Director: Mikael Salomon
Written by: Peter Salardi (based on the novel by Stephen King)
Starring: Rob Lowe, Donald Sutherland, Andre Braugher, Samantha Mathis, Robert Mammone, Dan Byrd, James Cromwell, Rutger Hauer.
Tagline: “In a small town, evil spreads quickly.”
STORY
Ben Mears is a writer returning to the town of Salem’s Lot, a place where he spend some time as a child before experiencing something horrible in the Marsten house overlooking the town. Around him, the small town carries along with its business as usual, unaware that a newcomer among them brings with him a terrible evil.
OPINION
It was almost inevitable that a revised version of Salem’s Lot would appear at some point this decade. Not only is Hollywood’s current craze for remaking 20 year old movies highly profitable for them, but the original TV movie hasn’t dated all that well. It’s not hard to imagine that kids of today would laugh at the same scenes that left an indelible mark on their parents when they first watched it, or at the very least find its languid pace a little too boring.
What’s sadly also inevitable is that rather than simply adapting the novel again, there are numerous changes made to “update” the miniseries into a “reimagining”. This, in and of itself, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While the core of the original novel is solid, a few minor aspects come across as quaint or at least unrealistic in today’s society. Censorship has also relaxed somewhat, especially on TV, meaning that some aspects of the original story that could never have been shown in the late 70s would be perfectly acceptable now. There’s also the question of the cheesy effects in the original miniseries, as well as that version’s change of Barlow from Dracula-like seductor to bestial creature (and the changes to Straker and Father Callahan’s scenes that resulted).
However, the first half of this miniseries is riddled with pointless changes that do nothing to advance the story, and in many cases hold it back while annoying anyone familiar with the story. This can be seen from the beginning as Ben Mears appears alone and homeless on the streets of Detroit, and attacks and attempts to kill Father Callahan. The rest of the movie is told in flashback as Mears lies dying on a hospital bed, telling his story to an interested but sceptical orderly.
Not only is this wraparound story totally different to the original, it makes little sense. It’s cheesy (why would the orderly sit around listening to what would appear to be the ravings of a dying lunatic), nonsensical (most of the events told in flashback happened when Mears was not there to witness them) and self-contradictory (the early scene makes no sense in light of the revelations at the end).
This theme continues throughout. Gone is the cute meeting between Ben and Susan, replaced with an unspectacular meeting at the diner where she now works. Mark Petrie is now the chid of a single parent family and seems much more antagonistic to those around him. Mears’ past now involved him directly witnessing Hubie Marsten’s suicide as a child. Matt Burke is now a gay black man. And so on…
It’s not all bad. The smaller touches often work the best, such as Petrie’s models now including Cenobites instead of the standard Universal monsters or the subtle way the abuse committed by the young mother against her baby is handled. Donald Sutherland is great as Straker, Dan Byrd is good as Mark Petrie, while Rutger Hauer and Andre Braugher give great performances in slightly underwritten roles that keep them offscreen too long. The Marsten house also appears a much more menacing structure, looming over the town, while 90% of the second half gets things right and manage to stay fairly close to the novel (at least until the stupid character change in Callahan, especially stupid given the character’s tales of the events following Salem’s Lot in the same year’s novel Wolves Of The Calla), the fifth of the Dark Tower series.
However, it’s a fairly mediocre work overall. The effects are the predictable mix of CGI and swooping camera shots. No single scene really has that much of a memorable impact. Fans of the source material will be too distracted to get involved in the story, while the truncated set pieces won’t engage newcomers. The melodramatic tone of much of the soap opera-ish character stories are offset by Rob Lowe’s narration, which sounds like he’s dangerously close to falling asleep while reading it. It’s not a particularly bad rental if you’re not familiar with the source material or previous versions, but Stephen King fans familiar with the novel will have a hard time.
..and that’s it for the small town of Salem’s Lot. Apart from a couple of short stories (Jerusalem’s Lot and One For The Road) from the Night Shift collection of short stories (which act as a prequel and sequel respectively) and a Salem’s Lot (Classic BBC Radio Horror), no other versions of this story have yet been made. But, I’m sure there will be…
Rating: 
TRAILER
AVAILABILITY
Salem’s Lot is available on DVD.