If you grew up in the 80s and 90s like I did, you were likely subjected to a lot of made-for-TV miniseries and movies. These relics were often schmaltzy and convoluted, but in the dark days before streaming or even the internet in general, beggars could not be choosers. I have no memory of seeing Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot when it originally aired on CBS (the miniseries concluded just days after my second birthday), but the VHS version was a staple of my childhood video store explorations – its white vampiric eyes following me as I moved about the horror section.
All these years later I finally got around to watching this gem from my youth, and I’m glad I did. As a reluctant victim of far too many made-for-TV movies, I can say without hesitation that Salem’s Lot ranks among the better ones from my memory, and certainly the best Stephen King adaptation (yes, it is better than 1990’s It – by a long-shot). This isn’t hard to imagine considering its director, Tobe Hooper, was a hot commodity at the time, with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in his rearview and Poltergeist around the corner. Salem’s Lot looks and feels like a “real” movie, with acting and a legitimately creepy atmosphere to match.
Its problems lie mostly with its format. At 183-minutes, it is at least an hour too long, but therein lies the problem. It can’t be any shorter because it needs to fill a certain amount of airtime, which causes bloat. There are whole sections of Salem’s Lot that would have been cut had it been a theatrical production. These scenes (like the overdrawn extra-marital affair sequence featuring Fred Willard, George Dzundza, and Julie Cobb) don’t offer anything substantial to the plot and only serve to bog down the good bits.
However, what does work is enough. Hooper builds on King’s mythology with a combination of visual panache and old-fashioned hand-wringing that proves delightfully engaging. James Mason’s turn as the mysterious antiques dealer at the center of the chaos is matched by David Soul’s unabashed compulsion to get to the bottom of things, at great risk to himself and others. In addition, Hooper pulls out the stops by using freaky undead children, jump scares, and a wonderful Count Orlok-inspired vampire (rather than a dapper womanizing one) to set the tone for a brutal – if watered-down for television – tale of small town secrets and blood-drinking. All of this comes to a head with some truly menacing visuals that I have no doubt sent parents and kids alike to bed with the lights on. And really, what more can you ask of a late-70s made-for-TV horror movie than that?
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.