Salem’s Lot (TV miniseries 1979)

 

Salem’s Lot (TV miniseries 1979)

 

It was one of the first three film or TV adaptations of Author Stephen King novels, preceded by “Carrie” (1976) and followed by “The Shining” (1980). The lasting popularity of this trio, as well as phenomenal popularity of the Author’s prose works, created a frenzy to make more or more King films, (as of 2024, IMDB lists 350 releases with another 24 projects upcoming), a frenzy that hasn’t abated over the decades even though an unreasonably large number of these adaptations were flat-out terrible.

 

The book it’s based on holds a special place in the King cannon. It was his second published novel (1975) and starting with it he began creating an elaborate imaginary map of his home State of Maine, wherein later, otherwise unrelated, works refer back and forth to Characters, incidents, and places from the works that preceded them. It also began King’s compulsion to write sprawling books with large casts of Characters though the central conceit was seemingly simple. King’s first novel, “Carrie” (1974) was quite short, it needed to be expanded to be accepted by its publisher, but soon the thickness of a King novels became a running joke, much like James Michner’s Historical Novels.

Executive Producer Richard Kobritz didn’t hide from the sprawl, choosing to present this as a TV miniseries instead of a feature film, which likely would’ve been held to 90-to-120-minutes. This one was 182-minutes long, though there are multiple edits floating out there, the shortest being a 112-minute version that received theatrical release in Europe. (Amusingly, in Spain it was released as “Phantasma II,” so as a sequel “Phantasm” (also released 1979) because Europe is a strange place.)

 

As the novel was about an entire town succumbing to a Vampire Plague, the miniseries showed a strong commitment to fully people that town with well-developed Characters. King’s template was Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” (1897); in that novel, Dracula brought a Plague of Death with him to London, but that was little explored in the book, which was more tightly focused on a small handful of Characters. King wanted that Plague to be the center of his tale, not something unfolding on-the-side. He described the book as “‘Dracula’ meets ‘Peyton Place.’”

 

A lot of credit must go to Screenwriter Paul Monash who had worked on the TV Soap Opera version of “Peyton Place” (novel 1956, movie 1957, TV series first aired 1964) and was a Producer for “Carrie.” He was recruited after many other drafts from some pretty significant Screenwriters were found wanting. His version deleted subplots and combined Characters to control the running time but is still, even today, is the only King film to convincingly evoke an entire community in peril, a common feature in King’s work but an element generally poorly translated even in the good King movies. King, known to complain many of the ocean of adaptations, offered unusual praise, "Monash has succeeded in combining the characters a lot, and it works."

 

Even with that that praise, there’s compression problems as Characters appear, or disappear, somewhat nonsensically. Notably, a prominent subplot in the first forty minutes concerned a sleazy-ball Real Estate Broker, Larry Crockett (Fred Willard), whose having an affair with his sectary Bonnie "Boom Boom" Sawyer (Julie Cobb), neither of them knowing that her brutish husband Cully (George Dzundza) is on to them. The subplot climaxes in a great scene where Cully bursts in on the two with a shotgun and the terrified Crockett flees the bedroom, but as it happens, he flees straight into arms of the Vampire, and then ... well, that’s the last we see of any of those three.

 

Between the novel and miniseries, the most important change was to dramatically-scale back the role of Vampire. King’s version was that the Vampire Kurt Barlow was an articulate and cultured Monster, akin to Dracula, but here he’s a speechless and Demonic-looking, based on the make-up from the film “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” (1922). That decision was made by Producer Kobritz and was objected to by King, but it now one of the elements that the miniseries is most remembered for. Kobritz explained:

 

“We went back to the old German ‘Nosferatu’ concept where he is the essence of evil, and not anything romantic or smarmy, or, you know, the rouge-cheeked, widow-peaked Dracula. I wanted nothing suave or sexual, because I just didn't think it'd work; we've seen too much of it ... I just thought it would be suicidal on our part to have a vampire that talks. What kind of voice do you put behind a vampire? You can't do Bela Lugosi [star of the 1931 version of “Dracula”], or you're going to get a laugh. You can't do Regan in ‘The Exorcist’ [1973] or you're going to get something that's unintelligible, and besides, you've been there before."

