Rob Zombie’s ‘The Lords of Salem’ Is a Rip-Off of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’
Classic rock star Rob Zombie is known for his grungy horror movies, one of the best of which is The Lords of Salem. In terms of its plot, The Lords of Salem is a bold rip-off of Rosemary’s Baby. However, the devil is in the details, and The Lords of Salem has a feel all its own.
Rob Zombie’s ‘The Lords of Salem’ is a ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ rip-off set in Salem
Rosemary’s Baby popularized the trope of the devil impregnating a human woman to create an Antichrist. This trope is an obvious inversion of Christian beliefs about Jesus Christ. But the devil doesn’t do it all on his own. In Rosemary’s Baby, a cult of elderly Satanists summons the devil in order to impregnate Rosemary.
The Lords of Salem, meanwhile, is about Heidi Hawthorne, a radio host in modern-day Salem, Massachusetts. A Satanic cult summons Lucifer and he impregnates Heidi with the Antichrist. Wow, how original. Ira Levin, the author of the novel Rosemary’s Baby, died in 2007. If he lived to see the release of The Lords of Salem in 2012, he might have sued.
Even rip-offs can be original
Of course, movies are not just plots. Aesthetics can make two otherwise similar movies into very different experiences. Rosemary’s Baby and The Lords of Salem are a prime example of that. Rosemary’s Baby shows a lot of restraint. We see small glimpses of the devil and the Antichrist, but director Roman Polanski mostly leaves the supernatural horror up to the imagination.
The Lords of Salem, on the other hand, is about as subtle as a machete to the face. The actors ham it up, the effects are gross and weird, and the film looks dirty. It’s not a classic, but its off-the-wall sensibilities make it a fascinating watch.
Rob Zombie said his movie was like ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘Eraserhead’
During a 2012 interview with Now, Zombie didn’t shy away from admitting that Rosemary’s Baby inspired The Lords of Salem. “I was always joking with everybody that it’s like Rosemary’s Baby if it were directed by Ken Russell,” he said. For context, Ken Russell was known for making over-the-top, bizarre movies, including the horror cult classics The Devils and The Lair of the White Worm.
During the interview, Zombie admitted he drew inspiration from movies that were a little more impressionistic and ambiguous. “I always liked those kind of movies because they don’t always have to make sense,” he said. “You have to think about them. And there’s just such a ‘thing’ now that everything has to make perfect sense. You see that all the time at the movies.”
He didn’t want The Lords of Salem to feel like a studio product. “With studios it’s meetings upon meetings and notes upon notes, and they just get so afraid that if the audience is confused for longer than 10 seconds that they’ll just walk out,” he said. “I remember liking so many movies like that. Like Eraserhead. I mean, what the hell was that? That’s why I loved it. I love movies that have a kind of mystery to them.”
Love or hate The Lords of Salem, it doesn’t feel generic, even if its plot is a bit familiar.
