Third adaptation of one of the best novels, if not the best, by Stephen King, Salem’s Lot tells the story of how a man visiting the small town of his childhood discovers it under the yoke of a vampire. Long in gestation at Warner Bros., this film by Gary Dauberman was completed in 2022 with a theatrical release scheduled for September of that year. “Tableted” for two years, Salem’s Lot will instead be released directly on the Max platform, Warner’s parent. In Quebec, Crave is taking over. Knowing all this, there was reason to fear the worst. Neither a success nor the expected failure, the film above all makes you want to revisit the two previous adaptations and reread the novel. And why not?
Stephen King published Salem’s Lot in 1975, more than a year after the surprise success of his first novel, Carrie. The plot revolves around a writer, Ben, during a stay in the semi-rural town where he was born: Jerusalem Lot, known as Salem’s Lot. As a child, Ben experienced a terrifying episode in the vast, and gloomy, mansion overlooking the town: Marsten House.
With a sinister past, the property attracts evil like a magnet, Ben now believes. So he is immediately suspicious of the new owner, a certain Mr. Barlow, a mysterious master of the house on whom no one has yet set eyes. Soon, Mark, a local boy, will join Ben in his fight against the epidemic of vampirism that is sweeping the city.
The novel contains many powerfully evocative passages, such as this one: “Walking softly so as not to make the floorboards creak, he went to the door and stood there for a moment. The quintessence of all human terrors, he thought. A door once closed, now ajar.”
Several figures and motifs that later became recurrent in King’s work are brought together in Salem’s Lot : a writer protagonist, the notion of returning home, childhood traumas that haunt the present, a child fighting a manifestation of evil, the small town attacked from within by an insidious evil…
King was influenced by two distinct elements, one socio-political, the other narrative. First, the author was then experiencing, like millions of Americans, a profound disillusionment: the Watergate scandal, the discovery of the “White House Tapes” and the partisan quagmire in Vietnam gave the impression of a democracy “under attack from within.”
Earning his living as a substitute teacher at the time, King had also included the novel in his curriculum. Draculaby Bram Stoker. In his (indispensable) essay Writing. Memoirs of a professionKing remembers wondering at the time, “What if vampires took over a small New England town?”
The answer was Salem’s Lotwith the added bonus of a socio-political allegory as a subtext.
The two miniseries
Given the success of the novel, Warner Bros (already) immediately acquired the rights to it with the aim of making a film. Since no script was deemed satisfactory, the studio accepted the proposal of producer Richard Kobritz, who had come up with the idea of a miniseries in two episodes of 90 minutes each, in association with the CBS channel.
Thanks to the success of his film Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Tobe Hooper was hired. His direction proved to be very inspired, far superior to what was being done on television at the time: it was impossible to forget these nocturnal apparitions of vampire children surrounded by mist, floating at the window. The photography and artistic direction, especially in the last act in Marsten House, a mansion that seems to be rotting on its feet, contributed to this success.
Broadcast in 1979 and with a great cast (David Soul, Bonnie Bedelia, James Mason), this first adaptation has aged very well (only the brief freeze frames before the obligatory commercials are dated). What’s more, Hooper’s version offers a terrifying Barlow different from the novel. Played by Reggie Nalder, this vampire who doesn’t say a word throughout the miniseries, was designed to resemble Count Orlok in Nosferatuby FW Murnau, illegitimate adaptation of Dracula : everything is in everything.
Interestingly, the miniseries was so well received that it was given a theatrical release in Europe in a shortened version (the 2024 film will be shown in a few theaters in England and Ireland).
In 2004, the TNT channel resumed the miniseries format for, again, a total duration of three hours. Here again, it was a production with a substantial budget and a well-stocked credits (Rob Lowe, Samantha Mathis, Donald Sutherland). Director who learned his trade by directing a few episodes of the series Band of Brothers (Brothers in arms), Mikael Salomon was entrusted with the project.
While it does include some passages from the novel that were absent from the 1979 version (the vampire children on the school bus), the 2004 version lacks its poisonous charm and gothic atmosphere. Played by Rutger Hauer, this Barlow is hardly frightening.
The 2024 movie
What about Gary Dauberman’s film? As has been noted, it barely does the job. It must be said that Dauberman, the screenwriter of the trilogy Annabelleof which he directed the third part, and co-writer of the diptych It (That), based on another Stephen King novel that bears many similarities to Salem’s Lothas experience in commercially oriented horror films.
His screenplay is akin to a studious, but oversimplified summary, with some liberties that are sometimes clever, sometimes questionable. Inexplicably, Dauberman underuses Marsten House and empties it of its evil charge: a mistake.
There is also something mechanical in the unfolding: punctuated by clumsy ellipses, the story does not breathe, and many situations seem rushed. It is as if an initially longer montage had been compressed. Apart from young Mark (Spencer Treat Clark, a real revelation), who becomes an unlikely hero alongside Ben, the characters lack depth.
The film, however, looks quite good: the young Glick brothers’ journey through the woods at dusk, magnificently sinister, resembles Chinese shadow theater. During the night scenes, the cinematography of Michael Burgess (Malicious / Evil) infuses the requisite macabre notes. Would the film have deserved a theatrical release? Generally speaking, horror is profitable and, in the genre, we have seen a lot worse. With or without a vampire.
The movie Salem’s Lot will be released on Crave on October 3. The 1979 miniseries is available on Blu-ray and iTunes and the 2004 miniseries is available on DVD and the Microsoft Store.