Salem’s Lot Is the Pick of the Week

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Last year a bare-bones DVD release of Tobe Hooper’s terrific TV movie adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot hit the streets (I reviewed it here.) It was an odd release, as we live in the time of 4K UHD, so it’s confusing as to who would want a DVD with absolutely no extras. Especially since there was already a nice Blu-ray release of the film with plenty of extras selling cheaply on Amazon. But I guess there are still folk who just have DVD players and aren’t looking for extras.

At any rate, Arrow Video is now releasing the film in UHD with loads of extras. I’ve got a soft spot for the film (I also reviewed it just for my blog, which you can read here). Despite its being made-for-TV in the 1970s, it is surprisingly effective and genuinely creepy. Now I’m glad I didn’t buy that Blu-ray because this is a much better upgrade.

Also coming out this week that looks interesting:

Marty Supreme: I have to admit I’ve never seen a film by either of the Safdie Brothers. They are directors I keep hearing good things about, and there is no reason for me not to see their films; I just haven’t. This one stars Timothy Chamelet as a guy who dreams of being a ping pong star and will stop at nothing to achieve that goal.

The Blade: Criterion presents this Japanese film about a blade manufacturer who quits his job and looks for revenge.

Eiichi Kudo’s Samurai Revolution Trilogy: Modern takes on the samurai film that push back the classic noble samurai idea and show how corrupt the systems really were.

Lupin the 3rd: Specials Collection 1: Lupin III is a Japanese character who is supposed to be the grandson of the great fictional thief Arsene Lupin. There have been lots of movies, shows, comics, etc. based on the character. This package delivers five TV movies inducing: Bye Bye Lady Liberty, The Hemingway Papers, Napoleon’s Dictionary, From Siberia with Love, and Voyage to Danger

Greenland 2: Migration: I didn’t know there was a Greenland 1. This one sends the Garrity family out of the safety of their bunker and across the barren landscape.

A Man and a Woman: Criterion presents this classic French film from Claude Lelouch about a race car driver’s romance with a script girl.

Tea and Sympathy: Beautifully drawn drama about a gay-coded young man (John Kerry) and the bullying he receives at a prep school for not being manly enough. Deborah Kerr plays the only woman who seems to understand. You can read my full review here.

She Killed in Ecstasy: Jess Franco directs this exploitation classic about a woman seeking revenge on the people who forced her husband into suicide.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Salem’s Lot (2024)

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‘Salem’s Lot was not the first Stephen King book I ever read (that honor would go to the short story The Langoliers) nor was it the one that turned me into a lifelong fan (that would be Mr. Mercedes) but it was the one where I realized how good of a writer he is and that I should maybe start paying attention to him (I wouldn’t do that for a few more years, but the seed was planted then.)

It remains one of my favorite King books.

The story’s basic idea is: what if a vampire came to a small town? But like so many of King’s books, it is so much more than that. It follows Ben Mears, a writer who has returned to the small town of Jerusalem’s Lot, where he grew up, to write about the Marsten House. That’s your classic old spooky mansion on top of the hill, where he saw a ghost as a child.

Naturally, that’s where the vampire lives. But before he gets there Ben makes a friend with a schoolteacher and falls in love with a girl, and meets lots of interesting people. That’s what I love about Stephen King. Sure, he’s written a terrifying story about an ancient vampire taking over a small town, but it is really a story about small-town living and the characters that fill it up.

Tobe Hooper directed a two-part miniseries of Salem’s Lot for CBS in 1979. It is far from perfect, but Hooper understands the heart of the story is its characters and the scares should be built around that. But he also creates some truly memorably scary images.

TNT adapted a version of the story with Rob Lowe in the lead in 2004 but the less said about it the better.

When I heard that had made a new adaptation for Max I was excited. I’m always excited to learn about new Stephen King adaptations. Then I watched the trailer and that excitement flew right out the window. It looked cheap. Worse than that it looked like it was going to rely too heavily on violence and jump scares. Then the reviews started coming in and they were not good.

But it is spooky season and I’m still a sucker for King adaptations so I crossed my fingers and pressed Play.

My friends I am happy to report it is not that bad. It is a long way from great, and you won’t exchange this for the Hooper version in your collection, but it is worth the watching.

