A film Review by Cliff Homewood
I love Salem’s Lot, for the 70’s generation it’s iconic. You didn’t get much supernatural TV so a two-part Vampire mini-series was something special. We generally got Hammer movies that were a bit slow, waiting for the good stuff. Salem’s Lot whilst 3 hours long didn’t feel slow. The art of good storytelling is to get you to know and care for the characters before the Big Event changes things. Do it badly; it’s slow and drags. Stephen King does it well and you’re absorbed from the start in the mystery of a man returning to a town he left decades before and his blooming romance with one of its people.
In the 70s we all sat around and watched the family TV. Come the 80s children would have TVs in their bedroom and the landscape changed. Children wanted to watch kids on the TV, we’d start to see young heroes and The Disney Channel was created. Salem’s Lot is a rare example of having an adult and a child hero to root for. The boy’s room was full of horror paraphernalia, making him both good for hunting vampires and for identifying with. A fellow geek.
There was a 2006 version of the story with Rob Lowe, Rutger Hauer and James Cromwell, I enjoyed that, a fair bit different but still enjoyable enough whilst not holding a candle to the original (the lights went out). Now we have the 2024 version. Things went wrong from the start. Writer Director Gary Dauberman (IT) wanted to be faithful to the book whilst making vampires scary, but Executive Producer James Wan wanted to be faithful to the film. Why not both? Doctor Sleep managed that admirable trick, but alas was a Warner Bros flop, so word came from above it must be short and pacy. I don’t know why they picked on the length of Doctor Sleep as why it underperformed and not the marketing or the fact they weren’t standing on their heads. Salem’s Lot cannot be short, Dauberman struggled to fit it into 2 hours. Back in the 70s they made a TV movie edit of that mini-series, was it any good? No. You think they’d learn. They turned Stephen King’s The Gunslinger into a 90 minute movie. Was it any good? No. You think they’d learn.
Stephen King, who provided notes throughout, tweeted, “I’ve seen the new Salem’s Lot and it’s quite good… Not sure why WB is holding it back; not like it’s embarrassing, or anything. Who knows. I just write the fucking things.” It also fell foul to the corporate re-organisation that cancelled Batgirl and Coyote vs Acme as tax write-offs.
So the 2024 version sat on the shelves a few years until the actor’s strike meant a shortage of material this year and it was released into the cinema in the UK. I enjoyed it, it has atmosphere and some good set pieces. But I know the story and so was entertained by this best of. But I noticed this ‘haunted’ house, whilst looking great, is only in a few scenes, the Big Bad vampire, whilst looking good, is only in a few scenes, his servant doing his bidding, is only in a few scenes … You start to see the problem, by trying to fit so much in to tell the story none of it is given enough space to become itself and be the thing it needs to be to make the film good. Characters are not developed, back stories bitten away (not sorry!) by the lack of screen time. Scenes that in the original are devastating in the remake are just something that happens. The original feels dated, needing an update. This could have been it, if the executives allowed it the length it needed to tell the story. There are still moments of tension and vampires are still an exciting concept, but for instance the townsfolk accept the reality of there being vampires reasonably quickly as the screenplay didn’t have time to do otherwise. It was decided to set the film in the 70s when the book was written but the verbose Master vampire from the novel replaced with the Nosferatu inspired Barlow from the 70s TV series, this helped make the film shorter. A memorable part of the original, I’ve read the book but prefer my formative memories of Tobe Hooper’s TV adaptation. Barlow was powerful and terrifying in the 70s but now is run of the mill as he has been in everything from Buffy to What we do in the Shadows. You know: the vampire in Vic & Bob’s Masterchef sketch, we are all used to variations of that look.
The finale changed its locale and although it worked well and showed the resourcefulness of Mark, our boy hero, it wasn’t a very realistic denouement. A good idea though, well setup and executed, the disbelief of how they going to escape still there. Glad it didn’t end with the cheesy house on fire of the dire 70’s TV movie edit, but included the emotional whammy at the end of the mini-series except there was no emotion to be felt here. It’s a mistake execs often make, cutting a film back by removing non-action scenes, not realising they give feeling to the action. making it good. Brazil, The Abyss, Kingdom of Heaven etc, all became good films by adding the running time the studio cut out.
“There are diversions from the book I don’t agree with, but on the whole, faithful.” Stephen King.
Some actors carried the film well, others failed. Mark (Jordan Preston Carter) lacked the warmth such a character requires to be the nerd everyman he is. The actor who played Danny Glick (Nicholas Crovetti) would have been a better choice. The schoolteacher Bill Camp (Matt Burke) was suitably endearing, and the Doctor (Alfre Woodard) felt real. Love interest Susan Norton (Mackenzie Leigh) looked white from the beginning of the film, before the vampires even appeared. There are two black families in a small 70s town, which whilst unlikely isn’t improbable. My solution would have been a black lead, but Hollywood seems reluctant to go that far. Events seemed to unfold very quickly as necessitated by the studio’s demand of pace.
Salem’s Lot? Not a good one alas, an enjoyable run of the mill horror story, not the update the original deserves. Fingers crossed for a 3-hour Director’s cut that could be as good as the original. Stephen King tweeted; “The Glick scene could have been directed by John Carpenter in his prime.”