Movies
Dee Wallace Helps ‘Salem’ Locals
Rob Zombie announced today that Zombie regular Dee Wallace has joined the cast of The Lords of Salem, which begins lensing this fall from the producing team behind Insidious and Paranormal Activity.
Dee plays the role of “Sonny,” a self-help guru. Shooting begins in less than two weeks.
Dee has appeared in so many beloved genre films such as The Hills Have Eyes, The Stepford Wives, The Howling, E.T.:The Extra-Terrestrial, Cujo, The Frightners and Halloween.
Bruce Dern was just cast as “Francis Matthias”, author of the book “Satan’s Last Stand – The Truth About The Salem Witch Trials.” Jeff Phillips will play Herman “Whitey” Salvador, one third of “The Big H Team” at WIQZ – Salem’s Rock Radio. Meg Foster was also cast as “Margaret Morgan”, the leader of a secret coven of witches in Salem. Ernest Thomas will play Chip “Freakshow” McDonald, the station manager at Salem’s #1 rock station. Torsten Voges stars as “Count Gorgann”, the lead singer of the Norwegian death metal band Leviathan the Fleeing Serpent.
“The story is about a local DJ who mistakenly unleashes a hellish curse on the town. 300 years earlier on the very streets of Salem that the townspeople walk on today, innocent folks were rounded up from their homes, convicted of being witches and sentenced to death. The Lords of Salem ran the town with an iron fist, but four witches who were tortured and killed in secrecy vowed that one day they would be back for revenge.”
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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