The Show Begins at Sundown

Back in 2011, Screem magazine commissioned me to write an article about ‘Salem’s Lot and its adaptations. (1) That led me to revisit the 1979 miniseries, starring David Soul, that had so terrorized me at the time. I had just started reading King a couple of months earlier, and two scenes in particular—ones that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen it—haunted me for a long time thereafter. Even though the original miniseries doesn’t stand the test of time—even in 1979, Soul didn’t have the gravitas required of the role and I find the adaptation almost painful to watch now—those scenes do hold up. I would say that the miniseries is better as a memory than as an actuality. I found a lot of flaws in it when I wrote about it for Screem and I doubt I could make myself watch it again today. (2)

I didn’t want to watch the 2004 miniseries again—once was enough for that turkey. Fortunately, I had my review in Cemetery Dance magazine to refer to while writing that article, so I didn’t have to. The production quality was higher, granted, and both Donald Sutherland and James Cromwell were excellent, as usual, but who would have believed that David Soul would be a better Ben than gloomy, angst-ridden, whiney Rob Lowe?

I ended the Screem article by saying this, “With the spate of remakes currently in development, if there’s one King novel that deserves a big-screen treatment that honors the source material, it’s ‘Salem’s Lot. No one has gotten it quite right yet.”

Flash forward nearly a decade, to 2019, and Entertainment Weekly announces that James Wan is going to produce a feature film adaptation of ‘Salem’s Lot from a script by Gary Dauberman, who would also end up directing. By late summer 2021, news emerged that filming was taking place in Ipswich and Princeton, MA, with Lewis Pullman as the lead. A release date was announced: September 9, 2022. Then the date was pushed to April 21, 2023 after test screenings, reshoots and additional photography.

In August 2022, ‘Salem’s Lot was pulled from Warner Bros.’ release calendar entirely. A new date would be announced “later.” Many of us worried the film would suffer the same fate as some other movies that vanished around the same time—permanently canceled for a tax write-off.

Last year, Stephen King started tweeting about the adaptation, saying it was “muscular and involving. It has the feel of ‘Old Hollywood,’ when a film was given a chance to draw a breath before getting to business. When attention spans were longer, in other words.” And, later, “It feels like a horror movie version of slow-burn movies like The Great Escape. It builds very well. There are diversions from the book I don’t agree with, but on the whole, faithful.” And, later still, “Not sure why WB is holding it back; not like it’s embarrassing, or anything.”

Apparently, King’s vocal support for the adaptation played a big part in getting the movie released, although it skipped the theaters (except in the UK, apparently) and is finally going to be available on Max on October 3. So, was it worth the wait? Let’s get into it.

One question that probably arose when adapting this novel is: how could it be set in the modern era of cell phones and social media? There were cell phones in the 2004 version, but that complicated things, leading to scenes where characters in danger conveniently have no service. Dauberman wisely decided to maintain the novel’s 1970s setting (Ben Mears arrives in the Lot on the first day of fall, September 23, 1975), which gives the film a vintage look and feel while avoiding the possibility that someone could tweet pictures of vampires (would a vampire show up on a cell phone camera?) or post a Tik-Tok of someone getting staked through the heart.

As King mentioned, Dauberman takes some liberties with the plot, including one that is definitely ex-canon. If you’re going to re-adapt a well-known work (the novel’s been around for nearly 50 years, after all, and the story is pretty well known thanks to the earlier miniseries versions), then how else do you surprise the audience? And while certain memorable scenes are preserved much as they were written and previously depicted, there are definitely surprises and shocks. And plenty of swearing—something that wasn’t possible in the earlier adaptations.

Visually, the film looks very good, especially in some of the nighttime shots. The silhouetted scene of the Glicks walking through the woods is particularly striking (see above). Dauberman does some clever things with small mirrors, revealing characters reflected in them. There were a few match cuts that I found a little too cute—Larry Crockett’s business card logo dissolving into a top down view of the staircase in Eva Miller’s boarding house, for example, the movie projector light morphing into the moon, or a bible turning into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Where the novel was coy about what was happening in the small town of Jerusalem’s Lot (established in 1710, population 1282…for now), the opening credits reveal documentation for a crate being shipped from London, England to this small Maine town, a path represented as a trail of blood, accompanied by an article about a mysterious disappearance aboard the ship. I’d love to have a copy of the map of ‘Salem’s Lot they use in the credits! Without the blood, maybe.

The opening scene involves two men being hired to pick up Barlow’s coffin at the behest of the dapper and quirky Straker (played by Pilou Asbæk, who I know from the Danish series Borgen and Forbrydelsen (The Killing)). He’s not given as much to work with as Mason or Sutherland, so his character feels a little underdeveloped—something that’s generally true of all of the characters. I found it rather amusing that Barlow and Straker’s antiques shop is almost directly across the street from Father Callahan’s church. For a moment I thought I saw a cross reflected in the shop window, but that might have been my imagination.

Before long, we meet Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman), a young author whose sophomore novel has received a critical drubbing after his first book was heralded. One of the first people he meets in town, Susan Norton (Makenzie Leigh), just happens to be reading Air Dance while working at the local real estate office. She finds Mears familiar but fails to make the connection with the author photo on her book (even though Ben adopts the same pose in front of her!) until after she says she’s trying to decide if she’s going to finish the book or put it down. Ouch! Samantha Mathis was great in the role in 2004 and made a very fetching vampiress, but Leigh gets to do a lot more in this version. Really physical stuff.

