Salem's Lot, on CBS
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Caution: spoilers.
This is based on the 1975 novel by Stephen King, which I haven't read. The miniseries first aired in 1979, when I was just four years old, so I didn't see it at the time. I watched it on Blu-ray in 2024. I was hoping, but not really expecting, that there might be some clear indication of when part one ends and part two starts, but there's not. So I just watched roughly half of it one night and the rest the next night, and I won't be able to tell you what happened in each part, just what happened in the miniseries as a whole.
It begins with a brief scene set in Guatemala, the details of which I won't reveal. But then the story shifts to two years earlier, in the town of Salem's Lot, Maine. A writer named Ben Mears returns to the town, which he'd moved away from as a young boy. He's interested in a building called the Marsten House, which has recently been bought by a man named Richard Straker, who is opening an antique shop in town. Straker has a business partner named Kurt Barlow, who is supposed to come to town sometime soon, but it's unclear exactly when. Anyway, Ben starts dating an art teacher named Susan Norton (Bonnie Bedelia), who has an on-and-off boyfriend named Ned Tebbets. Ben also reconnects with his former teacher, Jason Burke, with whom he talks about the Marsten House, which Ben believes is evil. There's also a realtor named Larry Crockett (Fred Willard), who is having an affair with his secretary, Bonnie Sawyer, which her husband Cully eventually finds out about. And there's a group of school kids who are rehearsing a play about the history of Salem's Lot. One of the boys, Ralphie Glick, is kidnapped by Straker, and later shows up at his brother Danny's window, as a vampire. (The scene reminded me of something from the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I wondered if the scene in that movie had been inspired by this miniseries.) Anyway, Danny is apparently killed by Ralphie, but after his funeral he turns into a vampire, himself. I'm getting some things out of order, I'm afraid. But then, so does Wikipedia. Anyway, there's a large crate delivered to the Marsten House, which is obviously important, but as of the time I stopped watching on the first night, what was in it hadn't been revealed. (I have a suspicion, though.)
That's pretty much all I saw on my first night of watching the Blu-ray, though I have left out a few characters, so far. I want to say that for most of the first part, there are no vampires, and nothing particularly creepy happens... but nevertheless, there's often ominous music that's clearly trying to set the tone for the miniseries. Personally, I just found it out of place. I guess it's not that big a deal, but I kind of didn't like having ominous music playing when nothing inherently ominous was happening. I feel like it kind of made sense for the story to take its time introducing us to the various characters and everything, while slowly building up to the actual horror portion of the miniseries. But I feel like the eventual shift would have been more effective if the story wasn't pretending to already be scary from the beginning.
Okay, on to what I watched the next night. Um... it seems a lot of people in Salem's Lot are being turned into vampires. Ben and Jason eventually figure that out, and try to convince Susan's father, Dr. Bill Norton. And um... Danny Glick had a friend named Mark Petrie, who is obsessed with like monster movies and magic tricks. At one point the head vampire kills his parents, so Mark wants to kill him. And as I suspected, Barlow is the head vampire, who looks a lot more monstrous than the people who had been turned into vampires. (And they weren't too good-looking anymore, themselves.) How Ben and the others figured out that Barlow was the head vampire is beyond me, I mean I didn't pick up on the miniseries actually explaining that. I suppose it's fair, because it should have been obvious to anyone watching the story, so why not to those living it? I guess. Anyway, Ben and Bill plan to kill Barlow while he's sleeping, during the day. And they tell Susan to leave town, but instead she goes to the Marsten House by herself, and sees Mark sneaking in, so she follows him. Because of course she does. I don't want to say what happens to either her or Mark, but a bit later Ben and Bill show up. And... I feel like I've said enough. Except that after the climax, the story flashes forward two years, to repeat the opening scene in Guatemala, and show us what the two people we saw there are doing. Which I don't want to spoil.
There are some characters I still haven't mentioned, and I feel a bit bad about that, but not bad enough to bother mentioning them now. And I'm afraid I didn't care too much for the miniseries. There are too many leaps of logic that make little or no sense, and actions that make no sense, and dialogue that isn't particularly good. There are a few decent enough scares, I guess, but overall I didn't find the story super scary. I really wanted to like this miniseries, so I'm disappointed, but at least I didn't really dislike it. I could almost say I kind of liked it, but not quite. Still, I'm glad to have finally seen it.
There was a theatrical sequel called "A Return to Salem's Lot" in 1987, and a remake miniseries in 2004, and a remake movie on Max in 2024.