Salem's Lot (1979)

Can you believe this a made for TV movie?! This movie is awesome - extremely scary vampires in this one. These vampires are not your modern day vamps - this movie is a good example of how mean and vile vampires are - just like the old folklore and legends about them. Within this film contains the way vampires should be on film - evil. The vampires in Salem's Lot will remind you of the old 1922 film Nosferatu - yes they are that scary.And the story of Salem's Lot is so damned good too! If you like vampire stories, along with mystery and thriller films and a lot of horror then Salem's Lot is a movie you will not want to miss.Yes this movie is a must see for all Vampire fans - and it's hard to believe that this movie was made for television but it was. I was 7 years old when it aired on TV - I was completely terrified then and the movie still creeps me out today.9.5/10

One of my favorite adaptations of any Stephen King work. Not because it religiously follows the book, that's for sure. In many ways this mini-series improves upon it. Tobe Hooper creates a wonderfully spooky old-school atmosphere. There are several memorably creepy set-pieces, particularly those involving the vampire kid and, of course, every scene with the Nosferatu-like Barlow. The makeup for Barlow is very effective. CGI can't touch this. The cast and direction are great. Love the location shooting and '70s TV look. I'll admit it's not perfect. The Soul/Bedelia romance feels contrived and rushed. The subplot about the cheating wife adds nothing to the overall story. But even though it feels a little padded in places, catch the original full-length mini-series, not the shortened version. It's one of the best made-for-TV movies ever made and possibly the best vampire movie to come out of the '70s.

This was an excellent miniseries. I use to own the full length miniseries on VHS as a kid. Idk why so many fans had a problem with making Barlow look more like Nosferatu? Honestly, I preferred this version over the 2004 one and the novel written by Stephen King himself. It just makes more sense. Barlow's appearance in the novel and in the 2004 version wasn't scary. I don't find a vampire with a more human like appearance like Dracula to be frightening. David Soul portrayed a better Ben Mears than Rob Lowe. I also liked the actor who played Mark. I found this version satisfying. Sure, it's not exactly like the novel. But then again it's Hollywood.

This movie was made before Stephen King was, really, Stephen King. By that, I mean that the legend had not yet become the horror icon that he is today. He was really still a young, aspiring horror writer gathering some reputation for himself. As has been documented previously, the rights to this novel were purchased, initially, with a feature film in mind. However, the romantic version of Dracula and remake of NOSFERATU were both hitting screens around the same time, so the producers decided to avoid the competition and go for something totally different.There is probably a large segment of the horror fan community that is too young to remember the heyday of the television movie. Back in the 70s and early 80s, network TV would sink large budgets into creating original films, often spread out over several nights. These were, typically, adaptations of popular novels featuring fairly well- known, if b-list, actors. Today, networks would rather fill the time slots with much cheaper reality TV, but I digress.I have been wanting to see this for some time now, as it was always spoken about reverentially since I was a kid in the 80s. Being sometimes difficult to find on DVD (as a rental), it took me some years to finally manage to see this movie. I would say that it is a fairly effective chiller that is held back quite a bit by the trappings of the television movie genre in which it was created.The movie is far too long, to begin with. I recognize that it was intended to be a "2-night event", but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't have been better trimmed to a standard length movie. This, also, allows the movie to capture more of the novel, but I'm not a viewer who cares about this, at all. I am an avid fan of fiction, but I've never been the kind of fan who cries out when a movie strays from the book. I see them as two completely separate entities and do not feel that the movie version has any obligation to stick to the novel so closely. Large segments of this movie could have been trimmed down to make for a tighter film.It's also full of the sort of overacted melodrama that was an integral part of the TV movies, of these times, though our two main heroes, David Soul and Lance Kerwin, come off completely opposite. I found both of them to be emotionless automatons and I never really developed an empathy for either of their characters.The entire first half of this movie is really slow and takes awhile to build some steam. More off-putting, when the scares do start to come, they are often presented in really annoying freeze-frame style. A hand reaches out, the image freezes, we get some music akin to "dun dun dun" and cut to commercial. I found this eliminated any tension or mood that was trying to be created. I enjoy several of Tobe Hooper's movies, but found this to be missing a lot of his trademark stylings. It too often comes across as generic.The movie does pick up very well in the second half. The finale in the Marsden house is actually fairly tense. I really enjoyed the creature makeup on the vampire. I thought it was an excellent decision to deviate from the look of King's novel and go for the Nosferatu style instead, though the odd blue tone could have been better conceived.The most famous scene is the young Glick boy coming to visit his brother outside the window, a scene mimicked in THE LOST BOYS. Though somewhat dated, I found it to still carry quite a bit of atmosphere. Another scene I noticed was later ripped off was when the human medium, Straker, meets his demise. The scene was lifted almost shot for shot in FRIGHT NIGHT. Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable movie if taken for what it is, a late 70s TV movie light on gore and scares. I would like to see the trimmed down European cinema release as I feel that I would probably enjoy it more than this somewhat bloated exercise in TV horror.