The full length made-for-television mini-series based on Stephen King's novel about a writer who returns to his New England home town only to find its genteel citizens are turning... more
the town. It's like a beacon throwing off an energy force. - Ben Mears (David Soul) At last! Salem's Lot the 1979 horror mini-series from 1979 gets the much-desi...
Salem's Lot
Upon its initial publication in 1975 '"Salem's Lot" with its 'intended echoes of ... more
Dracula' was recognized as a landmark work. The novel has sold millions of copies in various editions. Now with the addition of fifty pages of material deleted from the 1975 manuscript as well as material that has since been modified by King an introduction by him and two short stories related to the events of the novel this edition represents the text as the author envisioned it. It also features lavishly creepy photographs by acclaimed photographer Jerry Uelsmann printed interior endpapers and a stunning page design.
Salem's Lot
With Salem's Lot, a blood-curdling shocker based on the novel by Stephen King, director ... more
Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist) sends the time-honored vampire legend soaring on bat wings into the modern era.Sinister events bring together a writer (David Soul) fascinated with an old hilltop house, a suave antiques dealer (James Mason) whose expertise goes beyond bric-a-brac and the dealer's mysterious, pale-skinned partner (Reggie Nalder). The solid supporting cast of vampire victims and fighters includes Bonnie Bedelia, Lew Ayres, Elsiha Cook, Ed Flanders, George Dzundza, Lance Kerwin, Geoffrey Lewis and Marie Windsor. It's hard to keep the undead down. And so easy to be scared in Salem's Lot.
Salem's Lot - Stephen King
Stephen King's second book,'Salem's Lot--about the slow takeover of an insular hamlet ... more
called Jerusalem's Lot by a vampire patterned after Bram Stoker's Dracula--has two elements that he also uses to good effect in later novels: a small American town, usually in Maine, where people are disconnected from each other, quietly nursing their potential for evil; and a mixed bag of rational, goodhearted people, including a writer, who band together to fight that evil.Simply taken as a contemporary vampire novel,'Salem's Lotis great fun to read, and has been very influential in the horror genre. But it's also a sly piece of social commentary. As King said in 1983, "In'Salem's Lot, the thing that really scared me was not vampires, but the town in the daytime, the town that was empty, knowing that there were things in closets, that there were people tucked under beds, under the concrete pilings of all those trailers. And all the time I was writing that, the Watergate hearings were pouring out of the TV.... Howard Baker kept asking, 'What I want to know is, what did you know and when did you know it?' That line haunts me, it stays in my mind.... During that time I was thinking about secrets, things that have been hidden and were being dragged out into the light." Sounds quite a bit like the idea behind his 1998 novel of a Maine hamlet haunted by unsightly secrets,Bag of Bones. --Fiona Webster
A review by Walter_Kovacs on Salem's Lot (DVD) January 17th, 2009
Author's product rating:
Did you enjoy it?
Liked it
Story
Good
Characters / Performances
Good
Special Effects
Good
How does it compare to similar films?
Good
Advantages:
Scary, well written
Disadvantages:
A bit slow at times
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Salem's Lot is a horror film and also extended to become a miniseries. It's adapted from the short story by Stephen King and is directed by Tobe Hooper, who horror fans may know also directed "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "Poltergeist".
Ben Mears (David Soul) is an author who is returning to his old home, Salem's Lot, to write a book about the town's supposed hanunted house, Marsten House. He is quickly seen as suspicious and is kept an eye on by the police chief. But there is also another new face in Salem's Lot, an antiques dealer by the name of Straker (James Mason) whose Boss, Mr. Barlow, no-one has ever seen. Soon after Ben's arrival people start to go missing and dying from mysterious causes, and everyone is baffled as to what is going on. Meanwhile, Ben meets a school teacher, Susan (Bonnie Bedelia), and they fall for each other. Her father is also a doctor at the local hospital so he can keep up with the sinister goings on. Soon everything comes to a head, people start seeing vampires and we find out Barlow is the original, and he and Straker are in cahoots. So Ben, the doctor, and a young horror fan must go to the old Marsten House and kill Barlow once and for all!
The film starts off quite slow, as we are introduced to all the characters and get a little bit of history about the town, it does speed up a little and gets quite exciting. Little things start happening and they snowball until everyone just leaves town as they don't want them or their family to be the next victims. Marsten House is a very intimidating place, even inside one of the houses or on one of the streets you can almost feel the presence of the house there, overshadowing the whole town.
Mr. Barlow, the vampire, is very traditional looking. He reminds me of Nosferatu, the vampire from the silent film of the same name. The make up is good, everyone looks horrific and scary but unlike Mr. Barlow his victims still look human so the transformation is made all the more tragic.
The acting is great, Mason (who seems to have taken more than a few acting tips from Vincent Price) is very sinister as Straker, who from the beginning seems to have an ulterior motive. David Soul is a good fit for the writer who gets caught up in this nightmare, inquiring about the disappearances until finally at the end deciding what he must do, and the rest of the cast perform admirably.
Overall a good, tense horror film, albeit a little slow at times. Well worth watching though, and well worth four stars.
Plot: The full length made-for-television mini-series based on Stephen King's novel about a writer who returns to his New England home town only to find its genteel citizens are turning into vampires.
Release details
DVD Region: DVD
Studio(s): WARNER HOME VIDEO; CINRAM LOGISTICS
Release date: 10/07/2006
No of Discs: 1
Catalogue No: D 012717
Barcode: 7321900127172
DVD Description
The full length made-for-television mini-series based on Stephen King's novel about a writer who returns to his New England home town only to find its genteel citizens are turning into vampires.
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