Does Rob Zombie’s Novelization of His Own Lords of Salem “Fix” the Movie?

One complaint that many (and by “many,” I mean “all five of us who saw it”) viewers had about Rob Zombie’s most recent cinematic opus, The Lords of Salem, was that the narrative is more confusing than a statement written by a former member of Attack Attack!. But in a new piece for Badass Digest, Brian Collins asserts that the novelization of the film — which Zombie himself wrote with author B.K. Evenson — “fixes” Salem by providing “answers to the movie’s mysteries.” One example cited by Collins concerns the flick’s prologue:

“…while we meet Heidi (Sheri Moon Zombie) in the first minute of the film, she isn’t introduced until page 40 or so in the book, as we’re treated to a lengthy prologue that fleshes out the Hawthorne (Andrew Prine) and Morgan (Meg Foster) characters. Some of this material is used as flashbacks in the film, but it never adds up to as much as we get in the book, which explains a lot more about Hawthorne’s prosecution of Morgan and her fellow witches, and also, yes, turns the Magnus brothers (Sid Haig and Michael Berryman) into actual characters – that of witch hunters who help Hawthorne. Since the entire plot concerns Morgan coming back to seek revenge on Hawthorne’s descendent (that would be Heidi), I can’t help but wonder if those who found the movie incoherent would have felt differently if the backstory wasn’t so truncated.”

Actually, now that I think of it, that really would have helped. Hm. Interesting.

I don’t think I have the energy to read the book after suffering through the movie, but if you feel like you have more fortitude than I, you can purchase a copy here. Or, of course, you can just read the rest of Collins’ article.