I watched both the 1979 and 2024 SALEM'S LOT adaptations back-to-back recently, and the two are a study in polar opposites when it comes to approach and presentation. (I still have yet to see the version with Rutger Hauer as the master vampire; I have not heard good things.)
The source novel, Stephen King's second, tells the tale of a small town in Maine (where else?) slowly and insidiously being taken over by a powerful vampire. It's long and intricately involved, with several sub-plots, so it would benefit from being adapted in a format of more than two hours. To adequately get across its particulars and weave the needed atmosphere, at least four hours would be required, minimum, as the story is a carefully orchestrated slow burn, but the 1979 version was hampered by being made for television 45 years ago and broadcast on CBS, which meant the watchful eye of network censorship, plus the need to be long but not too long to be tolerable for the attention span of the average American viewer, and audience that for the most part tends not to read. It was directed by Tobe Hooper, whose The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the favorite horror film of many, myself included, so it was hoped that he could again weave the dread magic that he conjured with that 1974 masterpiece. The TV adaptation is okay for what it is, but it’s slow-moving to the point of boredom, unless something scary is happening, and those moments are rare. But when the scary moments hit, they hit hard. I saw that version in 1979 during first airing, when I was fourteen, and its shocking moments stuck with me to this days. Likewise for my classmates, many of whom have not seen it since, and therefore hold on to the illusion that it was “the scariest film they’d ever seen.” Which only tells me that they don’t watch much horror. (It also sticks in my memory because the second half aired on the night of a local election, and it was interrupted during the final forty minutes for a showing of the ongoing election results. When the movie finally resumed, is did not start up from where it left off. Instead, the film had been allowed to proceed unseen during the election results, and when it resumed the vampire's house was on fire and maybe three minutes remained to the film. Audiences were pissed, and the local CBS channel airing it was inundated with calls from irate watchers. I had to go and buy the book to find out what the hell happened.)
As for the 2024 version, its 2-hour running time wisely eliminates all of the sub-plots, as they were more about the novel’s establishing that Salem’s Lot was a town already festering with all-too-human darkness well before the vampire lord moved in, and while that works for a novel, it unnecessarily bogs down a movie format. The 2024 version moves at a brisk pace, perhaps too brisk, because no time is taken to flesh out any of the characters That said, and speaking as someone who’s read the novel, a novel and a movie are completely different animals, so this version was made for the horror audience of the 2020’s, an undemanding lot if ever there was one.
The 2024 take on the story sets up the threat to the town, a handful of characters realize what’s going on, and they deal with the vampire infestation as best they can. The film depicts the takeover occurring very rapidly, whereas it was a slow burn in the novel and the 1979 version, so it’s more of a thrill ride than a meaty narrative. It’s fun, but kind of hollow. Also, the final act, when the heroes confront the vampire lord once and for all, ditches the ending of previous tellings and brings the audience something more spectacular and crowd-pleasing. The ending was actually quite clever and I did enjoy it for what it was, but part of the thrill of the best vampire stories is the heroes confronting the monster in its atmospheric lair, a place marked by all manner of baleful evil, against which they have but the slimmest hope.
And bear in mind that by the climax of the story, the town of Salem’s Lot is completely overrun by vampires, to the point where at night vampires are seen brazenly hanging out on rooftops, so it’s quite a harrowing task for the heroes to find and destroy all of them during daytime hours. I get that depicting that would have taken up a lot of screen time and possibly gotten tedious, so what they came up with worked quite well. (Though I take umbrage at an 11-year-old suddenly being shown as able to drive a car, and to drive with considerable practiced precision, which was at no point established at any time prior. It just happens from out of nowhere.)
Which is a long-winded way of saying that both iterations are worth watching, but their approaches and flavors are diametrically opposed Having absorbed both back-to-back less than 24 hours ago, I find the original to be of historical value and possessed of some of the eeriest moments seen on American television up to that point (and perhaps even still, over four decades later). But its neutering by network censorship constraints, glacial pacing, the look and feel of a cheap made-for-TV movie of the week from its era, populated with familiar faces from assorted TV series of the day (which took me right out of the narrative, even back in '79) render it hopelessly quite dated and, if I'm being honest, quite boring when the scary stuff isn't going down. The 2024 version, on the other hand, is just a mindlessly fun vampire shocker that operates as little more than a thrill ride, minus the visceral narrative meat and slowly encroaching dread of the novel, but it moves quickly and kept me entertained. I particularly felt seen by its version of Mark Petrie, the 11-year-old fearless monster expert, this time depicted as a bespectacled black kid and played to great effect by Jordan Preston Carter, because this version of the character was basically me at that age.
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Promotional image for the 1979 version.
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