Salem's Lot

Excellent horror flick from Tobe Hooper who gave us Poltergeist (that's Poltergeist 1, the GOOD one)...Lifeforce, Nightmares, The Mangler, Dark Skies, The Others, and so many more!

Written for TV by Paul Monash, screenwriter who adapted the marvelous TV series, "V," and directed by one of the Masters of Horror, Tobe Hooper, this movie (in the extended version) closely follows Stephen King's original literary work much better than expected.

While there are campy moments, and the effects could have been much, MUCH better (it WAS post-Star Wars, after all), there are edgy, frightening moments; moments where you literally hold your breath, if you've allowed yourself to be drawn into the movie. Riddled with "scare you" and "edge of the seat" moments, this film, while a bit dated, is still scary.

I previously owned the "cut" version which aired on cable in 1979.

In writing this review, I purchased the full-length version and I must say that I was delightfully surprised. This version was so much better, followed the original work more closely, and added the depth of character development which the "short" version completely obliterated.

In the wake of the remake to be aired in 2004, I thought a fresh viewing of this movie was in order, and so it was. If you have never seen "Salem's Lot" in its 184 minute presentation, please do. It's a classic in the horror genre and will enrich your perspective of the plot by 100%.

Suspenseful and actually scares you from time to time.

It rates an 8.4/10 from...

the Fiend :.

This is one of the most richly atmospheric films in horror, an article of pure latenight seduction and phosphorescent darkness.

Atmospheric not in the sense that a dry ice machine has pumped a catacomb full of haze and cobwebs are strategically placed in some dark corner, but as a place lived, with naturally dark corners and tangible portents: the old dark house on the hill breathing evil, the antique shop downtown, all velvety smell and musty colors, the small town lined with porticoes bathed in the quiet of a lazy night, yet harboring secrets and vice from inside. Prying eyes staring from behind a curtain.

Oh, at some point vampires come flying through the window, and it's still fine by me, it's one of the better vampire films and at 3 hours it's better fleshed than most of them; but I am just not attuned to the whole vampire lore so I leave this part to be enjoyed best by the traditional horror fan. It is actually one of the more potent retellings of the most familiar story in this field, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not quite Dracula but that older film with longer shadows, so I will not spoil the discovery for you.

But the first part intrigues me in stranger ways, more suggestive, with menace that goes unspoken. The small-town facade that would later resurface in Twin Peaks.

There is a notion that matters in all this, but which is not pursued at all; the writer who feels from his perspective that it was his presence that awakened evil, it's fitting that it's coming from a writer because it's a self-centered, imaginative notion, but which from our end we know is bogus. Evil was already afoot, and was never centered around him. But he wistfully imagines himself at the center so he can write about it.

So I don't know what happened with Tobe Hooper. He was never very elegant with a camera, the way Argento was or occasionally Carpenter, but he was unmatched in his feel for the aural qualities of film. He could make a room hum with evil. My guess is that, being an intuitive maker, the feel came and went, or he forgot how to tap into it (you can see as early as Eaten Alive how he seems to be desperately trying to capture again the muse that gave him Texas Massacre). Or he plainly stopped actively chasing after the right material.

This was just right for him. Only Kubrick has better adapted Stephen King to my mind.

The story is pretty interesting and is build up well. The miniseries does an amazing job on building up the atmosphere when the vampires arrived. I really like how the vampirism spreads throughout the townsfolks. The creepiness factor really works well when the vampire shows up because it gives off a eerie vibe to it. And the climax is pretty suspenseful. There's a few flaws with this miniseries. One is that some scenes feels unnecessary and I didn't get the point of it. Also the main vampire doesn't appear a lot and only shows up 2 hours into the miniseries. While he doesn't appear a lot, he's definitely the scariest vampire I ever seen. He looks so freaky and is really threatening villain. The vampire makeup effects are really well made. I really like how the makeup looks so creepy with it's yellow eyes and Barlow blue face. The atmosphere is the best part of the movie. The miniseries does an amazing job building up the suspense to it and the vampire scenes are really effective to be creepy.

I was fourteen years old when this film was released, and it was really a shocker for its time. Although I can see the points raised by detractors of this film, nevertheless, it is, in my opinion, one of the most truly terrifying movies I have ever seen. The scenes in which first Ralphie and then Danny Glick appear in windows at night, scratching to be let in, were utterly horrifying, as were the scenes with Mike Ryerson in Jason Burke's guest bedroom ("Looooook at me ... I will see you sleep like the dead, teacher") and Marjorie Glick in the mortuary. Along with the original "Halloween," this is a film that really, really scared me, and I feel that a key element was the lack of gore (which is probably a disappointment to younger viewers used to explicit splatter). The nonverbal dialogue of expressions and actions, the music, and the significantly occurring silences resulted in the suspense which makes a film truly frightening in my opinion.

Having said this, I do feel that the book was much, much better than the movie, and I would recommend it as one of the best vampire stories ever written (sorry, Anne Rice, but it's true). But let's be fair and realistic. It's a rare film that excels the book on which it was based. Not one of Stephen King's wonderfully (and horribly) imaginative works has EVER been committed to film in a way that has equaled the written work. Never, ever, EVER. That is something that will just never happen. If it were possible, then nobody would bother to read his books, he would become a screenwriter, and that would be a real loss for the horror genre.

I recently read Stephen Kings novel (one of his first major successes), so I thought of checking out this mini-series. It's by now more than 40 years old, and that of course shows. The pace is slower than we are now used to (the overlong almost three and a half hours didn't help with that) and the special effects are modest.

But director Tobe Hooper created a pleasantly creepy atmosphere, building up the tension gradually but very effectively; the photography is at times great (the scene of the undertaker on the graveyard for instance); the eerie musical score is exactly right; and there is some solid acting, especially by David Soul and by old school actor James Mason, who excels in his aloof and over-civilized attitude. Some scenes, like the floating vampires by the windows, now make a rather simple impression, but the make-up of the master vampire, like a Nosferatu in colour, is absolutely top-notch scary!

The series follows the novel pretty closely, they only brought back the amount of characters a bit, probably to keep everything more surveyable. The epilogue is essentially different from the book and comes a bit out of the blue, but as an (open) closure to the movie it worked fine enough.