[Nerdspresso] Anemic Salem's Lot Adaptation Lacks Teeth

It’s Halloween time and there’s a new version of Salem’s Lot, the classic Stephen King vampire story, playing on MAX right now if you’re in the mood. The streamer is rolling out a ton of scary flicks for this time of year so you can kick off the season big time.

If you are a fan of fright films, this month is your jam. I have an awkward relationship with horror movies as I watch most of them through my fingers. I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to things that go bump in the night, but I still do really dig Stephen King. 

Are you a King fan? I feel like he’s a classic storyteller; a modern master of the macabre. He’s Ray Bradbury without the lyrical musings or Edgar Allen Poe without the opium. Uncle Steve has been pumping out bestsellers for 50 years now.

His first novel, Carrie, hit shelves in 1974 and within two years Hollywood had cranked out an adaption. For almost a half-century, King has had a love/hate relationship with the movies. More often than not, these flicks don’t work out. They’re more eek than epic.

What are your favorite Stephen King flicks? Surprisingly, the tops on my list are those titles that aren’t straight-up horror tales. Stand By Me, Shawshank Redemption, and Misery rank pretty high, but I also like The Mist, Pet Sematary, and The Shining.

There have been about 90 movies made from King’s stuff. You would think with that many chances at bat, there’d be a few more home runs. It’s been hard for filmmakers to make a decent Stephen King movie. Most can’t strike the balance between fear and feeling that really makes his best stuff sing. 

I enjoy a small fraternity of friends that bond over all things King. We share the books we loved, praise the movies that were true to the source material and mock the ones that weren’t. A lot of my chums have confessed their earliest King connections.

Sometimes, it’s just memories about reading Cujo under the covers as a kid, reviewing forbidden tomes by flashlight. Others profess to being traumatized after watching Carrie, Salem’s Lot, or The Shining at a way too early an age. If Generation X has a patron saint of horror, it’s Uncle Steve. 

My earliest encounter with the master was during summer vacation in a small town in northwestern Iowa. I was staying with my grandparents and they lived in a house juxtaposed between farmland and budding suburbs. A little place on a lonely road populated by matchbox houses.

There was a straggly cornfield winding toward the horizon in the back and a creaky place next door. Believe it or not, a family lived in this dilapidated two story. They seemed pretty normal to me, but I was stuck in Iowa with no other kids my own age. These folks could have been the Manson Family and it would have been cool with me. I was fine as long as they shared their Hot Wheels.

What I remember most about that summer is that twlight lasted for hours. For someone always mandated to be home by dark, it was liberating to not see the sun go down until almost 10 p.m. That’s a big deal for a kid. It was the first time that I felt really free.

I played with those spooky-house kids all summer long. We entertained all kinds of backyard games and make-believe, but I never went inside their house. It was a dark and mysterious place where they disappeared every night once the sun had gone to sleep.

Looking back now, I don’t think the kids were allowed to have friends in the house, but my little kid imagination thought all kinds of weirdness was happening there. One night after the kids retreated, I was loitering around out in the yard when I noticed a flickering of light coming from the windows on the side.

I slowly crept up to the glass and peered inside. It was completely dark except for the electric glow from a TV at the far end of the room. Their dad (or uncle or grown up male person living with them) was watching HBO with his back to me. I couldn’t look away. Mainly because it was HBO and we didn’t have that at our house and secondly, the movie that was playing was The Shining.

I stood transfixed at that window, trying to stay out of sight but also doing my best to watch what was transpiring on that big cabinet-style TV.  The sun was slowly setting behind me. The surroundings were becoming increasingly quiet and dark.

As night was taking over, I was mesmerized by Jack Nicholson trolling the labyrinth of an empty hotel in the dead of winter. And really hoping that guy didn’t turn around and see me bogarting his pay cable. Soon my grandma started calling for me. I ran back to the safety of her house and never spoke of my voyeurism until now. 

Whenever I think of Stephen King stories, my psyche is entangled with wistful childhood memories of summer and the creeping paranoia of that scary house and the fear of getting caught. I’m forever that little boy staring through a window into a forboding darkness, broken only by the blue firelight of Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic telling of King’s nightmare tale.

And that memory is much more engrossing and terrifying than all two hours of the new Salem’s Lot. The writer of the It movies helms this tepid reworking of a small town slowly overtaken by vampires. 

It feels like writer/director Gary Dauberman, who also wrote all the Annabelle movies, is cutting his directorial teeth here after taking the reins of that most recent haunted doll flick. While he’s quite adept at the random jump scare, there’s very little genuine terror. This heavy-handed fright flick is mostly mediocre.

Dauberman has assembled a few creepy images and he seems a master at manipulating shadows, but ultimately, horror movies should be scary. This one is mildly discomforting at best.  Dauberman keeps things moving, but a lot of scenes are awkward and predictable.