They say writer/director Gary Dauberman has a three-hour cut but Max made him edit it down to just under 2 and you can feel it. The movie plays like the greatest hits of the story. It isn’t so much that it jumps straight to the action, but that it shortcuts through everything.

We meet Ben (Lewis Pullman) as he’s driving into town (the soundtrack plays Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown” which is a great choice) he meets Susan (Makenzie Leigh) at the real estate office. She’s reading his book but doesn’t recognize him. But by the next scene, she’s inviting him to the movies, and we learn both their stories within a few minutes. Movies always have characters falling in love way too fast, but here it is even faster.

The realization that the weird stuff going on in this town is caused by vampires happens extraordinarily fast as well. Ben’s newfound friend, Matt (the always great Bill Camp) sees a friend in a bar looking a little pale and pekid. He takes him home and notices the guy has a couple of little scars on his neck. Later he thinks he sees the guy scurrying into an upstairs window.

That little bit of information convinces him that the town is full of vampires. He quickly convinces Ben and Susan of this information. Then the alcoholic priest (John Benjamin Hickey). The new schoolboy in town, Mark Petrie (Jordan Preston Carter) doesn’t need to be convinced, he already knows. He’s an old-school horror nerd who doesn’t take crap from nobody.

This happens throughout the film. Relationships deepen and plot points happen offscreen, in the cuts. Before I realized that they were literally happening in the cuts, that more details had been shot and then edited out at the last minute I thought it was an interesting story choice. Now it just seems distracting.

But what is left is well done, if a little disjointed. The editing is interesting. There are a lot of shots like one in which a man is alone on a bed. The camera moves slowly to look under the bed, then it moves upward and the room is full of people – a great deal of time has shifted while the camera was under the bed. Or the camera will focus on an object and then it will cut to a similar object in a different scene.

When the violence comes it comes with that frantic modern style of scaring you with jumps, and quick edits, which is not to my liking at all. They changed the ending quite a bit. Some of it I liked – they moved it from the Marsten House to somewhere interesting. Some of it I did not – far too much generic action. But more or less it worked for me. Or perhaps my expectations were so low that anything not terrible would have been enjoyed by me at this point.

Salem’s Lot (1979)

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I was slow coming ’round to Stephen King. Growing up I was more of a Dean Koontz man. I read the short story The Langoliers when I was in high school and loved it, but for some reason didn’t even bother finishing the other short stories in the book, much less read any other King. In college, I read Dolores Claiborne and loved it, and then didn’t get around to reading any other King books until a few years later. And so it went for a long time. I’d read a King book, love it, and then not pick one up again for many months or years. And then four or five years ago I got a copy of the Mr. Mercedes audiobook from the library and really dug it, then picked up the sequel, Finder’s Keepers, and I was off to the races. I’ve been reading him steadily ever since.

I read ‘Salem’s Lot about 12 years ago and absolutely loved it. I’m a sucker for vampire stories, and King tells a really good one. It remains one of my favorite novels of his. Tobe Hooper directed a two-part TV miniseries back in 1979, and I decided to rewatch it this week. It is surprisingly good.

The story concerns Ben Mears (David Soul), a writer (the first of many times the protagonist in a King story would have that occupation) who grew up in the small town of Salem’s Lot but moved away as a boy. He comes back to write about a spooky old house up on a hill that has a sordid history and is rumored to be haunted. He plans on renting it, but as it turns out, the house has just been purchased by the mysterious Richard Straker (James Mason, completely enjoying himself) and his absent partner Kurt Barlow.

Turns out Barlow is an ancient vampire, and Straker is his familiar. But the movie takes its time getting to that part. First, Ben has to meet Susan (Bonnie Bedelia), the romantic interest, plus other assortments of characters. It isn’t until the second part of the movie, more than 90 minutes into its three-hour runtime, that we actually see the vampire. Mysterious things do happen—people get sick, a kid dies, a dog is murdered, etc., but Hooper keeps the pace slow and the eeriness high.

There is quite a lot of padding, as one would expect from a TV movie made in 1979. And the production values fit within that genre as well. But Hooper gives some good jump scares and several truly spooky scenes. There’s one in which a vampire kid floats into another kid’s room, which is an all-timer. The look of the main vampire is very Nosferatu-esque and pretty darn terrific.

It is a film that, if you consider the budget and its limitations, comes across as surprisingly great and well worth watching.