Salem's Lot 1979

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first. The film style is a bit outdated. You can tell what era this was made in right from the title sequence. Since it's no surprise that this is a vampire story, I feel comfortable divulging the below. Whenever a vampire pops up (in an attempt to be scary), a horn blows and most times the camera cuts away before anything happens. A bit of vampire biting happens on screen, but it's also often met with similar quick cutaways. With two movie length episodes, the show is a bit a long, but I don't think that's a serious negative here.

On a more positive note, this is a really close adaption of Stephen King's original work. It couldn't have been properly fleshed out in a normal feature length movie time. Even with the 3 hour film time, the show had to reshape a few things from the book to adapt for the screen. None of the decisions felt particularly illogical or unnecessary so I vastly approved of the choices made. Squeezing in the rest would have required a few more episodes and I don't think that would have been best for anyone.

If you haven't read a Stephen King book before, you might expect that they are pure horror. That's actually not the case. Almost all Stephen King books have a deep mysticism, and for lack of a better word, a focus on superpowers. See "The Shinning" if you're looking to dig a little deeper. Some characters have a inherent and unexplained understanding of things they shouldn't. There are unexplained rules and dark "magic" surrounding the entire story. The show does a really good job of focusing on some of these concepts and keeping this from being a pure vampire horror flick.

While the show is outdated, the story is great and it does a good job of dropping you into the real Stephen King universe. Nothing to write home about, but worth a watch if you're into these types of things.

7/10

I don't think I'm going to regret not reading the book first because I'd heard that neither book nor movie are particularly scary. In fact, most everything you hear about Salem's Lot (the movie) is how scary the floating kid at the window is. I'd say it's an effective moment, but not the ONLY moment to remember. There's a scene where Barlow crashes into a home and rises up from a crumpled black mound on the floor to become the towering dull blue Nosferatu look-alike that he is. He smashes the heads of a wife and husband together, killing them, before wordlessly challenging a priest in a battle of will and faith. Calling it a battle is a stretch as its brevity is implied by the moment occurring off-screen. There is also a very tense scene, not even related to the vampire nastiness, when a beer-guzzling husband catches his wife cheating with another man. The state of fear generated from staring down both barrels doesn't need to be explained further.

I think more than anything, I enjoyed seeing a lot of the second-tier stars of the late '70s. James Mason was amazing as the evil henchman Straker. Kenneth McMillan was outstanding as Constable Perkins. In fact, a couple of my favorite moments of the movie occur when he and Straker are exchanging words at the police station. Geoffrey Lewis was a very effective gravedigger-turned-vampire and senior teacher and all-around good friend Jason was played with elderly grace by Lew Ayres.

The two main characters are played by David Soul and Bonnie Bedelia. I actually do remember watching "Starsky and Hutch" when I was very young, so it was interesting to see how well David Soul played something un-Hutch-y. Bedelia was wonderful, especially when she pursues Mark inside of the Marsten House. She relayed the fear she was feeling so well. It was impressive.

I read the King short story "Jerusalem's Lot" a few years ago. While I recall being a fan of that story, I couldn't remember how this movie tied itself to that pre-Salem's Lot story. I'll need to re-read that and if it intrigues me enough, re-watch this movie for references. That might be fun.

"Salem's Lot" has a few scary moments and the late '70s fashions, cars, sets and overall vibe really worked for me. I am a little disappointed that it is such a standard vampire tale, though.

I bought the Blu-ray and was surprised by its 1.33:1 aspect ratio until I remembered that it was made-for-TV. The DTS audio is Mono, which also makes nothing but sense for the same reason. I'm sure the Blu-ray allows the movie to look better than it ever has. I really loved the film grain. In fact, the presentation relayed the late '70s mood very well. The colors were natural and you can really see things in the shadows and the mist.