Salem's Lot miniseries

After reading Salem's Lot I was anxious to watch the mini-series.  My expectations were pretty low.  However, I was pleasantly surprised that the mini-series is very faithful  to the King novel.

Some characters have been spliced together -- awkwardly!  A teenage boy is now a grown real-estate agent.  And oh my. . . the 70's were not good to our hair! One lady has bright orange poofy hair.  Terrible, just terrible.  Certainly does not portray small town America -- I hope!  The town of Salem's Lot is beautiful in the movie.  My biggest objection runs along the lines of something Stephen King said as well, Barlow the vampire doesn't get any lines!  He's just a growling, hissing monster.  The talking is left to his assistant.

The movie has some good effects and truly scary scenes.  For television as it was  at the time, I think this was pretty good.

The scenes in Mark's bedroom are flat  out funny.  First of all, no kid has a bedroom that  big -- unless it's  on a SOUND STAGE!  Also, apparently this kid doesn't own clothes.  He  wears clothes, but his bedroom doesn't have a single jacket tossed over a chair, no shirts on the bed, no shoes on the floor.

But. . . here's the best  part  about Mark's room: The view from the window.  In the picture above, you can see a vampire (a child vamp!) rising to  the window.  But even when there is no vampire, a misty fog drifts by the window.  Where do these people live -- spooksville?

CINEFANTASTIQUE

Cinefantastique (Volume 9, number 2 -- 1979) ran several articles when the movie came out that were great.  Also reviewed were: The Amityville Horror, The Muppet Movie and The Black Hole.

Here are some of my favorite selections:

Stephen King:

"CBS  worried about a few things in the screenplay.   They worried about using a kid as young as Mark Petrie is in the book, because you're not supposed to put a kid that young in mortal jeopardy -- although they do it just about every day in the soap  operas.  Some things were left out because of time,some because  it's television.  My favorite scene in the book is with Sandy McDougall, the young mother, where she attempts to feed her dead baby, and keeps spooning the food into  his mouth.   That  won't be on TV, obviously."

Tobe Hooper directed the film.   He is most famous for Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  The article says, "It is important to note that the selection of Hooper did not signify an attempt to mimic the intensity of Texas Chainsaw in a television show, which would have been frankly impossible."

The minisieres was budgeted at $4 million, which was "norm for prestigeminiseries. . ." (of that time).

The California town of Ferndale served as Salem's Lot for the film.  Got that, right?  A California town portrayed a small Maine town.  HERE is a cool website about Ferndale.

The only problem was, there was no house that could be used as a double for the Marsten House.  The movie team found a cottage on a hillside overlooking Ferndale and the Salt River Valley and built a full scale mock up of the Marsten House around the existing cottage!  The family living in the cottage was paid $20,000 and guaranteed all of the lumber from Marsten House once shooting was completed.

Starsky and Hutch  star David Soul was chosen to play Ben.King said, "I think the castingof David Soul is fine.  I have no problem with that at all."

David Soul:

"I cleaned  up my speech pattern a little  bit.  I sound like a writer, a man at home with words.  Starsky and Hutch was always dip-dip-dip, a street jargon and repartee, sort of half-finished sentences.  This time I stuck with  he lines and discipline of a well-written script.  There's also a mysterious quality to Ben Mears, and I tried to work with hat.  I didn't socialize a lot.  It was a rough part, and in a sense I tried to let all of the neuroses that were building up in David Soul  because of the pressure work for the character."

And. . . "Yes, there are a lot of inconsistencies, built into the script because the producers felt  that since it's television, there needs to be this reiteration of the fears on Ben Mears' part -- so the audience is constantly aware.  That for me is not giving the picture everything it could have.  There are only so many times Ben Mears can say, 'Did you ever have the feeling something is inherently evil?', you know? There are a million other ways to say that same thing.  I much prefer the scenes such as the entrance of Straker when his cane, which comes far  closer  to creating true terror, than dialogue can."