Movie: 'Salem's Lot (2004)

Three times around with Carrie was pretty exhausting, but two miniseries of 'Salem's Lot was especially taxing, and technically a longer time investment.

I'm not sure if the 1994 miniseries version of The Stand was to blame, but over the following ten years, a series of ill-advised and not-really-needed Stephen King miniseries aired. Perhaps the creators felt that 20 years of advances in special effects and a few big name actors and a modern setting would make for an improved adaptation. Here in the 2004 'Salem's Lot (bringing back the leading apostrophe!) we have a few big name actors, outweighing the 1979 version: Rob Lowe, Donald Sutherland, and James Cromwell, and maybe some other recognizable ones depending on how much TV you watch.

For the most part I felt this version tried to stick closer to the book. One big exception, of course, is the totally whacked-out ending. The opening scene, which was so different I nearly deleted it from my DVR thinking I had the wrong movie, teases this difference. In spite of creating this ultimately adversarial relationship between Father Callahan, Ben Mears, and Mark Petrie, there is a lot of things that click better. In spite of some tepid and dour acting, Rob Lowe looks more like Ben Mears's description in the book. Mark is way older than his book counterpart (and a "mean kid" to boot) but looks pretty much as described. Barlow has returned to being articulate and human-looking as he was in the book. Donald Sutherland, however, did not go chrome-dome as Straker. I guess even the best actors have to draw the line somewhere. Most different was Matt Burke, who regained his original name, but is now black and gay. The 1979 movie, probably in the interest of time, merged a bunch of characters together. There isn't so much of that going on here, but some of the book's more minor characters enjoy expanded roles, such as Dud the dump manager and Charlie the bus driver. For some inexplicable reason Eva has become French Canadian and marries Weasel, or at least tries to anyway. All in all, the parts of this movie that try to hew close to the book get derailed by the parts where things wildly diverge.

In the filming locations department, this has to be the craziest one yet. This time, maybe for tax reasons, Australia is now subbing in as Maine. Not only that, but the supporting cast is largely from either Australia or New Zealand, and it seems as if they've been dubbed over with American voices. Either that or they should have fired the sound guy because I've seen kung fu movies dubbed better. Plus, the ambient noise seems to drown out the dialogue in places. The chroniclers at IMDB have correctly noted that trees in full summer foliage are flocked for the winter setting, not to mention the not-found-in-Maine eucalyptus trees all over the place.

In closing, you can lead a perfectly happy life by not seeing either adaptation of 'Salem's Lot. This version is a missed opportunity to have fixed some of the shortfalls of the first one, and ultimately leaves you wondering what the whole point was in the first place.

Movie: Salem's Lot (1979)

I'm a big apologist for older movies that struggle with special effects. You have to work with what you've got! However, the original Salem's Lot TV miniseries served as a strong reminder that television production values seriously lagged behind feature films in 1979, and arguably for years to come. Let us not forget we live in the Golden Age of Television.

For some reason, adapting 'Salem's Lot for the screen has been a lifelong struggle for, well, just about everybody. After four years of being only a book, 'Salem's Lot received the honor of being the second Stephen King work brought to the screen, albeit the small one this time. Now I understand that 'Salem's Lot lacks the devastating precision of Carrie, with a bigger cast of characters and a slower plot development process, and no doubt this is why one became a 100-minute movie and the other a 5-hour (with commercial interruption), two-part miniseries. Tobe Hooper, best known for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, directs and between him and the screenplay-writers, they decided to undertake some drastic changes to the plot of the book.

Some things are cosmetic. David Soul (fresh off his career high as "Hutch" in Starsky & Hutch), who plays Ben, and the kid who plays Mark look nothing like their descriptions in the book. Apparently someone decided they should be blond. Also, probably due to actor issues, Mark is a good deal older than his book counterpart. For some reason Matt Burke is renamed Jason Burke. Filming locations are always going to be problematic, something I typically lament in these posts, and in this case Northern California has the honor of substituting for Maine in this version. It could have been worse, I suppose. Also, the Marsten house is sort of tossed off to the side, lacking the prominence of being on a hilltop, that made it so menacing in the book.

The main departure point of this movie from the book is the strategy of combing characters together to get all the necessary content of a 450+ page novel into the allotted running time and still be able to acknowledge their commercial sponsors. There are probably other websites that are devoted to being comprehensive about this, but I've got a few examples. Susan's dad and Dr. Cody are the same guy in this version. This sort of makes sense, as Susan's dad is really only in the first half of the book and the doctor only appears in the second half, so why not save time? Larry Crockett doubles in the role of adulterer (instead of the phone company guy) and Bonnie is now his secretary. Floyd (now named Ned) is more involved with the moving of the "sideboard" to the Marsten house. Most of these devices are more understandable as time-savers than simply bad changes to the book.

Finally, some things are pretty crazy different. Father Callahan is minimalized to the point where he is pretty much a non-factor in the fight against Barlow. Of course, nobody in 1979 realized this character would become a lot more crucial thanks to later books, but I'm getting ahead of myself. As for Barlow, the fully articulate and even charming master vampire has been turned into an inarticulate growling monster. While book-version Barlow could have theoretically run the night shift at the antique store, this stock-horror movie creature is hell-bent on destruction and no amount of makeup could hide his grotesque appearance. Finally, there is the matter of Susan. In the book, Susan's conversion to vampirehood is sudden, shocking, and sad, but Ben has to man up, stake her, and move on to bigger problems. The movie clearly is less reluctant to disregard their previous romance, and instead makes her the main objective, following Ben and Mark all the way to Guatemala for the final showdown.

