Customer Reviews

Salem's Lot - The Miniseries

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

***Warning: Spoilers Ahead***

I've always loved the novel and the 1979 miniseries. When I heard they were doing a remake in 2004, I couldn't wait! Then I found out Rob Lowe was starring. Eeeh, he was in "The Stand" a decade earlier and that managed not to suck. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt and tuned in. And in all fairness to Rob Lowe he can hardly be blamed for how awful it turned out.

Now I can understand changing around elements for "dramatic purposes" and "updating" and "adapting for television". Let's not forget the novel was written and published in the 1970's when there were no cellphones, laptop computers or Internet. It seems the fellow who adapted the novel, Peter Filardi, and went hog-wild with it. The end result is that the only the movie characters have in common with their book counterparts are the names. Ben Mears was once held captive by the Taliban? Matt Burke is gay? Susan Norton is a waitress? Did Filardi even read the novel? Then there is the problem of the very minor characters getting way, way, waaayyyy more screen time than they deserve, as in they shouldn't have been in the movie at all. Sandy McDougall, Dud Rogers, Charlie Rhodes and Ruthie Crockett are all very minor throw-away characters who don't deserve a place in the movie. Ruthie didn't even have any dialogue in the book for crying out loud!!! What is so special about these characters that they managed to get on screen and take away precious time from the real characters? This is reason why Barlow is reduced to a cameo, because Peter Filardi felt the inexplicable need to cram in as many characters as possible.

My biggest complaint is the way they handled the scene where a vampire Mike Ryerson comes back to Matt Burke's house. Instead of being a terrifying encounter with the undead it winds up a truly bizarre homo-erotic/necrophiliac encounter so completely drained of any suspense that left me scratching my head and wondering 'what the hell was that about'? Hey people, if it ain't broke don't fix it! If you had $25 million to spend on this movie why didn't you hire a writer who could actually write a suspenseful scene!! Stephen King should sue! Excuse me, I'm going to watch the 1979 version and try to put this slop out of my memory for good.

Stephen King has not been treated kindly by the movies. For years, his books were turned into films. Most of them bad. None of them on par with the books. This has been remedied in the past few years by the television miniseries, the only format that can do King justice. For while he may be a horror writer, it's King's gift for prose and characterization that makes him shine above others in the genre. The Shining and especially The Stand fared well as miniseries. Now Salem's Lot has been remade. The Tobe Hooper version (also made for TV) was flawed in that it made some unwise changes to the book and had a silly ending but it was genuinely scary. And to that end, this remake largely falls short.

(This review is written from the perspective of someone who has read the book and I assume most viewers will have read it or are familiar with it.)

I don't know why every writer who takes a crack at King has to change plot and character needlessly but it seems they do. This version has far too much setup before anything really happens. Some of the good stuff includes an updated backstory for Ben Mears and a much more sinister history for him with the Marsten house (in this version, he actually witnesses the suicide death of Hubie Marsten instead of only imagining it years later.) This version also includes Dr. Jim Cody and Father Callahan-one of whom was eliminated from the original and the other serving a much truncated role. The Barlow character is also a full-fledged one instead of a speechless Nosferatu that relied on the Straker character (played in the original by James Mason) for a voice and personality.

Alas most of the new material is unnecessary padding and I was largely bored by the first half. For example, a new story line about Dr. Cody having an affair with a patient and getting blackmailed that was not in the book and totally unnecessary. These revisions on the original become particularly annoying when some of the best moments from the book are left out later on or not fully explained. One of the creepiest moments in the novel was when the team breaks into the Marsten House only to find Barlow had already relocated and left them a letter correctly guessing and urbanely threatening each team member. That was completely omitted. They do add a nice touch though with the subsequent discovery of Susan there that I won't reveal.

By failing to stick to the book and venturing out on his own, the screenwriter (Peter Filardi) also introduces a number of noticeable logic gaps. The characters make a point of saying vampires can't enter a home unless they are invited only to have Barlow later do just that without explanation. Later, after their leader is killed the vampires all seem to turn into zombies with one significant exception. While this made for a poignant interaction between two main characters, it made no sense. Certainly many horror films have idiosyncracies and you the viewer must at a certain point just let go and enjoy but the material must rise above them to make this possible. This miniseries was also filmed in Australia and it's evident from the accents of the minor characters that something is amiss as their ill-fitting American accents occassionally slide all over the map. At one point, I wondered if one character had been changed to an Eastern European only to have her accent wander back to New England a few sentences later.

