Television Miniseries Examination: Salem's Lot (1979) (Unedited version!)

The ultimate in terror might actually be true this time!

Well, I'm back again for another punishing October Nights review series. And this October I get to start with a movie I've already (kind of) reviewed! Salem's Lot was a movie I reviewed about four years ago now. And I remember saying in that review how I thought I had seen the movie before. Well, I had, but it was the full version of the film, not the edited down confusing jumble that I saw for that review. I say that in retrospect after I saw this full version finally. I have definitely seen all of the content in it before, but probably years before I knew what reviewing for the internet even was.

While this movie is substantially longer than the edited theatrical version, it has weirdly dissimilar content. It feels like the two versions are never equal. With this version explaining and introducing much more of the story of 'Salem's Lot and its townsfolk, but also not having scenes that are in the theatrical version. I wish I could find a list of the differences between the version. While I have the unedited version now, the edited version I reviewed before has been misplaced somewhere. So, in going off memory alone, I know there are substantial differences, and I also know that I prefer the unedited version so much more, even if there are extra scenes for some reason in the theatrical version. I wish all the scenes could be added together to make one full and complete Salem's Lot (1979), but that's nothing more than a hope and a dream.

At least I finally learn the fate of Larry Crockett, four years after I asked the question of his fate. He was turned into a vampire or something when he was somehow left in a (his?) car after another car drove him and the car he was found in to the lake where Susan and Ben were canoodling. And then he was a vampire after that. So, I asked and this version told me what happened, so I guess I received what I needed in the form of some sort of conclusion.

This movie in general shows a great deal more about the town. Ben and Mark are concentrated on much less as a whole. The town really seems to be the focus here, and I will admit that makes the entire story and movie in general much stronger. The concentration on Ben and Mark only heightens their inability to completely carry the story on their own. They are mostly bland characters thrust into prominent roles by fate rather than by winning personalities. Putting them at the forefront just made the edited version unlikable. Putting them as just another character in town really adds to the tension and atmosphere of the story, and makes it seem like the town's death story rather than the Ben Mears and Mark Petrie mediocre character hour.

The movie as a whole looks much better than the edited version I saw. It has a great deal better pacing and atmosphere, and those are things that shouldn't be compromised in a horror story. This version actually made me turn around my feelings on this movie. I actually think I like it. More than that I think it's the absolutely superior movie of the adaptations of 'Salem's Lot. I don't have much else to say except that I enjoyed this movie quite a bit despite the length (almost three hours long!) and some of the acting issues that I mentioned in the first review. Those issues are still there, but with better pacing and more characters those issues are better hidden.

And that's about it. If you want a slow-paced creepy seventies vampire horror movie, this is probably a decent one to check out. I still think it has some of the best vampires and one of the creepiest scenes of vampire horror movies ever. The scene with Burke and the vampire still gets to me, as does the child vampire scratching at the window. both are completely unsettling and incredibly well done. They haven't been matched in any other movie I've seen to date. So, yes, this is the superior version of this movie, and the best adaptation of the source material. I recommend it as a very fun and creepy watch.

This is a wonderful start to October.


Let's hope it lasts.



[Oh, and if you want my exact thoughts on pieces of the movie, just read my other review. I'm not going to reiterate the story, characters, or plot here. I've said it all already. I mostly wanted to talk about the differences of quality in versions.]

Movie Appraisal: Alien (1979)

So, I'm back and ready to review! I'm almost sorry to review Alien though. It's a movie I've avoided watching for a very long time. I think it was mostly because I didn't want to be disappointed. I'm such a huge fan of space horror as a genre, and Alien is really the granddaddy of all modern space horror. I mean, Event Horizon, Pandorum, and Sunshine are some of my favorite films of all time. No, they're not just some of my favorite horror films of all time, but some of my favorite movies period... of all time. That's quite the accomplishment, especially when I'm pretty finicky about movies in general. I know how much influence the Alien movies and especially this one have had on this weird and niche subgenre of sci-fi horror.

So, for the first time ever I checked out Alien. I usually am very fond of Ridley Scott. I usually like movies that have this kind of premise. I think you know where I'm going with this. I found Alien to be pretty mediocre. And there were large tracts of the movie that I didn't like at all. The story was pretty good. But the characters felt so weak in response. Okay, let me elaborate. I found the story to be very standard for a movie of this type, certainly derivative of some earlier sci-fi films like Planet of the Vampires and Forbidden Planet, but with a much more serious tone and a horror focus. And that's fine. Honestly, that's a good thing. I like the early sci-fi movies, but I have to admit to loving the more serious efforts of the 1970s and 1980s. The problem with this movie wasn't its derivative story or the quality of that story, rather it's really the lack of a focus on characters. I mean, I felt nothing for any of the characters. None of them had a well-developed story or anything interesting about them. I felt that I couldn't relate to any one of them whether they were male or female. There simply wasn't enough to establish the characters as actual humans. Instead every last one of them felt so generic and boring that their deaths were meaningless to me. The whole movie was basically meaningless for me.

