(1979)
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Starring Davil Soul, James Mason, Lance Kerwin, Bonnie Bedelia, Lew Ayres, Elisha Cook Jr., George Dzundza, Ed Flanders, Geoffrey Lewis, Kenneth McMillian, Fred Willard, Reggie Nalder

My first experience with the film Salem’s Lot was not a good one. I don’t remember seeing it when it was first broadcast on TV back in 1979, which seems odd enough. But in the early 80s, I began to dive into horror fiction, which spread faster than a vampire plague in a small town! When I got to King’s Salem’s Lot, I absolutely loved it and over the years, it would remain my favorite. Maybe because I grew up in a similar small town, though in Michigan, where everyone knew everyone’s business, but it really resonated with me. So, after finishing the book I went out and rented the VHS release of it, not realizing it was the shorter theatrical version. I absolutely hated it. I hated that Barlow looked like Nosferatu, which is completely different than he is in the novel. I hated they had left so much character development and backstory out. This was in my younger and naive days when I had no clue what it took to adapt a novel into a feature film, not to mention that the version I had just watched was condensed version of the full 2-part series.

Years later, going back to the full 3-hour version, and taking the chip off my shoulder of the book-to-film comparison, I finally saw it differently and started to appreciate it. King had captured the feel of the small town in the book, and screenwriter Paul Monash did as well in the teleplay adaptation. I got over how Barlow looked and understood the scare factor there. And it does work.

Writer Ben Mears (David Soul) travels back to his childhood home to start new book, a subject that terrified his youth… the Marsten House, which even now seems to have a hold on him. Right before his arrival, the dilapidated house had been acquired by a pair of old gentlemen who are opening an antique shop in town. Straker (James Mason) is there to get things going while awaiting the arrival of his partner, Mr. Barlow. After a couple of the locals pick up a large crate and deliver to the Marsten house, bad things start to befall in this small town. A young boy goes missing. Then people start being affected by some strange disease, almost like a form of anemia, where they are missing blood and are very weak. And then they die. Mears’ old schoolteacher Jason Burke (Lew Ayres) starts to put things together, with Mears agreeing with him, as crazy as it sounds. But they know the minute they start telling people they think that vampires have moved into their little town, they are done. As this plague sweeps through the small town, Ben, Jason, local high school kid and horror nerd Mark (Lance Kerwin), and the local Dr. Norton (Ed Flanders), decide it is up to them to stop this vampire invasion.

While this is a made-for-TV movie, it is still very effective in both as a story, how it unfolds, and is scary. There are plenty of sequences that were creepy back then and I think are still effective today. Maybe this is why producer Richard Kobritz wanted to hire Tobe Hooper to direct, after seeing a screening of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). That film also has barely any blood in it but was still very effective in terrifying its audiences. Hooper continues that tactic, doing an excellent job here, with the constant camera movements, setting up some real atmospheric shots, like the floating boys outside the windows, making this feel like a feature film and not something we’d normally see on television.

With a wide range of great character actors filling out the cast, from Elisha Cook Jr., George Dzundza, and Geoffrey Lewis, they help bring this small New England town to life. At least for a short time. David Soul, just finishing up his run on the very popular TV’s Starsky and Hutch, does his best to show that he could do more than playing a cop, and he does okay. He does give you the feeling that the Marsten house still has a grip on him after some childhood trauma there. He lets us know that those childhood memories are still very vivid to him and still have a strong hold of him. We can see it in his sweat covered face when staring at the Marsten House. James Mason was brilliant casting choice as the vampire familiar, Straker, with that cool and calm voice, always telling the locals, “Mr. Barlow will enjoy you.” But there are moments in the film where he actually seems terrified, as if all the planning he’s doing doesn’t go perfectly right, he knows he will be punished for it. This goes to show that even he is scared of Barlow. Young Lance Kerwin plays Mark, a high school kid that loves monsters and magic, which at that time was frowned upon because it wasn’t “normal”. It shows how far we’ve come today with what is considered “normal”, even to the point when Mark’s dad makes the comment that he won’t be able to make a living out of that.

And the vampire Barlow, looking like a blue-skinned Nosferatu, is played by cult icon Reggie Nalder. While he’s only on screen less than 2 minutes of the 3-hour running time, he steals every sequence he appears in and does have a great look for a vampire that is more monster than human.

Even with the extended running time, and even though you still can’t compare it to the book, it still does stand on its own as a very effective horror story, a good old-fashioned vampire invasion tale of a small town in America, with very believable characters, many that you really care about. With a score by Harry Sukman that is mainly used for commercial bumpers and setting up the suspenseful and scarier moments, it helps in making it play even better.

Arrow Video has released this in 4K, and it simply is a must for anybody that is a fan of this. Not only does the quality look amazing, but you have 3 different options to watch this film. You can watch the shorter theatrical version, or the original two-part mini-series, both of which are in 4K presentation. But for the original series, you can either watch it in the original 2-part series, or as one extended version. I, myself, kind of like the breakup between them, with the recap at the beginnings, since it makes it feel like the old series that it was.

This new release has a brand-new audio commentary by film critics Bill Ackerman and Amanda Reyes, an archival commentary by Tobe Hooper, as well as a brand-new commentary by film critic/writer Chris Alexander on the theatrical cut of the film, so there is plenty of information to be learned here, both from an analytical side but as well as hearing from Hooper himself. I’m glad when they use archival commentaries, especially from those who have left us since then, because it helps save those comments, notes, and information coming right from the direct source. And the new ones tend to give us ways to see and think about the film, which is always a plus.

While all of that is more than enough to want to add this to your collection, the assortment of featurettes on this release is just icing on the cake. There is a new interview with Stephen King biographer Douglas Winter that is highly informative and really interesting, called King of the Vampires. He goes into detail about the original circumstances when the book Salem’s Lot, King’s only novel, was first published. In Second Coming, we get to hear from author and film critic Grady Hendrix. We hear from Mick Garris in a new interview where he discusses the film and director Tobe Hooper. There is a really nice featurette called We Can All Be Heroes by film critic Heather Wixson, as well as a featurette called A Gold Standard for Small Screen Screams with film critics Joe Lipsett and Trace Thurman, co-hosts of the podcast Horror Queers.

But my favorite of all the featurettes was Fear Lives Here, where we get to visit the locations where the film was shot and amazingly enough, a lot of it looks pretty close to when it did back in 1979! It was very cool to see these different locations.

This release from Arrow also comes with reversable sleeve with two different original artwork, a booklet containing new essays on the film by Sean Abley, Sorcha Ni Fhlainn, and Richard Kadrey, plus archival interviews with Hooper, and actors Lance Kerwin and Julie Cobb. There is also a pretty cool Salem’s Lot town sign sticker.

There are a lot of made-for-TV movies from the ‘70s that really do live up to their reputation. This is one of them. Not only because of it being based on a King novel, or that it was directed by the same guy who gave us Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but also that it has an astounding ensemble cast. It is simply because it still is a damn effective movie, that has plenty of creepy moments and good scares. Don’t go into it thinking it is the novel, like I did all those years ago, but just as a movie, and I’m sure you’ll be entertained.

Note: photos used for this review do not represent screenshots from this new release but are used just to add some graphics to it.