The acting in this isn't anything special, aside from James Mason. Mason is a class act in anything he does and blows away the field. Even though he didn't shave his head for the role (I mean, this is James Mason), he still delivers an iconic performance as Straker. Everyone else is mostly from television and soap opera careers, though a young Fred Willard plays Crockett to a sleazebag T. Lew Ayres was probably the other enduring name in this production, but his character was fairly marginal.

Again, it is easy to be critical to this version given it's age. Believe it or not, this was closer to cutting-edge entertainment for its time and even won a handful of awards. Go figure!

Some odd things I noticed when watching:

• The picture was a little grainy, but it seems like Ben Mears's sporty little Jeep was rocking Colorado plates. Perhaps a nod either The Shining or The Stand, the next two books Stephen King wrote that have Colorado connections? Both had been released by the time this movie hit the small screen.
• This movie ditches the apostrophe in front of the title and apparently the town is officially called "Salem's Lot" in the movie, but they do acknowledge at some point it was, in fact, Jerusalem's Lot. I have also ditched the apostrophe for posts related to 'Salem's Lot (book, film, or otherwise), but this is for alphabetization purposes.

'Salem's Lot (1975)

Over the past two weeks I heartily enjoyed sinking my teeth into Stephen King's second novel, 'Salem's Lot. Unlike Carrie, the subject matter cuts much closer to King's interests as a developing writer. While the first book pivoted between publication and the circular file before finally leaning to the former, this book had been brewing for quite some time.

This book is about vampires. I'm not sure if that was supposed to be a huge surprise for the first readers. On the other hand I have the advantage of forty years of hindsight, as the book (and most of King's early books) is firmly entrenched in the zeitgeist of American fiction, so it is hard to escape the easy labeling of the book as his "vampire novel". Also, this is the first book that feeds into the Stephen King Megaverse, anchored by the Dark Tower series, so it's a generally-known fact through this connection that there is going to be a supernatural angle.

That is something I've had to get used to with this project. Stephen King isn't (primarily) a mystery author, he does horror and suspense. This means there isn't a reason for the destruction of Jerusalem's Lot that is grounded in reality. It's the same kind of adjustment that needs to be made if watching a later episode of Scooby-Doo and learning that the monster is not just some crank wearing a mask, but a real monster. This makes the more obvious explanation ("Barlow is a vampire") the correct one, rather than something surprising ("Barlow really is just a kindly antiques vendor and somebody innocent-looking is actually infecting the town with flu because he's mad about something"). The fun, therefore is not in the discovery of the truth, but in what the protagonists plan to do about it, and if they will survive.

Given where I work, I found the religious aspects of the novel to be interesting. Although I mentioned a little bit of flawed theology in the "progress report" post, I was surprised by how much religion played into the battle against the vampires. Father Callahan is a tortured guy, living in the decade immediately following Vatican II and clearly struggling to accept the modernization of Catholicism. Yet he has more than enough personal demons to battle, all of which fall in line when confronted by the vampire threat. More than any classic vampire weapons, crosses and holy water were the most fundamental and effective tools against Barlow, so much so they even glowed with power (bestowed on them through prayer and absolution, no less). There is also considerable discussion about faith among the characters, as well as the differences of spiritual experience among the denominations present in the town (Catholic, Lutheran, Mormon, and maybe another I'm missing).

As I was reading I thought of some of the other famous works of vampire fiction and how much (or little) they owe to each other. In his 1999 introduction to 'Salem's Lot, included in my version, King credits Bram Stoker's Dracula as an early inspiration, it did not serve as the template. Rather, his vampires come from the comic book type, the ones that are a lot nastier and commonplace than the one-off Count Dracula. The weapons and weaknesses are fairly standard: wooden stakes, crosses and holy water (definitely), sunlight, silver (maybe), and garlic (not really, more of an allergic reaction). Vampire victims typically become vampires themselves, but more zombie-like with only limited cunning and confined to the town. Unlike Stoker's world, they are not charming, except if you are dumb enough to stare into their eyes. I had to remind myself that Anne Rice only jumped into the genre the following year, so if anything, she owes King, not the other way around, for any similarities. More likely, though, they were both drawing from the same inspiration and also trying to differentiate from Stoker. Although Barlow alludes to being far older than the Church, King doesn't delve into "vampires spanning time" the way that Rice does. Her vampires are also better looking, if you take the movie into account anyway. About 25 years later, Charlaine Harris would get in on the act with the Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire series, and when her novels were adapted by HBO as True Blood, it seemed like another wave of vampire mania was upon us. Harris plays far more off of Rice's innovations (sexy vampires spanning time), and both are guilty of cranking out endless books in their respective series, both of diminishing quality.

Stephen King, unlike Anne Rice and Charlaine Harris, never wrote a proper sequel to 'Salem's Lot, although some plot elements would be worked into his later novels. Though not actually novels, this book has a prequel ("Jerusalem's Lot") and a sequel ("One For the Road") which were both published in King's first story collection, Night Shift. More about those when I get there!

'Salem's Lot has never enjoyed a theatrical release, but it has had two two-part miniseries adaptations, from 1979 and 2004. This probably has something to do with the "slow boil" plot that, if rushed into a 100-minute format, would make the climax all the weaker. However, this didn't stop an ill-advised sequel, A Return to 'Salem's Lot, from reaching the big screen in limited release in 1987. Just like with The Rage: Carrie 2, I think I've got more important things to watch!