 

What struck me about the film was the breathless, fun-house-like pacing, remarkably sustained despite the long running time; it was much like a film from Director William Castle, only many times darker. That must be credited to Director Tobe Hooper who, like Director Dario Argento, built his reputation in Horror largely on his exceptional gifts regarding camera movement and imaginative and effective set-pieces, but unlike Argento, also showed skill with Actors and care for coherent storytelling even when the story itself actually made no sense. Even Hooper’s, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974, his second feature, and thankfully no one remembers the Porn, which came fist), features strong performances and fluid narrative flow throughout its utterly lunatic fever dream.

 

“The Texas Chainsaw …” is, as the title promises, among the most gruesome films ever made, and often faced bans through the world, but what few seemed to realize is that it had virtually no blood. Hooper was an Exploitation filmmaker of rare gifts; he was a Master of Atmosphere and in his best films you see a great deal more than he’s actually showing you. That trick served him well in a context of inevitable TV censorship. Also, he had a great fondness of Jump-Scares and “Salem’s Lot” has more than you could easily count, but he also set up the suspense of the inevitably dark scenes flawlessly; he’s especially fond of low-angle tracking shots to warn the audience something bad is about to happen. He discussed how he handled the miniseries this way:

 

"This film is very spooky – it suggests things and always has the overtone of the grave. It affects you differently than my other horror films … A television movie does not have blood or violence. It has atmosphere which creates something you cannot escape – the reminder that our time is limited and all the accoutrements that go with it, such as the visuals."

 

Hooper also had real gifts for sound design, evident and on display here again, the creaking of a heavy crate on a truck’s loading lift, a Vampire scratching at a window, louder-than-real sounds as shrouds slipping and fall away from rising bodies, etc.

 

Producer Kobritz wanted "a good, atmospheric, old-fashioned, Bernie Herrmann-type score" so not the R&R-infused-Jazz popularized in the films by Director Argento, nor the increasingly popular synthesizer work of Horror Composer/Director John Carpenter. Kobritz turned to Harry Sukman, who had an Oscar win and two Nominations already under his belt. The music had the breathlessness of Director Hopper’s pacing and a sinister-ness that was throwing back to an earlier era. It would prove to be Sukman's last work before passing in 1984. 

 

Here we have a very straight-forward Vampire tale, unfolding through complex events. Our Hero is mild-mannered Author, Ben Mears (David Soul), returning to the town of his birth, but finds he hasn’t shaken his terror of the old Marsten house which dominated the Nightmares of his youth. The house has now been sold to Richard Straker (James Mason), an alleged Antique Dealer who proves to be the Human Familiar (think Character Renfield from “Dracula”) of Vampire Kurt (Reggie Nalder) whom Richard describes as his Business Partner but never seems to be around when people visit because Kurt’s in a coffin in the basement. Because this version of Kurt is speechless, Richard ’s role was expanded in the script. Richard tells Ben that Kurt is away on business, but when he returns, “You’ll enjoy Mr. Barlow – and he’ll enjoy you.” Ben recognizes the threat.

 

One by one, the townsfolk fall victim to what Dr. Bill Norton (Ed Flanders) describes as “pernicious anemia.” Ben, and a Monster-obsessed teen named Mark Petrie (Lance Kerwin), quickly realize what the real truth is. Ben is able to enlist the help of Dr. Bill, who is also the father of the woman Ben has started a relationship with, Susan (Bonnie Belinda). After the population of the town has been significantly reduced and even the Town Constable (Kenneth McMillan) has abandoned his duties in stark terror, the Heroes finally storm the Marsten house.

 

As it is an entire town, there’s a lot of disreputable and disappointing people therein and many are introduced first by demonstrating them to be obsessive gossips. The Marsten house, looming on a hill like the Bates house in “Psycho” (1960), contains Horrors that Ben remembers have no connection to the Horrors he faces now, so it becomes a symbol of a continuum of corruption, and maybe Richard and Kurt were attracted to the picturesque town because it was already stained. But there are plenty of appealing Characters as well, and the novel and miniseries were not afraid of slaughtering them with the same abandon as they were in the dispatching of the wicked. Moreover, once Kurt has you, whether you lived your life Bad or Good, you are his Evil Servant.

