Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot arrived on CBS as a two-part event in November 1979, and it still plays like the most patient thing the vampire genre ever did to itself. Hooper, working from Paul Monash’s adaptation of Stephen King’s 1975 novel, takes a small Maine town and lets it die quietly, one disappearance at a time. The miniseries runs two feature-length installments, first airing November 17, 1979, and closing November 24. It earns its length.
Trailer, via Arrow Video.
Ben Mears Comes Home to Salem’s Lot
David Soul plays Ben Mears, a successful author who returns to his hometown after a long absence to write about the Marsten House, an old property on a hilltop with a reputation for being haunted. He finds the house already bought by Richard Straker, a new arrival opening an antique shop with a business partner nobody ever sees, Kurt Barlow.
Mears moves into Eva Miller’s boarding house instead. He starts a relationship with Susan Norton, befriends her father Dr. Bill Norton, and reconnects with his former teacher Jason Burke. Soul plays all of this straight, and the plainness works. Mears is not a hero here. He is a man who came home to write and found something worse than a book.
James Mason Sells the Whole Thing
James Mason was on producer Richard Kobritz’s wish list for Straker, and Kobritz sent him the script. Mason loved it. His wife, Clarissa Kaye-Mason, was cast as Marjorie Glick. Mason walks through the antique shop with the calm of a man who has already won, and the miniseries is never better than when he is being polite.
The makeup and contact lenses were painful but I got used to them. I liked the money best of all.
That is Reggie Nalder, who played Barlow, on the job. Nalder was less impressed with the material than Mason was, and he says so. Barlow is the change Monash and Kobritz made from King’s novel: the head vampire went from a cultured, human-looking villain to a speechless, demonic-looking monster. It is the right call for television. A talkative Barlow would have been another Straker.
A Crate, Then the Disappearances
After a large crate is delivered to the Marsten House one night, townspeople start to disappear or die under strange circumstances. Mears and Straker are the main suspects, both being new in town. The crate, of course, holds Barlow, an ancient vampire whose servant Straker came ahead to prepare for his arrival. Straker kidnaps a young boy. The town becomes an army of undead slaves.
The opening scene sets the frame before any of this: at a church in Guatemala, Mears and Mark Petrie fill small bottles with holy water. One bottle glows. Mears tells Mark, “they’ve found us again.”
Two Couples, One Joke
| Pair | Performers | Source of the pairing |
|---|---|---|
| Weasel Philips and Eva Miller | Elisha Cook Jr. and Marie Windsor | Inside joke by producer Richard Kobritz, a Kubrick fan |
| Straker and Marjorie Glick | James Mason and Clarissa Kaye-Mason | Mason’s real-life wife cast in the role |
Cook and Windsor had played a couple before, in Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956). That is the kind of detail this production cared about, and it shows.
What the Miniseries Costs Itself
The budget was $4 million, and principal photography began July 10, 1979, in Ferndale, California. That money buys atmosphere, not spectacle, and Hooper knows it. The horror in Salem’s Lot is mostly offscreen or half-lit, which is why the Marsten House keeps its hold long after Barlow is finally shown.
The weakest stretch is the middle, where the mystery of who is killing Salem’s Lot gets stretched across two nights. The suspects are obvious, and the audience is ahead of Mears for most of it.
Why Salem’s Lot Still Holds
Salem’s Lot earned three nominations at the 32nd Primetime Emmy Awards and positive reviews on arrival. In the years since, it has built a cult following and left a real mark on the vampire genre. A 1987 theatrical sequel, A Return to Salem’s Lot, followed, directed by Larry Cohen.
The case for the miniseries rests on Mason and on Hooper’s refusal to hurry. The case against it is that two nights is one night too many, and the vampire itself is the least interesting thing in it. This is the version of Salem’s Lot that made a small town feel like a closed system, and that is the part worth keeping.
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