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.