THE TOY BOX

Had forgotten what a strange piece of surreal sexploitation Ron Garcia’s The Toy Box (1971) is. It’s one of the most (deliberately) mind-bending films to emerge from the skin flick genre at the time, with it’s mix of classic Old Dark House horror elements with late-sixties psychedelia, a couple of wacky sci-fi angles that seem to just jump up out of nowhere, and the aesthetic of a really creative underground student film. The movie is genuinely unnerving in a couple of spots (including one hallucinatory sequence that hints at necrophilia), and the sex scenes don’t drag on endlessly like they do in many softcore films from this era (although for a softcore film The Toy Box  certainly pushes the limit into very hard R-rated territory). 

The plot, coming on like an adults-only episode of The Twilight Zone, has a young couple heading to a swingers’ orgy at the large home of a mysterious figure they call ‘Uncle’, who appears to be dead and rewards his visitors with items from his magic toy box whenever they share their erotic fantasies with him. Some of the women who arrive to pay their respects to Uncle include Russ Meyer fave Uschi Digart (who gets seduced by her own bedsheets) and Marsha Jordan (a buxom blonde with great hair and a full but curvy figure who was slightly older than most of her contemporaries, which often saw her cast in the role of the bored and frustrated housewife). 

Writer/director Ron Garcia later went on to have a prolific career as a cinematographer, mostly in television and highlighted by his work as the photographer of the Twin Peaks pilot movie from 1990, as well as the 1992 cinematic offshoot Fire Walk With Me. Interestingly, The Toy Box  is the sort of film you could imagine Twin Peaks creator David Lynch making, had he been cutting his cinematic teeth in the sexploitation genre at the time.

One of the best movies that was ever picked up for distribution by low-budget movie mogul Harry Novak and his Boxoffice International company, The Toy Box was released on VHS in the 1990s by Something Weird Video, and on DVD in 2006 (where it was paired with another Novak acquisition, the bleak 1973 Freudian exploitation thriller Toys Are Not for Children).

SANGSTER DOUBLE

Spent the afternoon watching this double-bill of vintage UK genre cinema, both of which I have read about over the years but had never actually had the chance to sit down and watch. Blood of the Vampire (1958) was often mistaken for a Hammer production, chiefly because it’s a gothic, colour UK horror film from that period, has a screenplay by veteran Hammer scribe Jimmy Sangster, and stars Barbara Shelly, one of Hammer’s favourite leading ladies. Despite it’s title, it’s not your usual vampire yarn, but rather the strange tale of a prison warden in the 1880's (played by Donald Wolfit, who reminded me of a stockier Bela Lugosi) who is executed for being a vampire, but is kept alive through a primitive heart transplant while he experiments on his prisoners until he can discover a cure for his bizarre blood condition. It has a much seedier feel than the Hammer horror films of the day, and is very atmospheric with some nice sets. The angle of the disfigured assistant who falls in love with the photo of a beautiful woman kept in a locket, which has been confiscated from a prisoner (the male lead, played by Australian Vincent Ball), was later used by Anthony Hinds in his screenplay for Hammer’s Scars of Dracula (1970). 

The Hellfire Club (1961) features another Sangster screenplay, and is more of a swashbuckling adventure than a horror film or an expose of the notorious British society clubs that started sprouting up in the 1700's and preached a ‘do whatever pleases you’ philosophy that only the rich and influential were able to get away with at the time (the name was later used for several bondage and S&M clubs, including one here in Melbourne in the 1990s). Directed by Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman, The Hellfire Club is a tad long but rather entertaining, with some rousing sword fights (despite the unconvincing choreography), more nice sets and matte work, an almost comedic cameo role from Peter Cushing, the beautiful Adrienne Corri (later in A Clockwork Orange and the 1972 Hammer classic Vampire Circus), and lovely Czechoslovakian actress Kai Fischer.

Unfortunately, the prints of these films contained on Dark Sky’s 2006 DVD do not feature any of the additional nudity or gore that was apparently included in the continental versions of these films (though even as it is, the print of The Hellfire Club featured still contains some rather risque near-nudity scenes for its time). And the anamorphic widescreen print of  The Hellfire Club has some dizzying lens distortion at the sides, particularly during any panning shots.

Despite the prints being less than perfect, this was still a solidly entertaining double, and I’m keen to seek out better versions of both films now. The DVD is also nicely presented as an old-fashioned drive-in double feature, complete with vintage intermission snack food ads and trailers for several ‘coming attractions’ (including Del Tenney’s The Horror of Party Beach and Mario Bava’s Kill, Baby, Kill).

