Here’s a fun game: Take all the stuff you see in Rob Zombie movies, then string them together and speak-sing that list in a gruff Rob Zombie-ish growl, punctuate it with forceful “Yeah!”s and what have you got? A Rob Zombie song, pretty much. For example: Leather boots and killer clowns / Smokin’ cigarettes and Weird Al / Yeah! It used to be a pretty excellent drinking game, but unfortunately for those who are looking to get wasted right now, the trailer for Zombie’s The Lords Of Salem looks a bit more somber than the rocker-cum-filmmaker’s other, more hyperactive efforts.
It stars Zombie’s wife, Sherri Moon Zombie, playing a radio DJ who accidentally awakens a long-dead witch coven after playing a mysterious heavy-metal record on her show. With a cast culled from genre movie classics, including Dee Wallace (The Howling), Ken Foree (Dawn Of The Dead), and Meg Foster (They Live), and characters slathered in two-tone black metal face paint, Lords Of Salem—or at least the trailer—still represents Zombie’s buffet-style approach to horror cinema. It just seems to be working in a lower key. So, let’s all downtune our enormous, bone-crusted bass guitars and try this again: Corpse-paint guys and spooky kids / References to other movies / Yeah?