A lot of the issues that I saw in Alien were fixed in other later space horror movies. You look at a movie like Event Horizon and you can clearly see the improvements from this baser movie. At the same time, despite the characters having literally no depth at all, the acting is fairly well put together. I'd put a lot more blame on the script and the pacing than I would on the actors. And the thing is... this is an absolutely all-star cast. Maybe they weren't all-star then, but nowadays you hear the names of Ian Holm, Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt, Tom Skerritt, and Harry Dean Stanton all being in the same movie, you'd definitely be interested in the movie. Hell, Ian Holm in a movie is enough to get me interested in it. So the acting is solid, but I have to say that the performances of Ian Holm, John Hurt, and Sigourney Weaver should have a special mention. Each really tried to bring a life to their respective character. John Hurt, although he has limited screen time because of... well...

...uh... yeah...

...let's say reasons and leave it at that. He really does a great job with the time he is on screen, really making Kane one of the only characters that has any memorable qualities at all. Ian Holm was also quite good, and his characterizations actually made a lot of sense. He also happened to be my favorite character for much of the movie, but that's less about the character of Ash, I suppose, and much more about how much I like Ian Holm. Sigourney Weaver and her Ripley is obviously the famous character, but I honestly can't see much of the character in this movie. Sure, she's tough and survives, but all-in-all she comes across as more of a generic female heroine than the icon she would eventually become. Now, this might be because I'm watching it over thirty years after this movie came out, and it was groundbreaking in its time and just hasn't aged as well as I would have liked. That's fair. And I can't argue that as much or as effectively as I'd like to argue the point. I doubt that there were too many female heroes of Ripley's calibre back in 1979, and it stands as a testament to the movie that it was a huge movie that happened to have a female lead. I respect it for that, but I still have trouble liking it.

The movie was incredibly slow-paced at times, but they were all the wrong times. When the movie should have been slower, to establish characters or the titular alien, it moved quickly and without remorse, and when it should have moved more quickly in action intense scenes or hectic times, I felt it dragged on and on, often focusing on character faces and such for long periods of time while more interesting things should have been focused on. I'm certain it was an artistic decision... or maybe one to remove copious amounts of gore from the movie, but it seemed really awkward throughout. Having an intense moment with a character who is about to die only to have them die off-screen while another character is focused upon became incredibly frustrating. I couldn't enjoy the movie if it literally shielded me from the scarier moments like I was a baby. It felt terrible. I hated that feeling of the movie literally not letting me feel tension or not letting me feel fear... I go into these horror movies wanting to be creeped out, but with this movie I only found myself annoyed at the lack of actual horror. Kane is the only character truly shown to die. The rest are either off-screen or their faces are so focused upon when they die that you have absolutely no idea what's going on. Dallas, played by Tom Skerritt, and Brett, played by Harry Dean Stanton, completely die or are taken or whatever offscreen. Nothing is shown of their fates (yes, there are deleted scenes, but that's not what I mean) and they basically just disappear from the movie without any establishing character moments, without any heroics, without even showing their deaths or really even reacting to them. I found it so badly done that I seriously thought that I had missed a scene or the DVD had skipped or something. The same thing is true for Parker, played by Yaphet Kotto, and Lambert, played by Veronica Cartwright. They kind of get killed by the alien, I guess, but I have no idea because the scene flew by with quick shots of their faces that I had literally no idea they were dead until Ripley saw them and was like, "Oh they're dead." without even checking them to see if they were dead. I guess they must have been very obviously dead, but I couldn't tell.

I guess that all comes down to the script and the editing. And I have to say that the editing was really not my style. It was, in my opinion, really badly done, to the point where I literally could not tell what was going on for large portions of time. That should not happen. I should know what's going on in a pretty simple movie that I already know the premise of. Instead I was more confused than anything else, finding flaws all over the place in the editing of this film that should have been scary and should have been good, but instead came off as fundamentally flawed.

I will say that the set designs were well done though, as were the actual artistic assets done by H. R. Giger. The man can certainly create an alien image that looks creepy on a fundamental level.

One way or another, you look at the alien there and you feel slightly unsettled. I think the designs were incredibly well done for the time, and it was easily the most compelling part of the entire movie... although there were times that I found the alien unintentionally hilarious and kind of awkward looking, but that might just be because I'm a jerk whose really hard to scare.

