Warning: this review contains spoilers.
In Salem’s Lot (1979) Mark Petrie (Lance Kerwin) reminds me of myself as a monster kid. His room is full of all sorts of cool posters, models, and masks. After showing his friends, Danny and Ralphie Glick (Brad Savage and Ronnie Scribner) his ghoul mask (and explaining the horrific nature of a ghoul), they ask him why he’s “hung up” on this “stuff.” Mark replies, “I don’t know. I just am.” Then, when his father asks him when he’s going to outgrow it, Mark replies, “Soon, I guess.”
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The point is, he’s the character with which most monster kids will identify. With a nostalgia similar, yet different, to It, we are taken back to a time when encountering real life vampires would have been awesome, yet terrifying. In part one of the two-part miniseries, though, we don’t see much of Mark. His role is more like a hook that will reel us in for part two a week later. Other than a prologue that depicts him and Ben Mears (David Soul) in the aftermath of some kind of dirty battle or chase, we don’t know any specifics about his encounter with evil.
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Speaking of that scene, it raises one of several questions I had for the first time when watching Salem’s Lot for the umpteenth time. On one hand, it’s a spoiler. We know that the two characters are apparently going to survive… something. Even though there’s a suggestion that there’s still more to come, it seems to remove some of the suspense of the story. Then again, there’s no return to Guatemala at the end of part one, so maybe it will be forgotten by the time part two begins.
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I also had a question about the scene in which the Glick boys are walking home through the woods and a shadowy figure rises in front of Ralphie. Mike Ryerson (Geoffrey Lewis) and Ned Tebbets (Barney McFadden) haven’t yet delivered the mysterious crate, so who abducted Ralphie? We later have an answer when Richard Straker (James Mason) takes a plastic-wrapped bundle to the basement. Still a little confused, I then realized he was probably bringing Ralphie to Kurt Barlow (Reggie Nalder) for dinner.
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Kurt Barlow is another thing we don’t see in part one of Salem’s Lot, although his presence is highly anticipated by the townspeople. Nearly everyone who encounters Straker asks when Barlow is going to arrive. Be careful what you ask for… when he does arrive and Straker discovers that he’s exploded out of his crate, those curious townspeople begin dropping like flies. In part one, it’s the Glick boys, then realtor Larry Crockett (Fred Willard.) Again, though, we never see Barlow himself, only one of his blue clawed hands as he grabs Crockett.
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Many of the events of part one take place throughout one night. This, with the extra soap opera subplots of Cully Sawyer (George Dzundza) discovering Crockett sleeping with his wife, helps explain the need for a miniseries rather than a regular TV movie. It also allows director Tobe Hooper to squeeze atmosphere out of it in buckets. There are even two jump scares that get me every time. Stephen King novels are usually rich with characters and screenplay writer Paul Monash (who produced Carrie in 1976) does something few King adaptions do: gets it right.
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The highlight of part one is without a doubt the two scenes with Ralphie Glick floating in the fog outside the window, tap/scratching for his brother to let him in. It’s a truly scary image that’s haunted young viewers for years. I noticed this time how good Scribner is as vampire-Ralphie. Sure, he’s plastered with makeup and wearing oversized fangs, but watch him in his second encounter with Danny, the one where we see him bite. His performance adds something to the character and scene that goes beyond the superficial.
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I encourage you to notice the second highlight: Mason’s performance as Straker. At first, he’s a menacing-looking character giving shifty glances here and there, but once he opens his mouth, his conversations with Crockett, and later, Constable Parkins Gillespie (Kenneth McMillan), are brilliantly enunciated with a mix of British dryness, fish-out-of-water naivety, and cutting sarcasm. When he takes his black suits to the constable he asks, “I wonder… some suspicion?” Then, with forced realization, “Ah, yes. Because I’m a stranger. And a little odd.”
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Part one of Salem’s Lot sets the stage for what we anticipate will be something big. By the end, we know the characters pretty well and look forward to what happens to them when they realize the implications of Barlow’s arrival. It ends with Cully and Bonnie packing their truck and leaving town as Straker flips the sign on the front door of the antique shop that reads, “Opening Soon.” On its own, it’s just about perfect. However, endings of Stephen King adaptations usually burn us. Like viewers in 1979, we'll have to wait a week to find out.
Salem's Lot is available on DVD and Blu-ray. Visit the TV Terror Guide: 70's TV Movies playlist at ClassicHorrors.Club TV on YouTube to watch other great movies from this series.
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