Stephen King has said that the idea for his novel ‘Salem’s Lot came to him during his teaching days. He’d been reading Dracula with his students and one day wondered what it would be like if an old-world vampire came to small-town America. It was only his second published novel, and I’d argue, one of his very best.
Buy Salem’s Lot: The Miniseries (1979) DVDAt about the same time King was writing ‘Salem’s Lot, Tobe Hooper directed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, one of the greatest horror movies of the 1970s. Produced on a minuscule budget, that film was a smashing success and made Hooper a household name (at least in households that enjoyed grizzly, down-and-dirty horror movies). His next film, Eaten Alive (1976), bombed with both critics and audiences. He then agreed to adapt ‘Salem’s Lot into a two-part TV movie.
I find myself fascinated by this. While King’s first novel, Carrie, and ‘Salem’s Lot had both been successes, he was not yet the cultural monolith he is today. Hooper was now a known name in horror, but his films were gritty, gratuitous, and gory, not exactly the kind of guy you tap to adapt a vampire novel for broadcast television. Not to mention, Hooper’s films had thus far been independent productions, where he’d maintained (more or less) creative control. Now he’d be under the thumb of a whole slew of CBS bigwigs.
I wish this new release of the miniseries contained some extras regarding how CBS decided to give Hooper this opportunity and why he decided to say “yes.” But alas, we’ll have to make do with just the film.
It is a rather good film at that. One of the best made-for-TV movies out there. That’s a low bar to be sure, but there is a reason this has become a cult classic while countless other TV-movies have long been forgotten.
In the small, New England town of Salem’s Lot (in the book, the full name of the town is Jerusalem’s Lot, which has been shortened to ‘Salem’s Lot by the townsfolk, hence that apostrophe at the beginning – the film drops the apostrophe for presumably aesthetic reasons though there is some line about it officially being changed somewhere in the script), Ben Mears (David Soul) comes home. He grew up in Salem’s Lot, but left when he was just a teen, became a successful author, and has now returned to write a book about the town’s most famous landmark, the Marsten House.
The house has a dark history. Its original owner, Hubie Marsten, was a child molester and committed suicide on the grounds. When Ben was just a boy, he broke into the property and saw the ghost of Hubie Marsten hang himself. He now believes the house itself is evil. He’ll be proven correct when a vampire moves in and starts murdering most of the townsfolk.
But first, we’ll spend some time getting to know those townspeople. One of King’s strengths as a writer is his ability to connect us to certain places and their people. He’s wonderful at giving his stories a real, lived-in quality, taking his time before the horror begins, to let us get to know his settings and characters. Unlike so many directors adapting King stories, Hooper understands this appeal and spends time in this town with these characters before the bloodletting begins.
Ben falls for a girl (Bonnie Bedelia), gets to know her father, the town’s doctor (Ed Flanders), and makes some friends. We spend time with a slimy real estate agent (Fred Willard) and the town drunk (Elisha Cook, Jr). There are, for sure, some strange goings-on in town, most of them involving Richard Straker (James Mason), a newcomer to town who bought the Marsten house and is opening up an antique shop with someone named Kurt Barlow, who never seems to be around. But mostly in those early scenes, we’re just hanging out in this small town, getting to know its people.
These scenes are perhaps a little slow, but I enjoyed them. I liked getting to know these people in this small town. It helps that there is a palpable sense of dread shadowing everything – this is a Stephen King vampire movie directed by Tobe Hooper, after all. He never lets us forget that horror is just around the corner. He regularly inserts shots of the creepy-looking Marsten house sitting high up on a hill as if it is looking out over the town, ready to rain down its horror at any moment.
You are also very aware that this is a made-for-TV movie from the 1970s. Save for a few key moments, all of the real violence and gore happen off-screen. There are a couple of hilarious attempts at sexiness. One involves a man discovering his wife is having an affair. He sneaks up on them amid the act, grabs a shotgun, and breaks down the door only to find them lying apart on the bed, the man in his boxer shorts, the woman in some hot pants and a tight top. While this DVD combines the two parts to form a complete three-hour movie, you can easily tell where the commercial breaks went, breaking the film down into bite-sized chunks and screwing with the pacing a bit.
But Hooper does his damned best to make up for these limitations. There are some genuinely creepy moments, including Striker carrying a large package covered in a black plastic bag, only to open it and reveal the corpse of a small boy. Later that same boy, having been turned into a vampire, will float ominously outside the second-story window of his friend, the night enveloped in darkness, while eerie fog floats around him (Hooper will use that same effect two other times in the film to diminishing results). The head-vampire’s design is genuinely terrifying, and its reveal is one of the greatest jump scares of all time.
I think you have to approach Salem’s Lot with an understanding of where it came from and what its limitations are. If you can accept those things, then you’re in for a really rather terrific little ride.
I have long since given up on trying to understand the ins and outs of what physical media distributors decide to release and why. But it boggles my brain that in the year of our Lord 2025, someone would release a bare-bones DVD without any extras at all (save for a lone trailer) for this film. It is readily available to rent or buy via a variety of streaming services, and there was a Blu-ray release of it in 2016 (with extras including an audio commentary from Hooper) that is still in print (and currently selling on Amazon for less than $8). So, who this particular release is for is not a question I can pretend to answer.
I will say this print looks good. This isn’t some tossed-off VHS copy from a decades-old print or anything. So if you’re just looking to own a physical copy of this film and don’t own a Blu-ray player, then I guess this disc is for you.