Condensing King’s novel into a two-hour movie has also sacrificed quite a bit of the narrative. Characters aren’t really developed, but are just a collection of traits with a hint of backstory. It’s not enough for you to really care about when things go south.

Salem’s Lot is the story of author Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman from Top Gun: Maverick and Apple TV’s Lessons in Chemistry), returning to his childhood home. Orphaned as a child, Ben is hoping this homecoming can resolve some childhood trauma and help him find inspiration for his next novel.

He also wants to satisfy a morbid fascination with the Marsten House, a big spooky mansion that was the site of a series of grisly murders forty years earlier. The house has been vacant for decades, but has been recently occupied by the vaguely European Mr. Straker and his enigmatic (and never seen) business partner, Mr. Barlow. 

Ben’s arrival corresponds with the disappearance of a local boy and the bizarre death of his big brother. Soon other folks are falling ill or missing. Something sinister is happening in “the Lot.” That’s what the locals call their hometown. And they say it A LOT.

He suspects the strangeness has something to do with that creepy mansion and he’s not alone. Ben teams up with an elementary school teacher, the local realtor’s secretary, a skeptical physician, a jaded priest, and a fearless kid to solve this mystery. And then things get really toothy. 

This cast is genial but uncharismatic. They aren’t much more than chess pieces moved around on the board leading to the final move. Pullman is likeable but indistinct. He is a serviceable hero, but mostly just reminds you that he’s the offspring of Lone Star from Spaceballs.

Jordan Preston Carter, from that dystopian show DMZ on Max, distinguishes himself as Mark Petrie. I admire his moxy as Ben’s plucky young sidekick, but he’s almost too precocious. It’s like he’s just walked off the set of Stranger Things. Hey, kid, leave some stuff for the grownups to do. 

Bill Camp (Lincoln and Joker, how’s that for a diverse resume?) generates a comforting aura as the sage school teacher, but he doesn’t get near enough screen time. MacKenzie Leigh (TV’s Gotham) stumbles as the love interest while the venerable Alfre Woodard (Passion Fish, Crooklyn and Star Trek: First Contact) must have been saddled with the direction to just loudly enunciate every line. Her regal bearing classes up the joint, but she just doesn’t get to do much besides act incredulous. 

This flick is the third adaption of Salem’s Lot (they also made a miniseries for TNT in 2004 with Rob Lowe, Donald Sutherland, and Andre freakin’ Braugher!), so like the recent Dune is it a remake or a cinematic mulligan of the novel?

The first go-round was the 1979 TV movie by horror maestro/power tools aficionado Tobe Hooper. It starred David Soul (one half of TV’s grooviest detective duo, Starsky & Hutch), James Mason (if you don’t know James Mason, I’m not going to explain it here), and Bonnie Bedelia (Mrs. John McClane from the Die Hard movies).

This one takes a loooong time to get going, but it does deliver some seriously creepy vibes. People have been saying that they prefer the “slow burn” of the original to the new one’s hastened plot. I think that’s a polite way of saying that the old version is boring. 

You can also catch this one on Max right now and see for yourself. Having watched both flicks recently, I do prefer the remake to the original. Even though the characters are reduced to types, it doesn’t waste any time getting to the good stuff while the original eases into the mayhem.

You came to this show for vampires and the new flick delivers on that premise, although not proficiently. But the first one does have its charms. It’s campy and old school, very much a product of its time. The lines are cheesy, the fashions very mod and everyone has good hair. Plus, Tobe Hooper offers a certain pedigree. 

This redux retains the ’70’s setting of both the novel and movie, which was a solid move. It gives the flick most of its personality. The production design really transports you. You can almost smell the nostalgia for the days of polyester and big lapels wafting off the screen.

This time period is actually pretty essential to what works best in the movie. A pivotal scene set at the local drive-in wouldn’t have the same impact in 2024. Nor would the liberal use of a Gordon Lightfoot folk standard on the soundtrack, which is a clever touch. 

Several characters spend a good chunk of time in libraries, perusing dusty old books for clues. I’m thinking if all they had to do was jump on the internet for answers, this movie would be over in about 20 minutes. I don’t think the scene where Ben reviews microfiche would have been as cinematic if he had just googled it. And let’s not forget those fabulous seventies fashions. A smart dickie and some bell bottoms would really look out of place in the 21st Century. 

In conclusion, if you’re desperately searching for a diversion during this spooky season then you could do worse than a detour to Salem’s Lot. It will probably satisfy your Stephen King jones, especially with veteran character actor William Sadler (The Shawshank Redemption and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey) in the role of the world-weary town sheriff.

Sadler fills the void left by Pet Sematary’s Fred Gwynne (or John Lithgow in the recent remake), which is an old guy in a Stephen King story spouting platitudes with a New England accent. However, if you’re hungry for a spine-tingling good time, a chilling descent into existential dread or even just a vampire movie with bite, I would look elsewhere.

This movie is pretty toothless.