The Music and Movies of White Zombie, Pt. 5: The Maddest Story Ever Told
Welcome back to this special series where I’ll be covering the movies sampled and referenced by the greatest band in the world, White Zombie...I know, I know, it’s been a while. In the last installment of the series we covered Escape from New York, A Clockwork Orange and an obscure episode of the 1960’s Batman TV series. This installment, The Maddest Story Ever Told, we will explore some of the greatest horror stories ever told to examine why female antagonists may be better than their male counterparts and also loneliness. Let’s explore the films sampled in the next two White Zombie songs: Spiderbaby (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah) and I Am Legend.
Avid horror fans will easily recognize the song’s title is the same as an obscure horror film that features one of the last appearances of Lon Chaney and one of the first appearances of Sid Haig, a frequent Zombie collaborator. Spiderbaby follows a group of travelers who come to see an old house that they have inherited only to find it occupied by the last members of the Merrye family who all suffer from Merrye Syndrome which makes them crazy. How crazy? They eat bugs and dirt, one of the girls pretends she is a spider and stabs people with knives that she thinks are pinchers and the eldest looks like a young Captain Spaulding.
Like most Zombie songs, the title and lyrics don’t relate to the movie in any way. The closest Spiderbaby (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah) comes to referencing the movie is in the first verse:
Yeah, I knew I hit the edge when I saw the spider
Jukebox paranoid insider
Blaze they gaze -- Amaze at the razor
Stranglehold L-O-V-E laze or
Honestly, I really wish I knew what Rob Zombie was talking about here but I honestly have no idea. It’s like he did madlibs on the lyrics but everything was a blank to be filled in. Since the lyrics are nonsense and have no relation to the movie we are going to focus on the sample used in this song which come from some all time horror classics. The song opens with some creepy bells from Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 then further on in the middle of the song there is some ominous chanting from The Omen and the song ends with some more chanting, this time from The Exorcist. These movies give us a unique opportunity to figure out why it is that a female antagonist is far superior to a male antagonist.
At a very base level, The Omen and The Exorcist are very similar stories about a young child in the grips of Satan. Certainly there are tons of differences between the two in terms of directors, pacing, actors, overall story arch and special effects used, but my hypothesis as to why The Exorcist ranks higher than The Omen on most every horror fans list is because Regan is more interesting than Damien and a lot of that has to do with gender.
Now I could be completely off base and the reason why people sympathize or empathize with Regan is because she is the victim in the story whereas Damien is a willing participant in all the Satanism but I think another compounding factor that adds to my theory is the main protagonist. In The Exorcist, the story follows the mother who is trying to sort out what is going on with her child while in The Omen, the story is centered on the father.
I am almost certain there is some kind of caveman, lizard brain, subconscious reasoning behind why female characters in horror are more beloved and memorable but I am not a psychologist so I can’t speak on this. What I can speak on is my area of expertise and that’s horror movies and from that perspective, the science is clear. In the Nightmare on Elm Street series Nancy is far more memorable than Jesse, in the Friday the 13th series the films that replace the final girl with a final dude (Part 5 and Jason Goes to Hell) are often considered duds. Not to mention the Scream series is more remembered for Sydney Prescott than it is for the screamer or ghostface or whatever he is called. To prove my hypothesis I have one and only one piece of hard evidence and that is Hellbound: Hellraiser 2.
At a very base level, Hellraiser and Hellraiser 2 are basically the same exact movie. There’s a box, pinhead is in it, suffering is legendary blah blah blah and it’s all very horny but somehow, someway, Hellraiser 2 is the superior of the two, a rare occurrence in the horror world where the sequel is as good or better than original. But why? Two words JULIA COTTON.
The main villain of the Hellraiser series is Pinhead but being honest, he almost lost control of his own franchise in the second film as Julia Cotton was a force of nature that simply could not be contained. In the first film, the main villain was creepy Uncle Frank who was the bloody skinless mess in the attic of the old house and sure a lot of his motivations were because of Julia, but Frank was still the main villain and even when he put on his brother’s skin suit it’s wasn’t half as terrifying as Julia in the sequel wearing an all white pants suit. In both movies the motivations of the antagonist are the exact same, torture Kristy Cotton, consume flesh, legendary suffering blah blah blah and humping everything but when it’s Julia doing it instead of Frank, it’s ten times better, and to me, it’s because she’s a woman.
Now there are some films and roles that are just so legendary that it does not matter what gender the lead is, as long as Vincent Price has a prominent role.
Now I know I said at the beginning of this article that Zombie’s lyrics often have nothing to do with the movie referenced in their title but the rare exception is I Am Legend. Other than A Clockwork Orange, the novel I am Legend by Richard Matheson is one of the most referenced pieces of genre in all of Zombie’s discography, in fact, we will be covering the adaptation starring Charlton Heston in a later entry of this series but for now, we are going to talk about the dark and dreary Vincent Price film from 1964, The Last Man on Earth.
Now I am fairly certain that upon its release in 1964 that Technicolor films were standard in cinema and the only reason this film was released in black and white was because it was the only medium that could fully capture the dark and haunting tone that this film captures. I’ve seen tons of horror movies from different subgenres from countries all around the world but they all pale in comparison to how bleak The Last Man on Earth is. From it’s opening lines, “another Day to Live through, better get started”, which gives you the distinct impression that the main character is not happy that he is alive. To his inner monologue of, “there was a time that eating was pleasurable. Now it bores me.” How deep in depression and despair does one have to be to have these sorts of thoughts? The film makes it very clear as you watch Vincent Price wake everyday to make wooden stakes to kill vampires in human form after watching his wife and child and the entire world die before him. The film really touches on the unique deterioration of the mental state of a man who would be the last on earth.
In a rare occurrence, the lyrics of the song actually make sense as they capture not only what happens in the film but also the bleak mind set of the main character. In the first verse we see how the main character feels about killing vampires in the lines Terminate another, no one is my brother. We also see how the main character sees the world around him Hell is home, tomb, city, stone it’s all very haunting and so is the accompanying music which is some sort of dark, slow ballad with acoustic guitar.
When I'm in the sky, I'm too far away
Gotta kick in to feel it
Terminate another, no one is my brother
Yeah, the sun burns on me, well
Hell is home, tomb, city, stone
Nail me to another cross, yeah
Perhaps my favorite verse of the whole song which takes the strange aesthetic of Rob Zombie and mixes it perfectly with the bleak aesthetic of the film is the third verse.
Yeah, a vampire sharpshooter
"O," I said, "a messenger for the damned."
I got a holy gun, come a loaded
To kill everything that I am
Well I am the only nitty-gritty
Ride a rail and look at the crime, yeah!
Well I am the only—god? one they can find
As we’ve seen throughout this series, Rob Zombie’s lyrics are purely nonsensical but in this song it really seems like he took the time to focus and concentrate on matching the theme of the movie with the lyrics of the song. One of my absolute favorite songs on the album and one of my absolute favorite movies of all time!
Stay tuned for the next installment of the series, Notorious? Classic? Yeah? Maybe? where we will cover the next two songs on the La Sexorcisto album; Thrust! In which we will finally cover that porn I have been promising to cover for months and One Big Crunch which is a 22 second interlude that samples two of the greatest horror movies of all time…at the same time. Special guest appearances from George A. Romero, Tobe Hooper and gratuitous tentacle porn.
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