After a slew of horror films to his name -- House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects,and the Halloween reboots -- director/musician Rob Zombie finally makes his first appearance at Midnight Madness with The Lords of Salem tonight at The Ryerson!
After radio DJ Heidi Hawthorne plays a mysterious record by a band named The Lords, she inadvertently awakens the spirit of a 300-year-old coven of witches who are out for revenge.
With a giant cast of cult cinema stars in a movie about rock 'n' roll, witches, Satan, the occult, and dudes in corpse paint carrying swords, what's not to like? Tonight promises to be the grimmest, creepiest, most atmospheric Midnight Madness yet.
THE LORDS OF SALEM Screening Times: Mon., Sept. 10th, 11:59 PM RYERSON Wed., Sept. 12th, 5:00 PM CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 6
Director Rob Zombie is unabashedly in the category of filmmakers that double as hardcore movie geeks. This is a man, after all, who named his band after a Bela Lugosi flick, and who's stuffed his films with references--often obscure and odd--that span all eras of horror. His casting is no different, as his films read like a who's who of the past four decades of horror, exploitation, and sci-fi. Since mapping out the names and resumes all of his movies' casts requires numerous charts, graphs, and Venn diagrams that I have neither the space nor the mental fortitude for, let's instead take a quick, dirty look at his latest, the Midnight Madness selection The Lords of Salem.
A surprise to anyone is the return of Zombie's wife Sherri Moon Zombie in the role of radio DJ Heidi Hawthorne, as she's appeared in each of her husband's films. Another Zombie regular--and an always welcome addition-- is Sid Haig, who's appeared everything but Halloween 2, and is best known today as the deliciously sadistic clown-- and Marx Brothers' reference--Captain Spaulding. Haig's early career's still remembered for Spider Baby.
Another returning semi-regular is Clint Howard, who's recognized by most for popping up in his brother Ron Howard's films. Howard's appeared in Zombie's Halloween remake and as a voice actor in the oft-forgotten, quite twisted, and infinitely silly animated flick The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, but he's been in literally a billion (give or take a few) other movie and TV shows. A spot that's close to my own heart is his titular role in 1995's supremely odd, schlocky Ice Cream Man.
Udo Kier makes his second appearance in a Zombie production (if we're counting the fake trailer for Werewolf Women of the SSin the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino double feature Grindhouse), and has a long career dating back to the '60s. My personal favorites are Paul Morrissey's beautifully tasteless X-rated features Blood for Dracula (aka Andy Warhol's Dracula) and Flesh for Frankenstein (aka Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, of course). The latter originally showed up in theaters in 3D, and featured the greatest of all 3D effects, Kier's liver dangling over the audience on the end of a spear. Below is the trailer for the former.
Lords of Salem also supplies us with the first appearance of the wonderful Barbara Crampton in a Zombie film. Crampton's best known today for her early, regular work with Stuart Gordon, especially one very specific--and very brave--act committed with a severed head in Re-Animator. Since we're far too classy to show you that, check out this trailer to Gordon's From Beyond, with Crampton in full-on scream queen mode, plus a fellow Salem cast member, Ken Foree.
And with that, we're not even scratching the surface. Eagle-eyed movie nerds will recognize the likes of Maria Conchita Alonso (The Running Man, Predator 2), Meg Foster (They Live), Tim Burton's one-time wife Lisa Marie, and Dee Wallace (E.T., Cujo). There's even throwbacks to '70s TV, like The Brady Bunch's Christopher Knight, and Raj from What's Happening himself, Ernest Thomas. Did I miss someone? Maybe you've got a favorite Rob Zombie cast member or in-reference? Let us know down below in the comments.
THE LORDS OF SALEM Mon., Sept. 10th, 11:59 PM RYERSON Wed., Sept. 12th, 5:00 PM CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 6
Barry Levinson's The Bay and its army of invisible parasites is just the latest entrant in cinema's long, storied history of aquatic horror flicks. It's bad enough that fish do all kinds of debauched, disgusting things in the water to begin with, but then filmmakers have to go along and throw all other types of vicious nasties in there, too.
The tagline to Jaws was "Don't go in the water," and director Steven Spielberg and company meant it. But sometimes we find far scarier things under the sea then you're normal, everyday man-eating shark--like, for instance, genetically enhanced, super-intelligent sharks. That's case in Deep Blue Sea, a movie most best known for its out-of-nowhere Samuel L. Jackson death scene. But mutant sharks aren't this film's only horrors--you've also got a pretty silly, truly confounding (I've spent way too much of my life trying to figure out what "My hat is like a shark's fin" means) LL Cool J theme song to deal with, too.
The ocean is a truly vast, unknown world yet to be fully explored. One day, what kinds of things might we discover below the surface? If War-Gods of the Deep is to be believed (and I trust fully that it is), Vincent Price in a frilly neckerchief--complete with an "army of half-men, half-monster gill-men"-- isn't out of the question.
Really, if aquatic horror teaches us anything, it's that women are never safe in the water. Or really anywhere near a beach. Just look at Roger Corman's Humanoids from the Deep, as a race of intelligent sea-beasts invade our world for the sole--and quite rude, if you ask me--purpose of mating with human women as a means of advancing their species.
Truly, no one, and no beach is safe--not even Party Beach! Need proof? Check out The Horror of Party Beach, wher"an invasion of ghoulish atomic beasts who live off human blood" terrorizes fun-loving teens and cycle gangs alike.
And when Mother Nature isn't running amok, humanity's here to cause their own problems, like inventing "the most devistating device the mind of man has ever created," and then filling it with super-men with super weapons in Aragon.
With a filmography that includes stylish flicks like Versus and the greatest-titled film of all time Midnight Meat Train, it's fitting that a slick filmmaker like Ryuhei Kitamura would end up with an equally slick poster for his latest, No One Lives.
And for you completests out there, check out the equally moody international one sheet just below.
Since this will be my first TIFF, my first Midnight Madness and my first time aiding the fine guys and gals of this fine MM blog (heck, it'll be the first time I've left the country), I'd like to take a few sweet, precious moments of your time to introduce myself. My name is Justin Souther, and I'm a film critic based out of Asheville, NC, where I help run the Asheville Film Society, and co-curate a weekly horror film series at the local theater.
Beyond that, I write reviews for Asheville's alt-weekly the Mountain Xpress, record the very haphazard film podcast Elitist Bastards Go to the Movies(hence the quite frightening piece of artwork up top--that'd be me in the middle) with my cohorts Ken Hanke and Steve Shanafelt. In my free time, I'm usually watching whatever Netflix true crime program my wife Laura Marie is currently into, and occasionally tweeting embarrassing nonsense from @veryanal.
I'm quite giddy about my first trip to Toronto, hoping to find out what the big deal about Tim Hortons is, and praying mightily that Mayor Rob Ford does something silly while I'm in town. And of course, watching way too many movies.
