6.2/10
65%
2.8/5
59%
Okay, I know this is cheating a little bit as it’s a mini-series and not a film, but I was sure I hadn’t watched this version before so thought this would be a good time to take a look at it, however watching it in one sitting was a bit much.
Salem’s Lot is based on the 1975 Stephen King novel of the same name. Ben Mears, an established author, is returning back to his childhood hometown of Jerusalem’s lot. He has quite the history with the town having found a couple who had committed murder-suicide in the Marsten House when he was just 9 years old.
Ben is looking to excise his childhood trauma while making some money, and has arranged to rent the Marsten house while he researches a book about the events that took place there during his childhood. His plans are halted however when it turns out that the local big shot business man who has his dirty little fingers in all of the town’s pies has sold the house to antique dealers Straker and Barlow.
After taking a place in a local boarding house, Ben is befriended by the coffee shop waitress Susan Norton. She’s one of the only people in the town who doesn’t seem to mind Ben being there, even going as far as offering to help him with some of his research.
That night, down by a frozen pond it looks like a boy is being attacked by being dunked in headfirst into a hole in the ice, or maybe someone is trying to save him? It’s a bit difficult to see. Either way, the boy’s friend is having none of it and runs off to safety leaving his friend behind.
A massive search party is put together combing the woods but there is no sign of the boy and not long after the boy’s disappearance his brother, Ralphie Glick, starts to get sick and then dies from what the doctor can only describe as acute anaemia.
After the funeral, the gravedigger Mike Ryerson seems to have strange visions and breaks into Ralphie’s coffin before collapsing. After being checked out at the hospital, Ryerson goes to spend the night at teacher Matt Burke’s house.
Burke hears giggling in Ryerson’s room and later he and Ben find him dead, seemingly of the same anaemia that Ralphie died from.
But Ryerson’s not the only one — people are getting sick, are disappearing and are turning up dead all inflicted with this strange anaemia. Thinking this is some sort of outbreak, the hospital and police don’t know what to do but one of Ralphie’s friends, Mark Petrie, starts to put two-and-two together: that someone is turning the town into vampires and this all started when Barlow and Straker moved in to the Marsten House.
Susan has the a similar idea, well not about vampires but that the Marsten House is at the heart of what’s happening to her town. While scoping out the grounds, Susan bumps in to Mark and the two of them break into the house together believing that Straker has left for the day.
The house isn’t empty though and Straker comes back early and ambushes Mark and Susan. Mark manages to flee but Susan isn’t so lucky and is left to whatever evil the house holds.
As the mysterious sickness continues to spread, those that remain start to come to terms that there is something unholy stalking their town and that no one is safe, no matter how God fearing and pious they are.
Will the survivors be able to face and defeat the evil infecting the town? Or will they too succumb to the dark side of Salem’s Lot?
Great Casting, Missed Opportunities
It’s been a very long time since I have read the novel, or watched the 1979 Mini-series. I loved both when I was a kid, even using a school project about the book as an excuse to get my parents to buy me the mini-series on VHS.
So given the space of time between me interacting the the book, the following is just based on some of my recollections of the story and thoughts in general of this version of the mini-series.
The casting of this was fantastic: James Cromwell as the reluctant priest, Donald Sutherland as Straker, the evil human familiar, and Rutger Hauer as the villainous Barlow are all magnificent. Rob Lowe plays his usual brooding self but it works here, and Samantha Mathis is good as the headstrong but loyal Susan Norton.
I also had an “Oh! It’s that guy from that thing!” moment when it came to the character of Floyd Tibbits who was played by Todd MacDonald. It turns out he was in the Australian Soap Neighbours back in the 1980s when I was an avid fan. This led me down the rabbit whole of watching some old episodes — there’s a whole YouTube channel devoted to it — and I must admit I had to tear myself away from memory lane in order to get back to Salem’s Lot!