 

Fine performances abound, especially from Soul, who deftly carries off Mears transition from Timid to Heroic, and is never less than convincingly terrified; and Mason, always cultured, always menacing, never over-the-top, not even in the climax when he displays unexpected Brute Violence. Actor Mason is said to have loved the script and even brought his wife along to co-star (see below) but Character Kurt’s Actor Nalder, given little to do except hiss and suffer under the uncomfortable makeup and context lenses, wasn’t so thrilled. "The makeup and contact lenses were painful but I got used to them. I liked the money best of all."

 

As for individual scary scenes, there’s Child-Vampire, Ralphie Glick (Ronnie Scribner) who twice floats outside a windows begging to be let in, which are now legendary. That scene, was frequently mimicked later and even spoofed on “The Simpsons” (animated TV show, first appearing as animated shots in 1987, its own series in 1989, the spoof was 1993).

 

The effect was created with a remarkably simple trick, but a trick only possible for one with a keen awareness of its predecessors and the limitations displayed in older films. Flying/floating almost always requires wires but wires were devilishly hard to disguise even in the best of films. Here, two-bedroom sets were built on their sides, meaning that the windows, in Real-Life vertical rising from a horizontal plane, were, in fact, facing up, so horizontal on a vertical plane, then the Vampire were lowered down with an invisible boom crane. Not only were there no visible wires to spoil the illusion, the Vampires seemed to float more than fly, so more Supernatural-seeming than a Comic Book Super Hero. The scenes were also shot-in-reverse to accentuate the Creepiness.

 

There’s also a great bit where the Gravedigger, Mike Ryerson (Geoffrey Lewis) falls into grave he was digging, trapping him with another Child-Vampire, brother of the first one, Danny (Brad Savage), rising from its coffin.

 

Then there’s the Morgue scene, where one of the corpses, Marjorie Glick, mother of Ralphie and Danny (Clarissa Kaye, Actor Mason’s wife) wakes up and Ben, trying to fight back panic, fashions a Crucifix from tongue depressors and tries to Bless it, all the while crying out Dr. Bill’s name with increasing volume and hysteria.

 

And, of course, there’s the climax, with Ben and Mark, who’ve just run out of protective sunlight, are in the cellar of the Marsten house, struggling to stake Kurt just as he and his newly created Army of Vampires begin to wake.

The Score by Sukman, the Graphic Design Gene Kraft, and Makeup by Ben Lane and Jack H Young all won Emmys, and I’d argue that was less than the series deserved. It was a huge success, for years a Halloween regular on broadcast TV. It’s influence was huge, including the films “Fright Night” (1985) and “The Lost Boys” (1987), and the TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (first aired 1992) and “Midnight Mass” (first aired 2021).

 

The miniseries created a franchise, starting with a strange sequel, “A Return to Salem's Lot” (1979) coming from Writer/Director Larry Cohen, who had penned one of the rejected scripts for the miniseries. It seemingly ignored the miniseries but not entirely so, it mostly drew from another of Author King’s short story “One for the Road” (1978), a sequel to the novel where the town is now owned by the Vampires, and the surrounding Human communities keep quiet out of fear. There was also a 2004 TV miniseries remake that was not much loved. The TV series “Chapelwaite” was based on another of King’s “Salem’s Lot” short stories, “Jerusalem's Lot” (1978), a prequel to the novel. Another remake, this to be a theatrical film, was released in 2024 to mediocre reviews.

 

Director Hooper career after this success was problematic. He had a big hit with “Poltergeist” (1982), but Producer Stephen Spielberg got most of the credit for that one. Following that his projects were plague-ridden, swinging a pendulum between terrible or mistreated by the public. His other King adaptation, based om the short story “The Mangler” (short story 1978, movie 1995) was one of the uncontroversially terrible ones.

 

Trailer:

Salem's Lot - Official Trailer (youtube.com)

 

The floating child at the window:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1unHCE_Npw&feature=related

+++++++++++++++++++++

 

Robert Bloch.

 

King would regularly use homophobia as a way of calibrating how even – or especially – the most bucolic backwaters of Maine might be a privileged imaginary site in wider national patterns of discrimination, most notably in his recourse to the 1984 murder of Charlie Howard in Bangor as inspiration for the character of Adrian Mellon, whose fate opens the main narrative of It, set in 1984-5.