As for the cast, Donald Sutherland is brilliant in an over-the-top performance as the fey yet ominous Straker. He is easily the best part of the movie. Rob Lowe fares well as Ben Mears and Andre Braugher adds gravitas as Matt Burke. I also liked Samantha Mathis-where has she been hiding?-as Susan Norton and Dan Byrd as Mark Petrie, in a role that is closer to the book than the original film. Rutger Hauer was miscast, however, as Barlow in my opinion and as this is such an important part it's yet another flaw that fatally affects the movie. Overall, the second half somewhat redeems the first but this book is still waiting for better treatment.

(This DVD is well-made but contains no extras. Some deleted scenes might go a long ways toward rectifying the plot gaps but as it is the mystery of why this version had to reinvent a perfectly fine wheel will remain unsolved.)

I remember the original 1979 TV version of this modern gothic
vampire mini-series (starring David Soul) that was well-recieved
and scared the you-know-what out of me as a 15 yr old kid!!
So when TNT first aired this more modern version in 2004,
I was kinda skeptical and prejudiced towards it because
like a lot of people, I kind of hate it when studios of today
try to "remake" a classic of the past, because it usually doesn't
make the grade! I must say though, I was pleasantly suprised and
loved the way they implemented the newer technology for special effects which made it even more scary!
They also tweeked the original story as far as content,
giving it a more contemporary spin, even though it still
keeps its evil in a small town premise.
Rob Lowe and a stellar cast of good actors did an excellent job
in my opinion of bringing this tale to a new generation of short
attention span horror fans. Of course, there will be those who prefer
the original..which still has it's charm, though the special
effects are laughable looking at them through today's eyes!
All-N-All though, I would and did pay money to add this
to my DVD collection!

Rob Lowe is mildly okay as Ben Mears, but his performance goes nowhere near David Soul's angst ridden, really convincing portrayal from the 1979 original. Donald Suterland is disappointing, and I don't think it needs to be said that his performance is less than spectacular, even absurd. He's no James Mason.

Rutger Hauer gives a better performance than this series deserved. His portrayal of King's Barlow is more accurate than the Nosferatuesque Reggie Nalder, but somehow this seems to work to the film's detriment rather than benefit. Rent the original film, or miniseries. I had high expectations, maybe that they'd build on the original a little, but it's just rushed, badly acted, trying too hard to be modern, and in general, a waste of time.

'Salem's Lot is easily the most terrifying of Stephen King's novels. A dark and evil tale that scares the crap out of you. The 1979 version although annoying to purists (including myself) for the monsterfication of Barlow and some dodgy scriptwriting had one thing in common with the novel - it too was terrifying, it positively traumatised some viewers.

Bottom line: This is no more frightening than a tame episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it's an absolute pile of rubbish..... I find it extraordinary that a director can take such extraordinary material and turn it into something so utterly pedestrian.... and make no mistake here... the main problem was not the script, nor even the acting but the direction.

Three of the major scenes in the book and '79 version were ruined by the director here -- Danny Glick at the window, Marjorie Glick in the mortuary and the return of Mike Ryerson. How can you possibly ruin these scenes? A child holding the camera couldn't ruin these scenes.

Thoroughly disappointing, even more so because now Salomon has queered the pitch for everyone else -- no one else will be able to make this again for the next twenty years.

First off I feel I should warn people who may not have read the book or seen the movies that my review contains a spoiler so you may or may not want to read this review..!! I read Stephen King's book and I liked it so I was interested in seeing the two different movie versions. I liked the 1979 version but I was disapointed with this remake. I thought that Rob Lowe was good as Ben Mears but I don't like what the script writers did to his character and the added sub-plots were stupid! Ignore the reviews that say this remake is more faithful to the book. While the remake has it's moments it is merely just an okay movie and isn't as good as the 1979 version and despite what the FEW fans of this remake say say isn't really all that faithful to Stephen King's book and I find it hard to believe that reviewers who said this remake was more faithful to King's book actually even read the book! The 1979 version may have made changes, like having Bonnie Sawyer having an extra marital affair with her boss Larry Crocket when in the book she was having the affair with a young guy about 18 years old but despite that the 1979 version is still a good movie and very faithful in spirit to the book and it's not like this remake didn't make changes too, like combining Bonnie Sawyer with Sandy MacDougal, the character who was physically abusing her baby and making her have an affair with the doctor which didn't happen in the book at all and was even more unfaithful to the book and in the book Sandy was desribed as being fat and ugly but in this movie she is a skinny blonde. Also in this remake they had Ben Mears go crazy and kill Father Callahan who by the way wasn't evil in the book and then Ben Mears is shot by the police and dies at the end of the movie. These two characters do not die in the book or this movie and that's my main problem with this remake. Also the Marsten House isn't as scary as the one in the 1979 movie! And also what was with the stupid non-sensical scene with the zombies? The towns people became vampires not zombies!

