Salem’s Lot
directed by Tobe Hooper
starring David Soul, James Mason, Lance Kerwin
Arrow Video
The second film adaptation of a Stephen King novel (the first being Brain DePalma’s Carrie in 1976) Salem’s Lot was unleashed on an unprepared network television audience over two Saturday nights in November 1979. Directed by Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, 1974) the mini-series set a new standard for televised horror and remains one of the most beloved adaptations of a Stephen King novel. Although many liberties were taken in the adaptation, Tobe Hooper’s three-hour film worked in much of the small town drama of the novel, while also delivering the scares along with a bit of generational trauma.
Struggling writer Ben Mears (David Soul) returns to his hometown of Salem’s Lot (simplified from the abbreviation for Jerusalem’s Lot in the novel). Much of the town feels the same as when he left years ago, including a sense of dread emanating from the Marsten House, the town’s requisite “haunted” house. Mears tries to rent the house only to discover it has already been sold to the town’s new antique dealer, Richard Straker, and his associate, the mysterious and unseen Mr. Barlow. Mr. Barlow is in fact an ancient vampire who begins to infect the town, starting with the young boy Ralphie Glick, who himself becomes a vampire and helps Barlow decimate the town. Only through the determination of Ben Mears and local teen Mark Petrie is Barlow ultimately defeated, but not before exacting a terrible loss of human life.
Salem’s Lot, both the TV movie and the source novel, weaves a lot of cinematic vampire lore into its tale of a small New England town obliterated by a vampire. Stephen King envisioned his novel as “Dracula in New England,” and director Tobe Hooper chose the rat-faced Count Orlok from the F.W. Murnau Nosferatu as the clear inspiration for the vampire, Barlow. The blue make-up on actor Reggie Nalder may have also been a nod to the zombie hue employed by Tom Savini and George Romero in Dawn of the Dead a year earlier. The decision was to make the vampire Barlow monstrous and mute instead of the erudite charmer of King’s novel. Although it strays far afield from the source material, it’s a creepy and effective choice very much suited to Tobe Hooper’s brand of visceral fright.
As the audience surrogate, the heroic monster kid, Mark Petrie, adds a meta layer to the film by placing it in a world where the Universal Pictures and Hammer Film Productions monster movies exist. This knowledge enables him to use a cross from a graveyard model kit to ward off a vampire. It is refreshing to have a vampire movie where no one has to explain what a vampire is. The models, universal monsters movie posters, and the monster masks by Don Post were the stuff of dreams for any kid who drooled over the ads in Famous Monsters magazine back in the day. Apart from the first appearance of Ralphie Glick at the window, Mark Petrie’s bedroom may be the best remembered moment of this film. Of course, the appearance of Ralphie floating outside Mark’s bedroom window is one of the most horrifying moments in all of horror. Children have been vampire victims in film at least as far back as Bela Lugosi’s Dracula (1931), but having a child be turned into a bloodsucker was a bold choice and one of the elements that makes this film so terrifying and memorable.
Salem’s Lot has been on home video for decades in various formats and edits of the film. Arrow Video has assembled a terrific two-disc 4K UHD of the film in its original broadcast length (although it is edited into one three-hour film as opposed to two separate episodes) and the 112-minute European theatrical cut. Both versions of the film come with audio commentaries, and the discs are packed with extras from the likes of Mick Garris, Amanda Reyes, Grady Hendrix, Heather Wixson, and many more.
