The 1970’s were a fertile decade for Stephen King novels. ‘Carrie’ was the first great adaptation with one of films great shock endings, ‘The Shining’ was taken to greater heights by Stanley Kubrick and turned the book into something even better and then there was the 1979 TV two part version of Salem’s Lot that creeped out audiences especially kids who sneakily watched it on the portable TV. The image of a vampire boy floating outside his friends bedroom window remains iconic in Kings cannon. We now have a big screen remake of Salem’s Lot and this version is helmed by Gary Dauberman who is perhaps best known for his James Wan spin off films Annabelle and The Nun II.
Keeping its 1975 setting it sees author Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) retune to his home town of Salem’s Lot the sort of small town Americana where the newspaper boys deliver by throwing the papers on the drive way – a technique that was disastrously adopted by our milkman. Mears is the stranger in town thought not quite as strange as Richard Straker (Pilou Asbæk) and Kurt Barlow (Alexander Ward) having moved their recently and opened an antiques shop. They are the Renfield to his masters Dracula respectively with Asbaek delivering his dialogue like a camp 17th century dandy. It’s not long before children go missing and a terror descends on the town.
It is Mears along with a romantic interest Susan (Makenzie Leigh) who , along with local teacher Matthew (Bill Camp), boozy minister Callahan ( John Betjeman) and Dr with attitude Dr Cody (Alfre Woodard) and best of all new kid in school Mark (Jordan Preston Carter) who take the fight to the expanding population of vampires taking over the town.
As an early King novel this contains many of the themes, locales and character types of his successive books – the struggling writer, the small town, kids with attitude and a distrust of religion – new at the time but now well worn in the successive decades since the book was first published. But this version underlines just why some of his books are so well suited to the mini series or at least two-parter films as was the case with ‘It’ (albeit the 2nd chapter was a let down). It’s not without its moments, – a child abduction in silhouette (King has never been wary of sparing children from the horrors of his monsters), a jump scare in the basement with a lone light bulb, a vampire attack at a drive in cinema as the sunsets and of course the floating vampire boy outside the bedroom window
The path of this version of King’s novel ’s has been a troubled one – intended for release in 2022 it was shelved due to covid only to be finally released in the US on MAX and theatrical for the rest of us. But at two hours there’s signs that someone has got cold feet and taken the scissors to this with the characters and often plot too notably lacking in development where scenes having clearly been cut or clipped to get a shorter run time and it misses that sense of impending dread wanting to get to the vampires. Faubermann has made a decent enough film but there’s a feeling that a full unedited version of the film awaits on home entertainment release that is even better.
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Here’s the Salem’s Lot trailer….
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