THE ORIGINAL GOTH GHOUL

R. H. Greene’s 2012 documentary Vampira and Me takes its subject a bit too self-importantly at times, with the narration occasionally veering off into psychobabble, and suffers visually from the lack of archival footage (sadly, only mere minutes of Vampira’s televised career has been preserved). But it’s still a lovely portrait of this icon of 1950s style and the woman who portrayed her, actress Maila Nurmi It’s a virtual love letter from writer/director/narrator Greene, a Vampira obsessive who befriended Nurmi in the mid-90s, and uses an extended interview he filmed with her as the basis for the documentary. 

Getting inspiration for her character from the illustrations of Charles Addams, Nurmi found instant fame in 1954 as Vampira, a television horror movie host with amazingly arched eyebrows and an impossibly thin waist. But her fame was fleeting and she spent the next several decades living in near destitution and often working in restaurants just to pay for her dinner, though in the few years prior to hear death in 2008 she seemed to have found a semblance of peace and security. Vampira and Me covers Nurmi’s early years, her time as Vampira, her relationship with James Dean, working with Ed Wood on Plan 9 from Outer Space, her frightening incidents with stalkers (and the comical way in which these events were often reported by the press), the resurgence of Vampira in the 80s as a goth style icon, and her long-running legal actions against the Elvira character played by Cassandra Peterson.

What old footage is included here is lovely to see, including old home movies and Maila/Vampira’s appearances on various American variety and game shows, and there’s lots of great promotional and candid photos included. It’s sad to hear Nurmi talk about how she fought to keep her waist rake-thin for twenty years after the Vampira show was cancelled, just in case she got the call that never came to resurrect her character on television, but her enduring contribution to mid-20th century style is beyond doubt, and the mystique and allure of her creation lives on...

Above: stunning piece of Vampira art by Melbourne (Australia) artist Robert Rechter.

VIDEO IN FOCUS

A blast from the past. During 1997/98 I was one of the reviewers for Video in Focus, a weekly 30 minute film review program that ran on the emerging Optus cable TV network in Melbourne. It was a fun show to do because we were still reviewing VHS titles and the video store culture was still relatively alive (though the warning signs were clearly there). We reviewed a lot of the newer releases and I had to sit through a fair bit of dreck but I also got to do a regular ‘one you may have missed’ segment, where I would review and discuss some older favourites. Some of the films I recall reviewing were Horror of Dracula, The Silent Partner, Mars Attacks!, Bloodsucking Freaks, Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town and Blue Sunshine. This would have been not long after I started shaving my head (I first shaved it just after my father had passed away earlier that year). One day I need to edit together a few selected highlights and get them uploaded...

THE BARON'S HORDE

Richard Raaphorst’s Frankenstein's Army (2013) is yet another in the long line of post-Blair With Project POV found footage/faux documentary horror films. Taking a different approach from the usual modern settings for this style of film, Frankenstein's Army takes place on the eastern front during the dying days of World War II in Germany, and has a Russian combat cameraman capturing the carnage as his unit is decimated by an assortment of bizarre man/machine-meld monsters, the nightmarish product of the crazed great-great-grandson of the famous Baron von. 

I struggled to get into it for the first 20 minutes or so, but Frankenstein's Army eventually won me over with its ambition and intriguing strangeness. While the film reflects its low budget in many ways, the make-up and various creature designs are terrific and effectively creepy (I guess I would describe the creatures as a mix of H. R. Giger and Clive Barker with an industrial/’steam punk’ overhaul). Thankfully there is very little reliance on cheap and obvious CGI, with most of the effects and stunts looking to have been done in-camera, and the set designers have done a decent enough job of bringing the period to life (though some of the hairstyles and mannerisms of the characters seem very un-1945).   Ultimately, I think the film would have worked much better if they had ditched the whole found-footage approach and just told the story as a straight narrative. It’s a bit hard to swallow the idea of some beat-up, hand-cranked 16mm camera being able to capture such hi-def images nearly seventy years ago!