Anyway, for the most part I was very lukewarm on this movie. It had great designs, good acting, decent direction by Ridley Scott, and an interesting story that should have worked for me, but the editing of the movie, the script, and the lack of characterizations really hurt this movie on the most basic of levels, so much so that I can't even recommend this movie. It wasn't fun for me to watch. Hell, I enjoyed watching Nightflyers and The Dark Side of the Moon a ton more than this FAMOUS POP CULTURE MOVIE. Eh, well, I'm not changing my opinion. The movie didn't suck, but its flaws outweighed any good feelings I could have about it.

Book Evaluation: Ghost Story (1979) by Peter Straub

What? No picture!? This is blasphemy, I say! Blasphemy!

I'm just kidding here. I'm supposed to be talking about Ghost Story, one of the most appropriately titled works there ever was. It is about, you guessed it, a ghost story. Well, technically it is about multiple ghost stories, some absolutely fictitious, and some... well, less so.

The novel revolves around four members of a group called the Chowder Society, who have, for fifty years, been telling ghost stories to one another. The whole tagline of this book should be something like: This is where ghost stories... come true... because that's exactly what happens. There was once a fifth member of their group who died suddenly and unexpectedly at a party to celebrate a visiting actress years ago. It had looked like he had been frightened to death.

Oh, spooky! Now, I jest, of course, but ghost stories tend to not interest me in the slightest. It makes no difference whether I believe in ghosts or not, ghosts do not seem to really have the power to carry an entire novel. Most of the great ghost stories are, in fact, short stories or novellas at most. This is because ghost stories need that vague attitude about them to usually be effective. They need to take place at an indeterminate time and in a place that has old history to it. Well, that's usually what ghost stories are like, but this one is different. This novel is much less a ghost story and much more something else entirely.

Eventually, the Chowder Society seems to be seeing some fairly mysterious stuff and call on a member's nephew, Donald, who has written on the occult, to take a look. Donald is a man who has his own emotion issues, mostly with a woman named Alma Mobley. She was a grad student that he worked with and fell in love with in his time at Berkeley. He became enamored with her and then almost obsessed, all the while she acted like something unreal. She would frequently lie to him, unbeknownst to him, and eventually she left without a trace as he debated doing something drastic. Afterwards he investigated their time together and found all lies, nothing but lies surrounding her... then suddenly, one day his brother, dead in the present part of the novel, becomes engaged to one Alma Mobley. Well, that might have been fine, but soon after David, Donald's brother, was dead, and Alma gone again.

When one of the members of the Chowder Society dies, the rest decide to tell Donald the horrible truth of Eva Galli, the woman that they kind of killed and tried to hide the body of. Well, they attempted to because the body simply wasn't there in their trunk when they went to bury it. A lynx was near the car instead, glaring at them. And they believed that she was Eva Galli, a manitou, or shape-shifter who lives much longer than humans. Making the connections, they also believe that this thing was Alma Mobley as well.

Eventually as others die, they are joined by a man named Peter, and learn of a woman named Florence de Peyser, who seems to have control over the undead people and the manitou herself. Eventually, they track Eva/Alma down and defeat her, but she escapes before they can finish the job. Donald vows to go and find her and leaves soon afterward. He finds a young girl whom he believes to be the next form of Eva. The novel starts off with this and ends with this eerie young girl. Eventually she turns into a wasp and Donald kills her, then makes the promise to go after de Peyser in California.

The story is only part of Ghost Story. The plot, although important, only plays a small role to why this novel is so good. And it is very good, beautiful and brilliant in idea and execution, despite being a ghost story in name only. There are no ghosts here. Supernatural elements, certainly, but no ghosts. Ghosts are spirits of the dead, or even demons if you're being generous. Ghosts are not shape-shifters or creatures that can take the form of people. These are instead old Native American spirits of good and ill.

The idea of the story within a story, the little ghost stories inside of the large narrative are brilliantly handled as well, amazing set pieces to make the novel absolutely memorable. A memorable book does not make a good book, but a good book makes a memorable one. The ending, Eva and Alma, and the atmosphere of the novel stuck with me for so long after reading this novel for the first time years ago. It made me understand what horror could be if executed correctly.

Now, I have to talk about Peter Straub because, in my opinion, he is a terribly underrated novelist. The guy exudes atmosphere from every sentence. He's a better writer than almost any other horror writer I can think about, even Stephen King. The way he writes is brilliant, even in his less interesting novels, because he paces superbly, and every tangent has a reason to it, everything feels real, even when it obviously isn't real. And the atmosphere of his novels is basically the best set pieces to the novels since Lovecraft wrote some of his best works. In mentioning Ghost Story, I have to mention Shadowlands, which is also by him, and in someways is the more superior novel out of the two just because of how intricate the plot actually is.