Well, the film looks professional enough. It doesn't have low-budget TV movie written all over it. Also, it does a good job of balancing all the multiple storylines, and weaving a large and diverse cast of townspeople into a coherent plot. It's well acted, mostly. I could bitch about Rob Lowe, but I think that would just be mean-spirited scapegoating. Rob Lowe is fine.

But is everything is so well done, why is the film so very boring? Why don't I LIKE anybody? Why is watching people die like ticking items off a "To Do" list?

The film opens with Ben Mears (Rob Lowe), trying to murder a priest, Father Callahan (James Cromwell), in a Detroit food kitchen. Both end up in an emergency room, where an intern decides to practice his bedside manner on the critically injured Benjamin. "Why, as a good Christian shouldn't I let you die?" jeers this charming fellow. Mears replies with two words. "Jerusalem's Lot". Cue to flashback.

Ben Mears is a famous author who moves back to his small town home of `Salem's Lot to write a book. He wants to rent the "cursed" Marsten House, but fellow newcomer Mr. Straker (Donald Sutherland) and his Mysterious Unseen Partner snatch it out from under him. Further misfortunes await Ben, as he is then romantically pursued by one Susan Norton (Samantha Mathis), who has lovely eyes and cheekbones, and a personality cobbled together out of the rejected spare parts of other substandard horror heroines. Let me give you an idea about Sue. When told in confidence that Ben is writing about the haunted house, she "accidentally" lets it slip. But when she realizes his REAL theme is "small town evil", she gets all offended and rats him out ON PURPOSE, turning the whole town against him. Desperate for further abuse, Ben also befriends his in-your-face ex English teacher Matt (Andre Braugher), who lectures him on his cynicism, and tells him how awful his writing is.

Fortunately Ben sticks around anyway, because before you know it, kids start to go missing, people start dying of "pernicious anemia", and Ben suspects the House and its new occupants have something to do with it. Which, of course, it does. We can tell because every time anyone goes there, the camera starts sneaking up on them for no good reason, and the soundtrack makes lots of whooshing and chanting noises. This is not scary, but it does explain why the place was so hard to rent.

This film has Something to Say. To do so, it draws Metaphors between human corruption and supernatural evil, and points out these Metaphors in excruciating voice-overs and forced dialogue, just to be sure we catch on. To further this Important Metaphor, it seems EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the whole town has to be corrupt. The "bachelor" schoolteacher has a secret life in Portland. The priest drinks. The doctor is a self-indulgent materialist who is having an affair with an slutty teenager whose husband is a child-abusing blackmailer. The crooked real-estate agent molests his daughter. Mark Petrie is a delinquent, Mrs. Glick is a snob, and Ben's landlady used to dabble in black magic and sexual perversion. I could go on.

There is some good stuff in this movie, when it relaxes and remembers it's a VAMPIRE FLICK. I liked the cop's understated horror at a certain revelation. I liked the way half the characters proceed on the assumption that there are vampires without truly believing in them, while others who don't consciously believe in vampires at all behave as though they did. When one of the few likeable characters turns into a violent jerk who covers up obsessively in the daylight, we get a brief touch of the pathos and creepiness which is otherwise missing from this version.

But mostly, the film lacks life. Humanity and warmth seem conspicuously - even intentionally - lacking. The changes to the framing device, and to Father Callahan, are particularly glaring examples of a general attempt to leech human decency and affection from the story in favor of misanthropic bleakness. One thing the first miniseries managed to do was make me empathize with Mears before I knew anything about him, simply by allowing me to vicariously experience his fascination and his fear. But here the film stands in judgment of the characters and the town, while at the same time judging the hero for being judgmental. This makes it hard to empathize with anyone.

There is one scary moment in the whole movie. ONE. And it does not involve vampires. Any vampire that shows up, the first thing he does is move around at super-speed, just to show that he can, which immediately kills the mood.

