SALEM'S LOT (1979)

DIRECTED by Tobe Hooper.

SCREENPLAY by Paul Monash based on the novel "Salem's Lot" by Stephen King.

STARRING  - David Soul as Ben Mears,  James Mason as Richard Straker, Reggie Nalder as Kurt Barlow,  Lance Kerwin as Mark Petrie,  Bonnie Bedelia as Susan Norton,  Lew Ayres as Jason Burke,  Ed Flanders as Bill Norton,  Fred Willard as Larry Crocket,  Julie Cobb as Bonnie Sawyer,  Kenneth McMillan as Constable Parkins Gillespie,  Geoffrey Lewis as Mike Reyerson,  George Dzundza as Cully Sawyer,  Brad Savage as Danny Glick,  Ronnie Scribner as Ralphie Glick.

PLOT  - Writer Ben Mears returns to the town he grew up in, Salem's Lot Maine, to do research for his new novel. Upon his arrival strange and sinister events begin to take place...

There are new residents in the old Marsten house (a house with a dark past where Ben had a terrifying experience as a child), Mr Straker and the mysterious and unseen Mr Barlow.

Very soon it becomes obvious that the small town is being overrun by a dark force - a young boy Ralphie Glick disappears only to return as a vampire...tapping on his brother Danny's bedroom window at night...

Slowly...one by one...the townsfolk begin to die...die and then return to life as vampires. The town of Salem's Lot becomes overrun by a plague of the Undead at the heart of which lies the master - the head vampire - Kurt Barlow.

Only Ben Mears and a newly orphaned teenager - Mark Petrie - have a hope of stopping this evil infestation...

DIALOUGE  - Straker - "The Master wants you. Throw away your cross - face the master ! Your faith against his faith..."

PERFORMANCES  - Salem's Lot has the task of condensing a 400 page doorstoper of a novel into a nearly 4 hour long TV miniseries. As a result of this it has a large, large cast depicting the various townsfolk that are destined to fall to the vampire curse. Because of this sheer depth it's near impossible to list every major performance and character in this review (trust me, we'd be here all day if I did and NO ONE wants that). Let's just say that all the performances are a good quality and leave it at that.

David Soul plays the story's central protaganist Ben Mears. At the time Soul was a huge star, not only was he appearing in hit cop show Starskey and Hutch, he also had a successful career as a pop star. He's very good in this. Ben is a character that is caught in an awkward position - he has history with the town but is also seen as an outsider because he's been away for so long. As a result of this Ben is sometimes treated with mistrust and suspicion by the townsfolk, especially town Constable Parkins Gillespie (Kenneth McMillan). 

Soul manages to put across Ben's discomfort and awkwardness in these situations well and it makes a nice contrast to later on when he goes into vampire hunter mode. Ben never becomes a Van Helsing figure (at least not until the film's epilogue which is set a couple of years later), you always get the impression that he's completely winging it and only getting away with it by sheer luck. He's just a normal bloke having a bad day.

Perhaps the true "expert" in vampires comes in the unlikely form of schoolboy Mark Petrie (Lance Kerwin). Mark is a total horror movie geek and it is through the knowledge that he's gained by watching horror films and reading horror comics that he manages to survive multiple vampire attacks. The best bit is when a vampirised Danny Glick (Brad Savage) appears at his bedroom window trying to hypnotise Mark into letting him in. Mark snaps off a cross-shaped grave stone from a model kit he's been building and uses it to repel Danny.

Mark later becomes an orphan when his parents are killed by Barlow and he vows revenge on the vampire, teaming up with Ben to take him down. 

I have heard some reviewers say that they dont rate Kerwin's performance very highly but I think he's absolutely fine. He gets the right balance between teen geekiness and bravery that the character requires spot on.

The story's love interest is provided by Bonnie Bedelia playing Susan Norton. Susan is an intelligent small town girl getting frustrated by the backward ways of the local community and is slowly finding herself breaking away from the town she grew up in. She is attracted to Ben when she meets him and the two start dating. Bedelia has a good onscreen chemistry with Soul and the two make a believable pair of fledgling lovers.

Eventually Susan gets taken by Barlow and at the end we see that she's been turned into a sexy vampire.  In a scene charged with sexual subtext, Ben stakes her and continues onwards in his new found calling as a vampire killer.

My favourite performance comes from James Mason playing Straker. He's a brilliant villain - shifty and mysterious whilst being suave and urbane at the same time. Straker is a man that can make even the simple act of saying "good evening" seem like a veiled threat. He's smug and pompous, looking down upon the simple people that he sees as being just cattle...pray for his beloved master. He gets all the best lines as well, my favourite being "you'll enjoy Mr Barlow...and he'll enjoy you."