VALE MIKE VRANEY

Was terribly saddened to hear the news that Mike Vraney has passed-away at the age of 56 following an 18 month battle with lung cancer. Through his Seattle-based Something Weird Video company, founded in 1990, Mike helped expose myself and countless others to the films of exploitation pioneers like David Friedman, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Joe Sarno, Harry Novak, Doris Wishman and so many, many others. Mike rescued literally hundreds of films (as well as shorts and trailers) from the scrapheap of obscurity, and I can honestly say that without Something Weird Video my knowledge, appreciation and enjoyment of cinema would be nowhere near as diverse, interesting and complete as it is today.

I started out as a customer of Something Weird Video, and in the late-90s I started writing for them, contributing reviews/synopsis' for their printed catalogues as well as their VHS sleeves, and then of course online and DVD-R covers. It was always exciting getting the latest lot of videos to review for them - usually they would turn up in lots of five and, apart from the odd occasion where I might have requested something specific, I had no idea what titles I was in store for. It was often just a random assortment of gloriously gaudy titles, some I may have heard of but many I had absolutely no idea about. One parcel might have had Shanty Tramp, The Seducers, Suburban Pagans, Campus Swingers and G.I. Scare Films, Vol. 4. That's what made Something Weird Video so much fun, and such a joy and privilege to work with - every time you slid one of their tapes into the VCR for the first time, it was always a new adventure in discovery (not always an entertaining or satisfying one, but usually at the very least unique).

I probably reviewed over 100 releases for Something Weird Video, and though I never worked with or talked directly to Mike (usually I would work with his incredibly lovely and wonderfully talented wife Lisa Petrucci), his vision and guidance and passion for what he was doing was always evident. Though he seemed to be somewhat of a private person, he provided some terrific interviews over the years, he was in documentaries like Hell's Highway (2002), and shows up on the special features of some of the Something Weird DVDs (including a great extended tour of Harry Novak's Hollywood office, screening room and film vaults).

I feel terribly saddened by the way-too-early passing of Mike Vraney, and my thoughts are with Lisa along with their family and friends and loved ones. As a respected and passionate archivist with a clear love for good old-fashioned carnival ballyhoo, his presence will be much missed, but his accomplishments always appreciated and celebrated by those who love to trawl that curious netherworld of vintage exploitation cinema.

MIKE VRANEY

December 29, 1957 to January 2, 2014

"I'm the only guy I know whose wife cheers every time I bring home a big box of men's magazines". A nice little profile on Mike Vraney, Lisa Petrucci and Something Weird Video, which aired in 2006 on Seattle's Evening Magazine program.

FOLLOWING DREAMS

Recently caught-up with a couple of old CBC St. Kilda school mates Thanis Akritidis and Richard Reynolds for a pre-Christmas Malaysian meal at Chinta Ria Soul in Acland St. Was great to chat about simpler days and all that has happened since. Thanis and I were the big KISS fans at school, even when the band’s popularity was starting to wane in this country and we copped a lot of crap from classmates (Richard was more the studly Disco Stu of CBC rather than a hard rocker). Thanis took his love of hard rock very seriously, going on to write the regular Hard & Heavy column for Melbourne’s Beat newspaper, and fronting several bands, including Knight in the mid-eighties and Frozen Tears in the 90s. 

Listening to Frozen Tears’ 1997 album, Silence of the Night, and you can see Thanis has taken his teenage influences into his music. Silence of the Night is a slickly-produced slice of mostly original melodic hard rock numbers, with a cover of the KISS classic Strutter thrown in. There’s some nice guitar work from John Powers to complement Thanis’ enthusiastic vocals, and some synth thrown in to give it all a bit of a classic 1980s feel. I’d personally like to hear the songs with a bit more meat on the guitar licks and less reverb on some of the vocals, but listening to Silence of the Night made me smile, and it’s always heartening when I see an old friend following their dreams and passions.

TERROR IN THE AISLES

Have been watching Terror in the Aisles, a 1984 documentary on horror/thriller cinema hosted by Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen (it's included as a bonus on the US 30th anniversary Blu-ray of Halloween II). It features a nice (and nicely edited) collection of clips, mostly from 1970s/early-80s genre cinema, and pretty much all American titles (though I did spot a brief clip from Suspiria towards the end). Some of the interconnecting scenes of the cinema audience are amusing - I like the sweaty guy in the leather jacket, three day growth and wearing his sunglasses inside the theatre, and the two seedy Chicanos who yell at the screen while watching Jamie Lee Curtis being terrorised in Halloween ("No, no, baby! Get out of there babeeeeeeyyyyy!"). Now I want to re-watch Ms. 45, Alone in the Dark and Vice Squad (and predictably, I don't have any of these films at hand). 