Peter Straub is such a fantastic writer of horror-fiction and this novel shows it time and time again. Reading it is like going through the old horror novelists in turn... Algernon Blackwood, H. P. Lovecraft, Henry James, and M. R. James... he represents all fo them here, all of the old ghost stories that aren't that frightening to us today because of language, word use, or pure boring imaginations on our parts, are again made horrific here in the modern setting of Peter Straub's world. Here is one of the best ghosts stories of all time, paced  and written like a ghost story around the turn of the last century, but involving no real ghosts at all. In many ways this is the last great ghost story, the one that tops all of the rest... and of course the master of horror that Peter Straub is would be the one to write it.

I recommend this novel with every fiber of my being. It needs to be read. Go, find it, and read it. You won't be disappointed.

Movie Appraisal: Salem's Lot (1979)

So, I have a VHS copy of the 1979 television miniseries movie of Salem's Lot. I look at the box as I'm putting the movie in to watch it. The box tells me that this movie is:

The ultimate in terror!

Well, I'm excited. I've always wanted to see the ultimate in terror. Now, wait... I'm not entirely certain what that's supposed to mean though. "The ultimate in terror"? The "ultimate" what in terror? Ultimate is an adjective, not a noun, it literally makes no sense... I mean, ultimate can mean a lot of things too. Sure, it can mean something as simple as "the best", but more often than not it would mean something as simple as the highest, or the last... which absolutely makes no sense... maybe I'm just reading into it a little too much, but this movie makes me curious. Telling me that this movie is "The ultimate in terror!" is putting my expectations pretty high. If I watch this movie and am not rocking back and forth crying out of pure manly fear sucking my thumb and praying to whatever deity will hold me close to save me from the terrifying movie, then I think this movie wouldn't have lived up to expectations, I'll be disappointed.

So, I'll watch this movie and see what happens...

Well, this is interesting, I think, as I start watching this movie. I’ve seen it before, years and years ago, but years and years ago is not now. I barely remember it. As the competent horror movie score rises from the depths of my television and the nighttime shot of a mansion turns into a daytimes shot of a mansion, the credits role and I see that James Mason and Elisha Cook Jr. are in this production. Wow, I think, that’s pretty awesome. I've always gotten excited to see James Mason in anything... I'm really not sure why...

Anyway, the first thing I notice is the washed out color of the movie. I'm uncertain whether this is the movie itself and how it was filmed (I suspect that's what it is.) or maybe the VHS is old and faded... but I'll be watching this. I find it interesting that yellow in this movie doesn't look yellow, it looks... vaguely white kind of.

Well, the movie rolls, and if I didn't know the story of 'Salem's Lot I'd be very confused. Sure, I see that a lot of scenes from the novel by Stephen King are in here, but most of them make no sense and are very disjointed. The scenes fluctuate rapidly from our hero Ben Mears (played by David Soul) to other random people. I barely have time to figure out their names as the scenes keep changing from one group of people to another.

Mr. Straker (played by James Mason) is a particular oddity. His introductory scene makes absolutely no sense in context with Ben Mears randomly appearing in the dead of night at Mr. Straker's doorstep (at the Marsten House, which is the town of Salem's Lot's haunted house) and then they both kind of fade off. I'm very confused.

As the movie goes by the structure does seem to find a nice flow, but the beginning of the movie seems to have no real pacing at all, and it confuses and worries me. I wonder if an editor actually sat down to look at this mess. I wonder if he noticed how many plot threads are never tied up or how some characters are literally just forgotten about over the course of the movie.

One particularly glaring character that just kind of disappears less than halfway through the movie is Larry Crockett, the real estate agent. He has a role fairly early on, then has a... a really weird scene involving a shotgun in his mouth (Don't ask, it's all fairly disturbing and not in the "ULTIMATE IN TERROR!" kind of way, but rather in the, "Oh, man, I don't want to see this at all." kind of way.), and then he's gone and never to appear again to my knowledge in the whole film. I think he's attacked or something, but the rest of the characters who are attacked show up later, but I don't remember seeing him.

Also, and I do have to complain about this, two characters have earned my ire by being played by absolutely terrible actors. Mark Petrie (Lance Kerwin), the teenage boy hero foil to Ben Mears' manly hero persona, and Ben Mears' love interest Susan Norton (Bonnie Bedelia). A scene of particular interest is their one scene together in which they seem to be very close to either forgetting their lines or bursting out laughing. I couldn't tell, but in such a supposed-to-be-tense scene, it was very disappointing.