Regarding the spiritual themes of the story: The premise from Stephen King's novel is that vampirism arises from Real Evil. This implies that there is such a thing as Real Good, which is why crosses work. In the 1979 movie, the heroes' mad scramble for crucifixes and rosary beads, even though nobody seemed to be Catholic, was funny and kind of endearing. And it saved the movie from any implication of preaching or pretentiousness. Alas, this remake is nothing if not pretentious. If the screenwriter can possibly contrive it, showdowns with vampires are also showdowns with One's Own Sins. Gay teacher Matt Burke rejects the sexual overtures of the vampire youth he once lusted after, driving him off with prayer alone. The materialistic doctor sacrifices his BMW to save a child. As for poor Ben Mears, his sins and psychology take up half the script. Neither the living nor the dead can shut up about them. "I know where you're going with this" Mears complains, when the vampire he's about to stake regales him with a litany of his faults. Sure enough, the vamp asserts that since Mears uses other people as fodder for his writing, this makes him . . . the real vampire. But Mears is too smart to fall for this. "I'm NOT the vampire," he retorts. "Not ANYMORE!" Oh, please!

The same vamp also gives Father Callahan some incoherent psychoanalysis involving his faith and his drinking problem. Which just goes to prove that Callahan's remarks from earlier in the film were incorrect. Sure vampires are proven to be a Real Evil rather than figments of our Repressed Subconscious, but it doesn't change anything. Freud is NOT dead, and he still gets to spoil all the fun.

Firstly let me say that I love Stephen Kings Salems Lot. It's my favorite vampire novel, so no film could do justice to the material. But this adaption is just a crime. Living in the U.K. I imported this and genuinely looked forward to watching it. As good as Tobe Hoopers 70s version of the novel was I was never happy with his take on Barlow. So here was the chance to put things right. What a waste of effort. From a writer more interested in putting his grubby fingerprints all over Kings story to a director who seemed absent from events. I mean really, what is the point of adapting a novel and then deviating from it so completely! I've seen episodes of "charmed" that were scarier. Half the cast were Australian doing poor American accents. It was so miscast, the priciple cast seemingly fedexing their perfomances in. New England, Maine, looked more like Alaska. If you plan to import this (non U.S / Canadaian folk) don't. Just watch Tobe Hoopers version (re-read the novel) and hope in another 10 years or sooner someone has the good sense to do that novel justice. Perhaps Like Anne Rice with Interview with the vampire, Stephen King must over see the script personally.

I just finished watching The 2004 Salem's Lot miniseries remake and I liked the book which I thought was superb and I liked the 1979 movie which I watched on DVD a few months ago and while this remake is probably closer to the book they still changed alot of things so it's not entirely faithful to Stephen King's book. The acting was very good from Rob Lowe as Ben Mears and Samantha Mathis as Susan Norton though I think they made Susan a little too whiney! The rest of the cast was very good too, including Donald Sutherland as Straker and Rutger Hauer as Barlow and I liked the acting by James Cromwell as Father Callahan but despie his great acting I just don't like what they did to this character and I wonder if the director, producer and writers of this version have ever read Stephen King's Dark Tower series in which the author reprised the Father Callahan character, if they had then they wouldn't have done what they did to the character in this movie. Oh, sure they got it right that he was an alcoholic but they ruined the character by turning him into some kind of freak and I also don't like what they did to Ben Mears at the end of the movie either and I didn't really like how they made Mark Petrie into such a punk! In the book and 1979 movie Mark was a nice kid who you had sympathy for but he was such a punk in this movie and I couldn't really warm up to this character. For example, in this movie they had it where Mark and his friends Danny and Ralphie Glick were the passengers who angered the crazy bus driver who threw them off the bus but in the book it was some other kids who the bus driver had it in for and though I don't remember the names of those kids in the book I know that it wasn't Mark, Ralphie and Danny. Now, I'm not a diehard purist where a movie has to be exactly like the book to the letter but it would have been nice if they hadn't deviated from the book so much and I hope that Stephen King will authorize someone to do a remake that will get the story right. I give the book 5 stars, the 1979 movie adaptation 4 stars and this remake 3 stars but if they hadn't completely changed Father Callahan so much and ruined this character I would have given this 4 stars but I have nothing against the actor who played him, James Cromwell is a suberb actor but unfortunately the character he played was disappointing and just way off! BTW: Donald Sutherland (Straker) and Rutger Hauer (Barlow) appeared in another movie in which Hauer played a vampire, it was the 1992 theatrical movie Buffy The Vampire Slayer, though Sutherland played a good guy in that movie. Also James Cromwell's wife, actress Julie Cobb was in the 1979 movie adaptation of Salem's Lot. She played Bonnie Sawyer.

The remake of "Salem's Lot"- The Miniseries is literally the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life. What more can you say? It sucks. I highly recommend the original 1979 version of "Salem's Lot" starring James Mason and David Soul to this utter garbage. What a worthless piece of crap this movie is.