Top 25 Greatest Halloween Films: #20 — 'Salem's Lot' (1979)

#20: Salem’s Lot (1979)

Whatever you do, avoid at all costs the shortened versions that remove anywhere from a half hour to a full hour from the original 180-minute television miniseries. But if you have three hours to kill and are in the mood to settle into an extremely well-paced vampire/haunted house tale, the uncut adaptation of Stephen King’s second novel (his most addictive page-turner after “The Stand”) unfolds beautifully over the course of a brisk October evening. And because it’s a television film, you can invite the whole family in for Tobe Hooper’s impressively directed story of a small town dealing with an unwelcome vampire infestation.

David Soul plays Ben Mears, a widowed novelist drawn back to his childhood home to write about the Marsten place, the local haunted house with a brand new resident – Richard Straker (an unforgettable James Mason) – a cultivated antiques dealer who wields charm as a weapon as he sets up shop for his employer, Mr. Barlow, who’s out on a buying tour in Europe and due to return any day now.

Or so we’re told.

Mears settles into Eva Miller’s (Marie Windsor) rooming house, gets re-acquainted with his former teacher and mentor Jason Burke (Lew Ayres), and fires up a romance with local girl Susan Norton (Bonnie Bedelia). In the center of it all, high on a hill overlooking everything is Marsten House, which Mears sees as some kind of beacon of evil that corrosively corrupts the idyllic charm of his old home town. And right he is. Soon children start to disappear and adults suffer untimely deaths. The problem is, they don’t stay dead very long.

Like he did with “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (a film that received an R-rating for its disturbing intensity, not violence) Hooper doesn’t need onscreen violence to scare us half to death. The overall story is so well structured and the individual scenes so well staged with tension and atmosphere that the mere sight of a vampire child eerily floating behind a bedroom window and hypnotically scratching on the glass and asking to be let in, is enough to keep you up all night. There are at least a half dozen scenes like this, moments that catch you off guard with their intensity and make you want to hug yourself and chant, “It’s only a TV movie. It’s only a TV movie.”

The Mighty Geoffrey Lewis

But “Salem’s Lot” never feels like a television movie. The production values are uniformly excellent; Hooper moves his camera as though he’s shooting for the big screen (the shorter versions were eventually released theatrically), the make-up effects still hold up, and what a cast…

Besides those already mentioned, there’s also Elisha Cook, Jr., Fred Willard, George Dzundza, Geoffrey Lewis, Ed Flanders, and Kenneth McMillan – a treasure trove of familiar character actors who always deliver. But in the center of it all is the remarkable James Mason who serves up a delicious mix of the monster that is his Master-protecting Renfield character and the refined menace of his scene-stealing turn in “North by Northwest.” His every scene pops thanks mainly to very well-written dialogue that the actor loads with all kinds of disturbing subtext.

Furthermore, there’s an extra added pleasure for old movie fanatics. Though they’re not given enough to do, seeing Elisha Cook Jr. and Marie Windsor re-teamed as a couple 23 years after Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing” is just another one of those small pleasures that makes following the careers of the Golden Age greats such a treat.

Also worth noting is how the miniseries chooses to portray its vampires. Unlike today’s pretty boy bloodsuckers, there’s nothing attractive or alluring about the immortal undead in “Salem’s Lot.” These are horrific monsters, especially Barlow who looked nothing like Hooper’s nod to “Nosferatu” in King’s original novel. The themes fit the visual portrayal, as well. This is an old-fashioned, uncomplicated story of good versus evil. No one wrings their hands over the glamorous appeal of immortality in “Salem’s Lot.” You either find your faith in God or meet an unspeakable fate.