Now, getting to the scary parts, which is what I'm in this for. Well, there aren't many I could even consider scary. Actually there aren't many scenes that a scared seven-year-old girl who is terrified of the dark would be afraid of, which is disappointing, but not unexpected, but the box did lie to me. This is not "THE ULTIMATE IN TERROR!" No, box... I don't care what definition you were using for ultimate, this will never be the ultimate of terror, not ever. I'm sorry, but you're wrong and you've lied to me. I would tell you off if I could, but I see you trying so hard and I just don't have the heart.

There are a few genuinely creepy parts, mostly involving the vampires coming after the main characters. Oh, I didn't mention this is a vampire movie? Well, the movie seems to have forgotten as well until the halfway point or so... So, I was in no rush to spoil the vampires if the movie was in no rush to spoil it either. This is actually and seriously a pacing point that I like. It is also in the original novel and I think it works nicely, although it was handled much better in the novel and the second television miniseries that came in 2004. The whole point is a bit of a bait-and-switch. 'Salem's Lot is supposed to start out kind of seeming like it's going to be a haunted house movie and then BAM, nope, vampires. I think it's an interesting way of doing things and if this film were competent it would have worked nicely, but the film isn't competent and it works about as well as being slapped in the face repeatedly by a refrigerator.

So, now I'm actually going to tell about the creepy parts rather than interrupting myself again. The teenage boy vampire hovering at Mark Petrie's window is a particularly poignant scene and works very well. It was creepy, but fits rather poorly with the rest of the film since it is a fairly competent scene. Another scene of note (and in my opinion the best of the movie) is when the teacher Mr. Jason Burke (Lew Ayres) is confronted by a vampire in his own house because he had unwittingly invited the man into his house before the man was a vampire. So, this vampire sits in a rocking chair as Burke comes into the room and the creepiness level of this scene is awesome. Burke sweats and is obviously terrified, as the vampire (in some great makeup, I have to say) walks slowly towards him saying,

Look at me… Look at me, teacher… Look… Look… Look… Look at me… Look at me… Look…

with such an awesome raspy voice that it was hard not to take the guy seriously. Burke, one of the best character in my opinion, gets awesome and attacks the vampire with a crucifix and then has a heart attack and is never heard from again for the rest of the movie.

Now, in terms of the main bad guy in this film, Mr. Barlow, the Dracula type of character of this story... he's... well, a Nosferatu type of vampire... and it doesn't work. He just looks silly. Mr. Straker is a much more believable (human) villain who is terrifying in some respects especially as he carries the doctor who has been helping Ben Mears with the vampires, Mr. Bill Norton, Susan's father, to his death of being impaled by antlers attached to a wall. It's pretty awesome.

Now, as for a few other things I liked, but felt fell very short by the end were the Constable (Kenneth McMillan), who is absolutely awesome in all of his scenes except for his last, and the two scene wonder of the priest, Father Callahan as his crucifix is taken by Barlow. Both characters were very well done albeit fairly small characters, but their characters end poorly because of the lack of actual development for them.

The last scene of Ben and Mark killing Barlow is all right, I suppose, but the actual staking of Barlow is overshadowed by the younger vampiric townspeople stalking out of the root-cellar behind Mark to dine on fresh blood... Having them come to life out of focus behind Mark was beautiful. It actual gave a little tension to the movie that had had little real tension.

Now, I know I barely mentioned the main love interest, Susan... well, the movie seems to forget her, so why should I remember her? She goes into the Marsten House with Mark at one point and just kind of disappears, never to be seen again... I'm guessing she was turned into a vampire or something, but there's never a resolution there and it ends on kind of "huh?" note. And what ever happened to the priest, Father Callahan? His crucifix was thrown aside, but he never shows up again. And what about Susan's mother? Does she die because of the blaze Ben Mears starts at the end of the movie, or does she leave town like she was supposed to? And what about Burke who just seems to have been forgotten? Did he recover from his heart attack or tragically pass away? I have no idea and I kind of want to know... but nope, I never will.

So, Salem's Lot was a bit of a disjointed disappointment. I had wished for a lot more from a great vampire horror story and in the end I did not watch "The ultimate in terror!", what I saw was a movie trying desperately to be the original novel and failing quite badly in almost every way. The movie is worth watching, I suppose, if you like the source material, vampires in general, or mediocre TV movies from the late 1970's, but if you don't, I'd advise you to not waste your time with this "ultimate in terror!"