A horror film by director
Rob Zombie.
Heidi, a DJ at a local radio station, recieves a mysterious package containing a record from a band calling themselves "The Lords of Salem." At first, the record plays backwards, forcing Heidi to relive a traumatic experience from her past. Later, the record plays normally, and is a big hit with listeners. Soon after, a second package arrives, containing posters, tickets and records to host a concert in Salem. However, the gig turns out to be unlike anything Heidi or her listeners could have imagined...
The Lords of Salem provides examples of:
- Affably Evil: Heidi's witch neighbors.
- Bechdel Test: Interestingly, this is the rare film that fails the REVERSE Bechdel test. If you ignore movies within the movie (the main character watches a few), there is no point in this film during which a conversation takes place exclusively between men, which is not about a woman, women, or the actions of women.
- Brown Note: The record.
- Burn the Witch!
- The Cameo: Michael Berryman and Zombie regular Sid Haig (House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects) appear as witch hunters in a flashback. They apparently had more to do but were cut from the film.
- Cult
- Daylight Horror
- Deleted Role: Udo Kier had a role as a horror movie character in a Show Within a Show that was cut from the final cut.
- Originally, Richard Lynch played Jonathan Hawthorne and Andrew Prine played a character called Judges Samuel Mather. Due to Lynch's worsening health condition, Zombie reshot Hawthorne's most important scenes and filmed new shoots for the burning scene with Prine as the reverend and omitted the judge.
- Evil Old Folks
- Eldritch Abomination: The... thing that appears to have the head of a Harlequin baby and the body of a cooked turkey. Also Heidi's "baby" at the end of the film.
- Fan Disservice: Nude, elderly witches.
- Gainax Ending
- Hollywood Satanism: Count Gorgann
- One Steve Limit: Averted. There are two Hermans, known by their last names, Whitey and Munster.
- Precision F-Strike: Unlike most Rob Zombie films, f-words are keept to a minimum and only used at very specific moments.
- Rock Me, Asmodeus!: It's the Devil's music. Literally.
- Sins of Our Fathers: The witches curse the descendants of Hathorne and the rest of Salem.
- Surreal Horror
- What Could Have Been: Richard Lynch was set to play Hawthorne but was in such poor health and nearly blind during the shooting that his role had to be recast.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Heidi's dog disappears after a while.
- Averted, actually. It's briefly shown that he's been locked in the bathroom most likely by the witches. Heidi's in no condition to let him out by that point.
- Wicked Witch: The title characters.
- Witch Hunt: Subverted as Reverend Hawthorne actually identified real, satan worshipping witches.
- X Meets Y: Zombie described the film "as if Ken Russel directed The Shining."
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