherri Moon's ass :)
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
Finally got a chance to see this on Netflix.
Like most Rob Zombies movies, I'm conflicted on whether to say I liked it or not. The movie looks beautiful and creates a genuinely creepy atmosphere, but it is also unsatisfying in the sense it plays like a conventional story for the first two-thirds before ending abruptly. The finale was kind of a dud, it felt like they were still working up to some grand sequence. The soundtrack was really cool. I'd still like to see Zombie try directing a script at least co-written with some else. |
Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
Also, Sherrie Moon Zombie has a very engaging screen presence, I'm always surprised to see so many negative comments about her.
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Re: Rob Zombie's Lords Of Salem (2012)
Originally Posted by Crocker Jarmen
(Post 12532973)
Also, Sherrie Moon Zombie has a very engaging screen presence, I'm always surprised to see so many negative comments about her.
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