Straker ISN'T a vampire but he has been unnaturally enhanced in some way. He has super strength (we see him bodily lift Susan's father as if he was nothing) and it takes an entire round of bullets to end him. There's a scene earlier on in Mark's bedroom when the Glick brothers are looking at Mark's collection of horror masks, they pick up one mask and ask Mark what creature it's supposed to represent. Mark replies that it's a Ghoul - a creature that hangs around graveyards and serves the undead. The fact that the audience's attention is explicitly drawn to this, seems to suggest to me that this is what Straker is...he's a Ghoul.

Finally, we get Barlow himself played by Reggie Nalder. Casting Nalder was a stroke of genius - he was an odd looking chap to begin with and pairing his unique look with THAT creature design helps to create one of the most horrific looking vampires ever put on screen. The fact that Barlow never speaks and just hisses like a feral beast only serves to heighten the effect. Barlow is one hundred percent predator, pure and simple.

No review of Salem's Lot is complete without a mention of Brad Savage and Ronnie Scribner as the Glick Brothers. Without a doubt two of THE most disturbing vampires EVER ! 

The scenes where the Glick boys hover at bedroom windows are memorably chilling. Little Ralphie in particular gave a generation of kids (who stayed up late to watch this) nightmares... I should know because I was one of them...

Geoffrey Lewis also makes a great vampire. Lewis's character Mike Reyerson gets turned and comes back to haunt and pray on poor old Jason Burke (Lew Ayres). Sat in a rocking chair, fresh off the mortuary slab, still wearing the pyjamas he died in, Mike hisses and writhes like a cobra hypnotising a mouse. Reveling in his newly acquired undead powers, the simple, humble odd job man he was in life gone forever. 

It's this aspect that makes all the vampires in Salem's Lot so effective...that feeling of the townsfolk having come back from the dead somehow...wrong. There's no sparkly skinned pretty boys here - these vampires are pure evil. No wonder Jason Burke has a heart attack after banishing vampire Mike from his house.

SFX - Once again it's all about the vampires. The makeup work is stunning, hats off to makeup artist Jack Young. Mr Barlow's look is heavily influenced by Max Shrek in Nosferatu (1922), apparently the makeup was hell to wear for Nalder. On several occasions the contact lenses slid around his eyes and got stuck...Ouch!

ALL the vampires look impressive and creepy as hell. The ghastly pallor of thier skin and the glowing eyes all combine to create vampires that to this day have never been beaten.

We also get a nice decomposition effect when Barlow is finally staked, an unnatural wind swirls around his face leaving behind a grinning rat toothed skull...

SEX & VIOLENCE  - An example of the way that sex always seems to go wrong in horror movies occurs in the first part of this miniseries.

Town estate agent Larry Crocket (Fred Willard) is having an affair with his secretary Bonnie (Julie Cobb), he goes round her house one night thinking her husband Cully (George Dzundza) is out of town. Little does he know that Cully is onto them and is lying in wait to catch them at it...which he does.

Cully bursts in armed with a shotgun and makes Larry hold the gun to his own face...

The expression on Larry's face says it all...

The gun goes off but it's not loaded, Larry runs in fear out of the house wearing only his boxer shorts. It's a great scene.

There are lots of deaths in the story but most of them happen off screen, this was a made for television production after all, so it couldn't be too explicit.

Probably the most graphic moment is when Bill Norton (Ed Flanders) is impaled on a pair of antlers by Straker...

After that Barlow gets staked by Ben. He takes a long, loooonnnnggggg time to die. It's probably one of my favourite vampire staking scenes of all time. A good vampire deserves to go out in style...

RATING  - Salem's Lot is a brilliant adaptation of King's novel and I think it's the second best thing director Tobe Hooper ever did (the first being the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" naturally).

The only flaw I can think of is that some characters get a bit short changed in the second half. The script builds up so many side characters in the first part only for them to disappear in the second half. Cully and Bonnie Sawyer just vanish without a trace for example, Did they flee the town? Did they get vamped ? It'd be nice to know...

This seems a bit unfair and makes parts of the series feel rushed as a result. It would have benefited hugely from having an extra episode just to give the story a chance to breath a little. As it is, it has to pack in far too much in too short a runtime.

The vampires, makeup effects and creepy atmosphere are all second to none though. I'm giving this 4 and a half vampire children out of 5. It loses half a point for it's disappearing characters but other than that its a classic.

POSTER/VHS/DVD ART  -

Here's a newspaper ad for the first TV transmission.

And finally here's the cover for the movie tie-in edition of Stephen King's original novel. This cover really used to give me the creeps as a kid when I used to see it on the shelves of bookshops. Needless to say it's the copy that I own today...