THE FACE OF HORROR

One of the most haunting and nightmare-inducing faces I have ever seen in all of horror cinema - the deceased clairvoyant from Mario Bava’s 1963 compendium horror Black Sabbath (aka The Three Faces of Fear). I can only imagine how disturbed I would have been by this face if I had first seen the movie as a kid (I was in my twenties before I obtained a VHS of Black Sabbath - and even then, that face was horrific enough to me). It’s a superb piece of cinematic make-up for its time, but it’s just one of the many elements that make Black Sabbath such a masterpiece of terror. 

Watching it again at 2am on Boxing Day (filled with more than a little Christmas cheer), the film remains as seductive an experience as ever - dripping with atmosphere, boasting a most beautiful colour palette, and featuring a trio of stories (based on tales by Tolstoi, Snyder and Chekov) that are so tightly constructed and packed with giallo tension (the first segment, The Telephone), gothic horror (The Wurdalak, featuring Boris Karloff in superbly scary form) and outright terror (The Drop of Water, as much a psychological horror story as it is a supernatural one). It’s as effective aurally as it is visually, and even the little gag ending with Karloff adds to the unique charm of the film - it doesn’t diminish the horror of what has preceeded it, but it does help remind us that what we are watching are just dark fairy tales, and for his fans it provides a wonderful little glimpse into how Mario Bava was able to utilise ideas and creativity to achieve so much using so little. One of those rare anthology horror films where there is no weak link.

BAVA'S BOW

Had a watch of Blue Underground’s 2007 DVD release of Mario Bava’s Shock (1977) in the wee hours this morning. This is another one of those films I have previously only ever seen on VHS (I still have my Aussie ex-rental of it on the K&C label, under its alternate title of Beyond the Door II). I believe this was Bava’s last completed film (he died in 1980), and while it may not be the perfect genre epitaph from a man whose unique style, amazing visual flair and re-defining of horror/fantasy conventions resulted in such classics as Black Sunday (1960), Blood & Black Lace (1964), Planet of the Vampires (1965), Danger: Diabolik (1968) and many more, Shock still has more than enough moments to remind you that a master is at work. 

A paranormal horror in the Stephen King mould, but with a clear psychological edge and a few giallo-esque touches thrown in, Shock seems less like a classic Bava film and more an indication of the style that lay ahead for Italian genre films of the late-seventies/early-eighties. This could be partly due to the fact that Mario Bava’s son, Lamberto, co-wrote the screenplay and directed a number of the film’s scenes for his father (Lamberto would go on to helm such 80s giallo and horror flicks as A Blade in the Dark, Demons, Demons 2 and Delirium). Shock has moments of intense atmosphere, a couple of gruesome killings that still made me wince, and some typically clever (yet simply executed) in-camera tricks which really help elevate the film in terms of style and class. The Bava father/son combination seems to have lent the film a nice mixture of bloody modern horror with old-school ambience and menace.

Daria Nicolodi is wonderful as the female lead, I’ve rarely seen her looking more beautiful and her mental disintegration over the course of the film is handled quite well. As the young boy Marco, David Colin Jr. manages to convey a sense of genuine evil at times, he has a very disturbing, creepy stare, and the scenes of him spying on his mother while she is taking a shower, pinning her down playfully on the lawn then staring at her with a clear sense of sexual menace, and stealing her panties and slicing them up, all help give the film a rather dark sexual kink that adds to its downbeat feel.

The back of the Blue Underground DVD says the soundtrack is by Goblin, but it’s actually by I Libra. It’s terrific though, and certainly sounds a lot like Goblin, and I believe there are some connections between Goblin and I Libra (Italian soundtrack enthusiasts feel free to enlighten). Unfortunately the DVD doesn’t offer English subtitles for the Italian language print, so I had to watch the English dubbed version. Doesn't seem to be on Blu-ray as yet, from what I can see...

PROPHECHY: THE MONSTER MOVIE

When I first saw John Frankenheimer’s Prophecy (1979), I was probably a little too young to really grasp the film’s environmental themes, or even find them of much interest or significance. I was a Monster Kid, and I wanted monsters, not preaching. Rewatching it for the first time as an adult, I find the film’s ecological aspects - along with the major sub-plot involving Native American land rights - to be the most engrossing thing about it, which is good as its moments of horror and scares are pretty scarce during the first hour, and are not always memorable or effective. There is however, a classic over-the-top sleeping bag death, and a genuinely tense sequence where the main protagonists are hiding in a dirt tunnel, listening to the monster’s rampage, and the screams of the people it is killing just on top of them.

