In Progress: 'Salem's Lot

Hey we're on book number two: 'Salem's Lot! This post is a slow-roll live blog, a place to dump some running thoughts on the book as I work through it. As I prefacing the same post about Carrie, this may be spoiler-intensive in places. I'll keep updating this one post as I go, since there is no need for 20+ "in progress" posts.

July 25 (page 65): I started in a couple days ago. This Roy Lichtenstein-esque cover seems to be part of a re-issue series that went as far as The Shining. I haven't seen any covers in this style after that one. If you have a particularly old (or even new?) edition, you may want to find this one for it's valuable "author's note" from 1999. I'm not sure if 1975 readers were supposed to be unaware of the vampire nature of the book, but that potential spoiler has been long-blown both by this introduction and the packaging of this version. So far, outside of the prologue, it seems quaint enough, almost Winesburg, Ohio, but in 1970's economically-challenged Maine. If I were to hazard a guess, the mysterious man and boy pair from the prologue are Ben Mears and a yet-to-be-introduced character, but I could be wrong. Also, the prologue is in the near future and the main part of the book smack-dab in the present (1975) day. I caught one sly reference to Carrie in the mention of the town of Chamberlain (four years before its destruction!). However, this book, King promises in his introduction, makes Carrie look "fey". On the other hand, in the same introduction, he notes this book shows its age: an honest-to-God milkman (and not one of those hipster-yuppie throwback businesses), and the ability to find newspapers from Maine throughout the country. Oh, Internet, how you changed everything! At this point, I've gotten a hearty introduction to Susan and Ben and right now I'm meeting about a hundred assorted characters that populate the town. A couple of "off" things have happened, but no blood or guts to report. It's high noon in the chapter "The Lot (I)" -- let's finish the rest of the day and see what happens.

July 27 (page 110): Other than a dead dog and a kidnapped (murdered?) child, nothing out of the ordinary to report! Actually, I'm still wondering how wise I'd be the what's going on if I didn't know this novel dealt in vampires. Barlow and Straker? Just a couple old gay men wanting to start an antiques business. Dead dog? Cruel twist of fate. Giant box of sideboard? Just sideboard. If I had no background on this book, I would probably just see all of this as the portrait of an odd, small town in Maine.

July 31 (page 256): It took around half the book, but the forces of evil are now on the march and there is no mistake that something seriously diabolical is happening to the town. My hunches that Barlow was out and about were finally confirmed, although he seems to be more about dazzling the town's down-and-out than outright killing them. I had forgotten how many characters were introduced in the chapter "The Lot (I)" and now they are all started to reappear, almost as if ready-made cannon fodder for the bad guys to exploit. They're like sheep.

August 2 (page 320): Gadzooks, half the town has turned, that is if you believe that good-for-nothing Straker. As I plow through the second half, I'm getting confirmations of things like Barlow being a vampire and Straker his "friend" for lack of a better word. On the other hand, I wasn't prepared to say goodbye to Susan so suddenly. However, it is clear now that Mark is joining Ben as co-protagonist, while Susan's character has been marginalized. This also almost entirely confirms that Ben and Mark were the unnamed characters of the prologue (that, and I accidentally read the final chapter heading - please don't do that).

August 5 (page 409): Well, the cliche librarian is dead. Or, rather, Undead. Susan, too. Stephen King's theology (via Father Callahan) is a little wacky. He incorrectly states St. Paul was crucified upside down to so that he would face the earth instead of heaven. (It was actually Peter, by his request; Paul was a Roman citizen and was beheaded.) It's just a tiny quibble in an otherwise intense vampire hunt, where Barlow manages to keep one step ahead of the hunters. Not bad for a guy who has to sleep all day.

Cell in (and out of!) theaters this month

I've taken more note of what Stephen King movie adaptations are coming out since starting this project. Unfortunately, as I am already well aware, they can't all be winners. Although there is already buzz for the upcoming Dark Tower movies starting next year, Cell (based on the 2006 novel) hit theaters in limited release this month, and I'm pretty sure is already gone. However, you can watch it on demand if so inclined. I hope that if you do end up watching it, you get to watch it for free, because, with a 0% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes, you'll get exactly what you pay for!

I can safely say it is a relief that this one is a long way off for this project. Perhaps critical consensus will have shifted by the time I get around to it...but I doubt it.

Movie: Carrie (2002)

Well, I think I'm just about done - for life - with Carrie movies, and in fine form, I saved the worst for last. Filmed 26 years after the first one (and eleven before the theatrical do-over), the overarching question throughout the movie is "Why???"

I honestly don't know what motivated this made-for-TV version, the longest and dullest of the three. I might throw out a guess that since The Shining was remade (and, unlike this one, endorsed by King himself), a producer out there somewhere felt it wasn't beyond the pale to give Carrie a TV makeover as well. The main failings of going on this theory is that (1) the "new" Shining was inferior to the Kubrick original, and (2) Stephen King actually loved the original De Palma film, so much so that this one and the 2013 version aren't even listed on his website.

There was the whole matter of making a TV show (I've read many places this was a "backdoor pilot") which never happened, because, well, what exactly comes after this? The Sue Snell Mysteries? A remake of The Rage: Carrie 2? Perhaps the producers saw the opportunity for a special effects upgrade. This was certainly a big motivation for the 2013 film, while this one seemed to lack the budget to offer a credible improvement to the first movie. Right from the opening credits, it feels more like we're going to be settling in for a three-hour version of Law & Order.

Or, perhaps because of the backdoor pilot design, they wanted to tell a new version of a story that, by this time, was well-burned into the popular imagination. For one thing, it sports a very different ending from either the book or the other movies. It also adds a few scenes that contradict the assertions of the book. Carrie is depicted as totally googly for Tommy Ross right from the get-go and fantasizes kissing him right before the bucket-o-blood scene hits. Carrie behaves more like a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde character who turns on and off based on external triggers, and it is clear that the non-psychotic Carrie was not aware of what she did while "possessed". And to repeat, the ending is different (spoiler alert...) in that she lives past Prom Night, surviving an attempt by her mother to drown her, although she required some half-assed CPR from Sue Snell. No knives were involved, as in this version Carrie can use her telekinesis to stop her mom's heart. Sue, her brand-new partner in crime, agrees to fake her death and drive her off to Florida, presumably where the next episode of the never-made show would take place?

I do have some nice things to say about this most-maligned Carrie. First off, it's the only one of the three films in which Carrie asks a librarian for assistance rather than wantonly tearing through the stacks. That said, this librarian steered her to some primitive websites, found with some type of proto-Google search engine (which only returned 26 results, all trustworthy, on the keyword search "miracles"). It was also the only one that stayed true to the book in that Sue Snell stayed home during Prom Night, and in general Sue's character seems closest to the book of any of the three movies. Finally, in the true-to-the-book department, Carrie's path of destruction clearly ravaged the whole town of Chamberlain, not just her school and house.

In closing, I think it should be a law that anything filmed in or around Vancouver, typically a budget-saving move, should be stamped under the title card in all caps "FILMED IN VANCOUVER" unless it is actually supposed to take place in Vancouver. While unlike some other TV shows and movies I've seen, it doesn't look obviously Canadian, but these productions seem to attract the same actors over and over. For example Kandyse McClure (Sue Snell) would later appear in Vancouver-based Battlestar Galactica, and Emile de Ravin (Chris Hargensen) and Rena Sofer (Ms. Desjarden) in Once Upon a Time (yep, also Vancouver).