You all know the plot, and I don’t want to spoil the surprises, so let’s talk about the cast. Pullman is, hands down, the best Ben Mears we’ve seen. He has a diffident air about him and, although he was cast in part because Dauberman believed he looks like someone who could change a tire, he also looks like someone who has no idea what to do once he finds out what’s going on and he’s just making it up as he goes along. He’s not an action hero (3), he’s a regular guy fighting for survival. The kind of guy who’d suggest calling the police to let them take over. He doesn’t instinctively know how to make a crucifix out of a pair of tongue depressors, and the idea of putting a stake into someone’s heart takes some getting used to.

Leigh’s Susan is living at home with her overprotective mother (her father is dead in this version) who doesn’t want her to associate with Ben because he might take her away from town with him. Susan, who is biding her time until she gets her real estate license so she can move back to Boston, ignores her mother (who turns out to be quite handy with a double-barrel shotgun) and thus becomes part of the Crew of Light determined to hunt down and destroy Barlow.

Bill Camp is an excellent Matt Burke (he was my favorite character for much of the early part of the film), and there’s a clever set of parallel scenes in which Mark (4) Petrie (Jordan Preston Carter) learns everything he can about vampire lore from his comic books while Burke conducts more academic research. Mark is a resourceful, ingenious and wise young man, a newcomer to town who knows what he needs to do when confronted by bullies, and Carter’s performance is strong and credible. He’s arguably the hero of the story.

We first meet Father Callahan (John Benjamin Hickey) in the drunk tank. Compared to the previous two adaptations, Callahan’s role is beefed up but still somewhat thin. William Sadler (in his fourth appearance in a King adaptation) is the grizzled Constable Parkins Gillespie, who is hankering for retirement after 30 years and knows when it’s time to get out of Dodge. Alfre Woodard as Dr. Cody is the skeptic who gets all the movie’s best zinger lines as she is forced to confront what’s happening in town.

What should I say about Kurt Barlow? He’s brought to life, so to speak, by Alexander Ward, who has made a career out of playing monsters. His Barlow is more eloquent than the version played by Reggie Nalder in 1979 but less dapper than Rutger Hauer’s portrayal in 2004. We see him in the briefest of glimpses at first and then more clearly as the story unfolds. He is, in fact, really scary, and a force to be reckoned with. You get the sense that he’s been around a long time and knows how to survive—unlike some earlier depictions where his defeat seems to be a foregone conclusion once the Crew of Light pursues him.

Even though successful films have been made of much longer novels, this version feels overly compact and abbreviated. In addition to the skimpy characterization, what is missing? Well, Marsten House dominates the town and has clearly got a terrible past…but that past is glossed over and the scary house is underutilized. Everyone in town knows it’s creepy and it’s been standing empty since Hubie Marsten killed his wife. According to a report from a test screening, an earlier cut of the movie opened with a flashback that depicts Ben’s childhood in the town, which one viewer described as “crazy intense.” In this cut, though, Ben doesn’t have an explicit history with the house other than a passing reference to people experiencing something so terrible they can’t remember it for some time. This makes Ben’s reason for returning to ‘Salem’s Lot less meaningful.

So, is this the definitive ‘Salem’s Lot adaptation? No, it’s more like the CliffsNotes version of the novel. I think there’s still room for someone to truly adapt the book, and maybe that probably means a limited series that plumbs the book’s depths. Will we ever get that? Hard to say.

And yet, there are some nice additions in this version, including an action-packed finale that is completely different from the novel. One of Dauberman’s cleverest modifications to vampire lore is the fact that, although the creatures can’t withstand direct sunlight, they are fine in the shadows, which means they can wreak havoc during the daytime as well as at night, under the right conditions. Crawling shadows (5) and dark indoor venues create all kinds of tension in this version.

The bit about people being smuggled into the drive-in by hiding them in the trunk is a nice touch, and whoever came up with the idea of using Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown” both in the film and the trailer deserves a raise. The song is absolutely perfect for ‘Salem’s Lot. The rest of the music (including “Clap for the Wolfman” and “Hurdy Gurdy Man”) adds to the 1970s vibe. (6)

Easter eggs are at a minimum outside of a shiny red car with white piping in the local garage that made me think of Christine. The movie’s logo is strongly reminiscent of the cover of the Doubleday first edition, with the town shown inside the letter “O”.

In conclusion, if I were ever inclined to watch a ‘Salem’s Lot adaptation again, it would be this one. In fact, I’ve already watched it twice. It might have been fun to see it on the big screen, especially the finale. It’s never going to be remembered as one of the best King adaptations—there’s simply too much story crammed into two hours, too little focus on character and too many things omitted—but with a bowl of popcorn and your favorite beverage, it’s definitely something enjoyable to watch with your feet up on the coffee table.

And the lights on. You definitely don’t want to be sitting in the shadows.

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1) Although I wrote about the horrid 1987 film A Return to ‘Salem’s Lot for the article, I don’t consider it an adaptation.

2) Fun fact: One of the numerous people who were enlisted to write the screenplay when it was originally planned for theatrical release was Robert Bloch, who also penned a script for the pilot of a proposed weekly TV spinoff series that recounted the further adventures of Ben Mears and Mark Petrie. A copy of that pilot script, titled “The Homecoming,” was sold on eBay last week for over $850.

3)  Although he does pull off one Starsky and Hutch-esque slide across a car trunk.

4) How did I never before notice that this story has major characters named Mark, Matt and Mike?!

5) Bonus points if you get that reference!

6) The closing credits advertise a soundtrack album, but I haven’t been able to confirm that it exists.