The monster in question, an angry giant bear mutated by mercury leaking into the water from a large milling plant, is certainly a gruesome looking creature, though it has no real character to it, and moves a little silly and unrealistically to be genuinely menacing. One of those monsters which is most effective when shown the least. Not one of Tom Burman’s best creations, although the baby mutant bear is great - I felt some genuine sympathy for it.

Robert Foxworth puts in a great, deadly serious and highly watchable performance as the earnest, big city doctor investigation the mutations in the forests of Maine - he’s like a super-intense Robert (Mike Brady) Reed. Providing good support are Armand Assante, Talia Shire and the terrific Richard A. Dysart. The screenplay, and accompanying paperback tie-in, were written by The Omen’s David Seltzer. Filmed in British Columbia, Canada, the film also looks beautiful, capturing some spectacular natural scenery. Would love to see a Blu-ray upgrade of this someday.

The Simpsons paid homage to the atmospheric scene in Prophecy where the monster crosses a river and appears to drown, only to slowly emerge on the other side, much to the horror of the main characters (in The Simpsons, it is Bart who watches in horror as Principal Skinner crosses a river in the same way, while trying to catch Bart playing hooky).

Now I feel like rewatching the other Native American-themed horror movie from 1979, Arthur Hiller’s Nightwing (another film I haven’t seen since its release).

THE NIGHT HE CAME BACK HOME

Universal’s 30^th anniversary Blu-ray of Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween II (1981) certainly looks wonderful, but the improvement in picture and sound quality haven’t done much to improve my overall view of the film as a pretty lackluster and unexciting follow-up to John Carpenter’s original 1978 classic. It’s good that original stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence returned, but Curtis is virtually wasted as she spends nearly the first hour of the film lying almost comatose in bed, while the indestructible Michael Myers embarks on a killing spree through the halls of the most under-staffed (and under-lit) three-story hospital I have ever seen. Only during the final ten minutes does the film really display and genuine style, tension or mood.

I recall this film getting a lot of negative flack when it was released. I’m sure there were people who had already decided to hate it as soon as they fund out that Carpenter was not returning to direct (he does take co-writer, co-producer and music credits). I think one of the main problems with Halloween II is that there is really nothing, apart from it’s name and established characters, that distinguishes it from the glut of slasher films that had come out during 1980/81. It helps reinforce just how exceptional Halloween was, and how hard it was going to be for any sequel to measure up (though personally I always preferred the trashy fun of the Friday the 13^th series to the Halloween and Elm St. films when I was growing-up).

 

 

SMUT PEDDLER

CELLULOID HORROR

 

Over the past decade, Canadian Kier-La Janisse has emerged as one of the most interesting and insightful genre writers going around. From her contributions to publications like Fangoria and Rue Morgue to her outstanding book House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (FAB Press/2012), Janisse writes with an authority, honesty and freshness that is hard not to get swept-up in.

 

Directed by Ashley Fester, Celluloid Horror is a 2004 documentary which captures Janisse’s crusade to expose the filmgoers of Canada to some of the more obscure, subversive, arty and just plain confrontational extremes of horror cinema, via her CineMuerte (‘Cinema of Death’) film festivals, which she programmed and ran between 1999 & 2005. From Andrzej Zulawski's disturbing 1981 arthouse classic Possession to crowd pleasers like the riotous 1982 Spanish splatterfest Pieces, CineMuerte often challenged its audience into expanding their concepts of what a horror movie is, and garnering a mix of extreme reactions in the process (from verbal abusiveness over choice of films to people fainting over the - admittedly very hard to take - animal footage from Cannibal Holocaust).

 

Barely scrapping by financially, and fighting a lack of interest from much of the local press, CineMuerte nevertheless expands in subsequent years, bringing in guests like cult Eurotrash actor Udo Kier, French surrealist horror filmmaker Jean Rollin, Jorge (Nekromantik) Buttgereit, Buddy (Combat Shock) Giovinazzo, and Jeff Leiberman, director of two of my favourite mid-70s genre films, Squirm and Blue Sunshine. The sequences with Udo Kier are great fun, particularly when he agrees to help doing a live spontaneous voice-over for a film when the subtitles don’t work. The stresses of running a film festival are also clearly evident, from worries that the ailing Rollin might die while in attendance to the usual frantic dealing with sudden sound drop-outs during screenings. Janisse tackles any setbacks or issues the way she approaches the festival itself, with an energy and dogged determination that the viewer can’t help but admire.

