S&A DOUBLE - A SALEM FULL OF WTICHES

HOCUS POCUS - DIRECTED BY KENNY ORTEGA 1993

LORDS OF SALEM - DIRECTED BY ROB ZOMBIE 2012

   

    Salem Massachusetts has had a long storied history with witches.  The Salem Witch Trials of 1692-1693 feel baked into history and foundation of the United States, at least from an outsider perspective.  It is hysteria, puritism and superstition gone awary.  Many different artists since have taken the historical structure and molded it into something else.  For the example The Crucible by Arthur Miller which is about Government and legal corruption, and was also speaking to the Communinist UnAmerican Trials of the early 1950s.  For me History is always a living beast, it never goes away.  One of the way history can be brought back to life is through different artists who recreate and mould it to something else.  

    The movies I'm looking at, in the Schlock and Awe way, couldn't be more different.  Disney and Zob Zombie, both working in very different company styles.  Hocus Pocus and The Lords of Salem are both about the Witches of Salem, from the past that now haunt the present.  Also in both movies these Witches are looking for revenge and a researgence of their former power.  What really struck me  watching Hocus Pocus and The Lords of Salem the diffences travel through my taste in childhood to my adult taste nicely.  They do this with the music which, is incrediably vital to each movie.   In both Hocus Pocus and The Lords of Salem the use music is the central power.  I was the kid who used to listen to Disney Albums, big show tunes.  As I grew up I grew into more industrial metal, which is how I came across Rob Zombie.  For me music, being  a child of MTV or just how my brain works, music and images have always been entwined.  Which, is why watching these movies was so fascinating.  Not only because of how they used the Witch Mythology, but how it brought together my childhood and supposed adulthood.

    Weridly, Bette Midler was strangely was a large part of my childhood movie diet.  Beaches, Big Business, Ruthless People and Hocus Pocus VHS tapes were rented multiple times in my house.  Growing up in New Zealand, Halloween wasn't really celebrated so  Hocus Pocus has a lot of nostalgiic value for me in the sense that Hocus Pocus was a childood Halloween tradition, or what I thought a Halloween tradtion was.

    Hocus Pocus looks and feels like an animated movie.  Yet, even as a kid I thought the large amount of Virgin jokes was a tad werid.  Directed by  a True Disney Company Man Kenny Ortega, he also directed the likes of Newsies, Highschool Musical and the Descendants Movies.  Hocus Pocus takes the stories of the Witch Trials and condenses it down to the architypical fairy tale Witches Three (The Hag, The Mother and Maid) who nefariously hide in the woods stealing the souls of children so they can stay forever young.  But as newly arrived Max, played by Omri Katz,  Salem is a town drowned in Mythology which is also threating to come up to the surface.  Salem is a place where the dead are a little easier to rise.  And in constant fun fashion people rise up from the dead, and when I mean people I mean Doug Jones who plays Billy Butcherson and I love it.  Kenny Ortega is having funning playing with the different elements of Halloween, the older magical mythology, the trick or treating or the general party attomsohere.  It's what you want from a Halloween night.  

    The Sandersons Sister's real power really comes from their love of musical theater.  You don't hire Bette Midler and Kathy Najmy if you don't want a show stopping musical interlude of I Put A Spell On You at the Salem Halloween Party.  It's a tad on the nose, for they in fact do put a spell on the people of Salem, but it's fun and bombasitc and during a warning of how powerful they are.  It's Disney, it's theaterical, has a backing band and you can sing a long.  And that is what I love about Hocus Pocus, it's because of theatricality the colour and fun, with a great Penny and Gary Marshall cameo.  It;s all delightful.  

    As I got older and deserning, well ...... in my taste,  I got into Rob Zombie.  It didn't hurt that my present and past boyfriends all were fans of Zombie.  Zombie  has a very singular style, it's still something I am grappling with.  The griminess, the violence, all wraped up in a ugly exterior.  A Rob Zombie movie is something you can smell.  I have heard it said that The Lords of Salem is a more commercial version of a Zombie movie and I agree.  It goes down easier and Heidie Hawthorn played by Sheri Moon Zombie looks like she showers regularly, for the most part.  To me, The Lords of Salem feels like a celebration of female power, which is what Witchcraft should be.  The way Judy Geeson, Dee Wallace and Patricia freaken Margenta Quinn start taking over the apartment and Sherli Moon's life is glorious.

     Where in Hocus Pocus the Sanderson Sisters is a story brough back to life, the Witches in The Lords of Salem are in the very foundation of Salem.  They are in the walls, the instiutsions and the music, everywhere.  Everything in Lords in Salem is dreams and memories, and I  love it.  As soon as Sheri Moon Zombie hears that piece of music she recongizes it, the music and the history of Salem and is already in her DNA.  The city of Salem and it's history of Witchcraft and that conflict lives through her.  As the movie progesses, Sheri Moon regresses, she's slipping back in time.  I love the use of Meg Foster, as this primordial force, she's a dirty Mother Earth with those bewitching Bette Davis Eyes.  Zombie starts playing around with dream logic.  Sheri Moon Zombie feels like she is hypnotised throughout the movie.  She reminded me of Virginia Madsen in The Candy Man, she is compelled to delve deeper into Salem's history without understanding what is calling her and why. 

    The Lords of Salem has everything I now love in a movie.  It's a movie that is all about the lighting, music, mood, and they are all effectively characters.  The Lords of Salem does remind me a little of Suspiria from 1977, which in recent years is one my favourite movies of all time.  Suspiria is the perfect example of what kind of movies I am drawn too now.  I don't think my taste from childhood has become more subtle, I still like bomastity and fantasy, but it's changed in style.  It has always been the energy of a movie I love, the werid angles, moods and colour palette, it all adds a texture.  And The Lords of Salem has a texture that is all it's own.

    The Lords of Salem, along with The Devil's Rejects is a step in the direction of me liking Rob Zombie more.  Even if it's just the way he uses his cast, Sheri Moon, Ken Foree, Jeff Daniel Philips, Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Dee Wallace and of course Meg Foster are all used so well.  I love that you can see Zombie is a film nerd, there is a reverence to how how treats film and how he shoots certain things, even if it's layered under a lot of grime.

    Hocus Pocus and The Lords of Salem are not that dissimliar.  Both movies are about a Coven causing havoc, and in this they cast a spell the auidence falls under.  For me music is memory, and both movies are about music and memory that bring history to life.  One looks like an animated movie, the other has elements of a late 90s Industrial Metal video with extra dirt.  And I love both.  I have a nolstegia for both movies.  Hocus Pocus is my childhood, VHS and and cassette tapes, taped over and replayed, whole singing big brasey ballads into my hair brush.  The Lords of Salem is what I am drawn to now.  Drinking Whiskey, sitting in dark theatres letting movies wash over me, then talking to fast and excitedly with lots of hand gestures knocking over other peoples drinks.  And I am happy to be under each spell.