Tobe Hooper’s TV movie adaptation of Salem’s Lot. Airing in November of 1979, I would have been all of seven years old at the time, just the perfect age for dark things to latch onto your subconscious and never let go.
The Lost Boys, and was even parodied in a Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” episode. But it begs the question: is it merely a fluke standout moment in an otherwise unmemorable '70s TV movie?
Absolutely not. Salem’s Lot holds up just fine. As a matter of fact, it holds up better than most of Tobe Hooper’s post-Texas Chainsaw theatrical releases, Poltergeist aside. Despite making a few changes from page to screen, most significantly by changing the vampire Barlow from a human to a blue-skinned, Nosferatu-like monster, Hooper remained true to Stephen King’s vision of a town already dying on the vine that’s quickly and brutally put out of its misery by malevolent outside forces. He could have very easily made it so defeating Barlow saves the lives of everyone he’s already attacked, which would have been keeping in '70s TV horror’s tendency to pull its punches at the last minute. Instead, it ends as the novel ends: with the heroes Ben Mears and Mark Petrie victorious over evil, but at the cost of everyone they love.
Though Ralphie Glick just chilling outside his brother’s bedroom window is certainly the most memorable scene in the movie, it’s not necessarily the scariest. That would be in the second half of the miniseries, when groundskeeper Mike Ryerson (played by the late, great character actor Geoffrey Lewis) shows up in the house of kindly senior citizen schoolteacher Matt Burke (Lew Ayres). The scene is a masterwork in using mostly silence to chilling effect – Mike’s voice never raises above a grotesque, otherworldly hiss – not to mention some sort of damn clever practical effect that makes it look like his eyes are glowing.
It’s also beat for beat and note for note exactly as it plays out in the book, to the point where you wonder if Tobe Hooper had a copy of it open on his lap while on set. Compare this to the 2004 remake, which takes some considerable liberties with the plot, adding unnecessary drama involving child molestation, blackmail, and a car chase with an evil school bus driver. It seems to suggest that the people of Salem’s Lot are bad, and thus easy pickings for Barlow and Straker, his henchman. Tobe Hooper, on the other hand, with a strange sort of empathy not often seen in horror, got the idea. Really, it’s the town, the very soil of Salem’s Lot itself, that’s bad, and it’s the people who suffer for it. Death is coming whether they deserve it or not.
Though Ralphie Glick just chilling outside his brother’s bedroom window is certainly the most memorable scene in the movie, it’s not necessarily the scariest. That would be in the second half of the miniseries, when groundskeeper Mike Ryerson (played by the late, great character actor Geoffrey Lewis) shows up in the house of kindly senior citizen schoolteacher Matt Burke (Lew Ayres). The scene is a masterwork in using mostly silence to chilling effect – Mike’s voice never raises above a grotesque, otherworldly hiss – not to mention some sort of damn clever practical effect that makes it look like his eyes are glowing.
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