 

Like her book House of Psychotic Women, Celluloid Horror is almost as much an insight into Janisse’s personal life and sometimes troubled upbringing as it is a testament to her devotion and love of genre cinema, and the film is all the more involving because of it. Spending her time between two fathers (whom she dubs ‘George C. Scott dad’ and ‘Warren Oates dad’), Kier-La talks of her teenage days spent in reform school (where she was deemed "not crazy but dangerous"), and goes through a marriage and subsequent separation during the course of the filming, leading to some uncomfortable moments being captured on camera (Celluloid Horror is a very personal film in many ways - at her introduction to the recent Melbourne screening Janisse admitted that it’s only been since the publication of her book that she has become comfortable with watching and publicly screening the documentary again).

 

There’s an ample amount of choice film clips included throughout Celluloid Horror - all great clips without doubt, but I found they actually took the pace out of the film and become the least interesting thing about it (I guess it also doesn’t help that we are now much more familiar with the films in question than we might have been at the time CineMuerte were screening them).

 

Celluloid Horror is available on DVD from Breed Productions, in a release that contains a nice selection of extras, including an audio commentary from the director, extended scenes (I love Kier-La’s amusing Sleepaway Camp Vs. Screwballs story), a 30 minute Q&A with Udo Kier, an episode of Urban Rush featuring Kier and Kier-La, Jeff Lieberman’s post-Squirm Q&A, photo gallery and more. The copy I purchased after the Melbourne screening also contained a series of postcards featuring the poster art for the CineMuerte events over the years, and best of all, a cool little microchip installed, so that when you open the cover you hear the voice of Udo saying "Where is Keir-La/ I’m going to kill her!", as well as a couple of other snippets of dialogue from the film. The spirit of William Castle lives...

 

 

Above: Meeting Kier-La after the Melbourne screening of Celluloid Horror on Wednesday, Dec. 4th 2013.

ZOMBIE'S LORDS

Finally making its Australian debut (straight to Blu-ray/DVD in an absolutely bare bones release), it would be hard to recommend The Lords of Salem(2012) to anyone but the most completest horror buff or die-hard Rob Zombie fan. Zombie’s first original live-action feature since The Devil's Rejects (2005), The Lords of Salem contains very little of the violent grindhouse frisson or outrageous comic book characterisations that made Rejects (and Zombie’s first feature, 2003's House of 1000 Corpses) so much fun. Not that I want Zombie to keep making the same type of film - far from it - but this tale of a female radio DJ (Sheri Moon Zombie) caught up in witchcraft in modern day Salem has plenty of visual flair and atmosphere but an uninvolving (and paper-thin) plot, flat characters and a decided lack of scares. Only during the film’s final 15 or so minutes does it really gel and come alive, with a pretentiously cerebral but effectively trippy montage that contains some of the disturbing imagery which the rest of the film lacked.

 

As usual, Zombie fills The Lords of Salem with cameos and bit parts from a number of familiar exploitation/horror faces from the 1970s and 80s, including Dee Wallace (Cujo, The Howling), Ken Foree (Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, From Beyond), Patricia Quinn (Rocky Horror Picture Show), Judy Geeson (Inseminoid), Bruce Davison (Willard, X-Men) and Meg Foster (They Live).

 

Ultimately, The Lords of Salem comes off as an interesting but misguided attempt at experimental/art house horror, and does very little to change my thoughts about Zombie as a filmmaker. He clearly has a genuine love for the horror/exploitation genres, has a decent amount of visual flair, and knows how to dream-up some wild plots and memorably crazed characters. But he desperately needs a good co-writer to help make his plots tighter and his characters more defined (and restrained in places). And I think it’s time for him to ditch casting his wife Sheri Moon in the leading female role in his movies. No offense to Sheri Moon, she looks great and is usually fine when she has help from an ensemble cast, but in The Lords of Salem the film hinges quite a bit on her performance, and she doesn’t seem strong enough to carry a film on her own. Of course, her thinly written character would not have been much help to her - Caroline Williams in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Adrienne Barbeau in The Fog did the horror movie late-night disc jockey thing much, much better.