As good as the casting is though, the one thing that that can’t fix is the lack of screen time given to each of these wonderful actors. This is always an issue with an ensemble cast, and within the book (and ’79 mini-series) if I remember correctly, we don’t get introduced to Barlow until quite late in the story, which is what happens here. But Hauer is so under-used it’s bordering on criminal.
The same goes with Cromwell and Sutherland too. Really I think we could have had a bit less of the kids messing around with the bus driver storyline and more of these two phenomenal actors on screen. And, as this mini-series was a “based on” the Stephen King book rather than an “adaptation of”, they had the leeway to change up the story a bit to allow the characters more screen time especially given the mini-series format over that of a film or TV movie.
And this goes to one of my complaints, there are a lot of characters to keep up with here — while this might be the case in the source material, I just found it really difficult to keep up with who was who, who had fallen out with who, who had bitten who and who had killed who. It was all a bit of a mess if I am honest.
We would have been better just sticking with the core characters and have them interact with the secondary characters, rather than these secondary characters having (in)complete plot lines of their own.
Take the boarding house owner, Mrs Prunier. There’s mention of Prunier visiting the Marsten House back in the 1950s (I think) and doing something evil there — what that was I don’t know because it was either never explained or it was done so quickly/poorly I missed it.
Then you have an interaction with Prunier and Straker in the antique shop — he seems to recognise her name but that goes nowhere too. It could be because of her link to the Marsten House, and Straker/Barlow’s link to the evil within the property but again it’s either not explained or I missed it.
And finally there’s the whole ridiculous wedding storyline with Prunier and Ed, sure I get that we need to humanise characters in order to show how evil Barstow, Straker and their vampire horde are, but this was completely unnecessary and a waste of valuable time that could have been used on the other characters.
A Strange Twist To The Tale
🎃Warning! Major spoilers for the 2024 Salem’s Lot mini-series ahead!🧛
I also found the bookending of the two episodes with scenes set in a hospital after the events of the film an odd way to introduce the story and recap it for the second part. Ben was a writer so he could have been presenting the story as a part of the novel he was writing but instead it’s done through him apparently relating it to a hospital orderly or nurse after… well, let’s get to that elephant in the room shall we?
The start off the film takes place after the events that take happen during the main plot and we see a scruffy looking Ben attending a homeless shelter where a Priest is helping to dole out food. Ben lunges at the Priest and chases him, until they’re cornered together in an office. The Priest pulls gun and shoots Ben, but Ben charges forward regardless and launches them both out of the window.
The Priest is Father Callaghan, who was turned to evil by Barlow. I guess we can assume from Ben’s actions that Callaghan was the last link in Barlow’s chain and by killing him the threat is over.
The thing is, Ben dies in the process, which isn’t what happens in the book or the ’79 mini-series. It’s rather final for the character and leaves Mike on his own, whereas in the book’s epilogue Ben and Mike return to Salem’s Lot a year later to torch the town and finish the job, with Mike referring to Ben as his father at one point.
It seems so strange to change the ending so vastly from the original plot, and yet you add (or keep) in the seemingly pointless Prunier storylines.
I did enjoy this version of the source material, although I thought the change to the ending was a rather odd one. I get it, Ben made the ultimate sacrifice as he was attacking a man of God, even if that man had fallen, but it was jarring as it wasn’t how King had envisaged the character’s demise.
I think if I had watched this as two separate parts I probably wouldn’t have been so confused with all of the characters crammed into the story, but it was well enough paced that it kept my attention (Neighbours nostalgia trip aside) and things were explained for the most part (minus Prunier’s backstory), although as I noted the chain of deaths and who killed who did get a bit confusing.
If you’re looking for a pure vampire story then I think you’ll be a bit disappointed, but if you’re interested in supernatural tales that revolve around strangers creating discord and madness in a small town then this one is definitely for you — just watch it in two separate parts!
Watch Salem’s Lot if you’ve always wondered what really hides in that creepy old house down the street but are always too scared to investigate.
