Salem’s Lot: A Faithful But Shallow Adaptation of Stephen King’s Classic Vampire Novel | Media Center

Now comes Salem’s Lot. Written and directed by Gary Dauberman, it is the first film adaptation of the 1975 novel in which Stephen King proposed the thought experiment of transposing Bram Stoker’s Dracula to contemporary New England. The book has already been adapted twice, in 1979 and 2004, but always as a TV miniseries.

Of these precursors, the most interesting is the first, directed by Tobe Hooper. Made five years after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it signified Hooper’s move toward the mainstream while retaining some bloody scenes and choppy editing that recalled his former grindhouse aesthetic.

The new Salem’s Lot begins with a series of maps that show how the master vampire, hidden in a trunk, arrived in Maine. The film itself, paralyzed for years by the calculations of marketers and programmers, was equally arduous. It now arrives somewhat late and without box office success. While UK King fans can enjoy it on the big screen, it can only be consumed in most other locations via the Max streaming service.

Literary and film scholar Robert Stam offers a wealth of terms to describe the work done by film adaptations. They can, for example, “rewrite”, “transmute” or even “criticize” their source texts. Pointing to a gentler process, however, Stam also admits that an adaptation can offer an “incarnation” or “performance” of the material it is adapting. Realizing Salem’s Lot in this sense, responding in audiovisual form to King’s suggestions and refusing major reinventions, seems to be Dauberman’s objective.

King is a successor not only to Stoker and other horror writers such as HP Lovecraft, but also to the “local colorists” of late 19th-century New England who closely documented the sights and sounds of their region. On the page, Salem’s Lot is visually abundant. The new adaptation tries to be equally careful.

Dauberman takes care of color and lighting issues. The doors of a church, closed against the vampiric threat, glow bright red. Two boys walk through a silhouetted forest at sunset, their ominously insubstantial bodies against a sky that is turning from pink to black. There are other visual pleasures too, representing a change from Hooper’s version, where the shots are rougher and decidedly non-painterly.

The cast of this Salem’s Lot is likable and fights courageously, in the face of regular scares, to solicit audience involvement. Unlike, say, Hammer’s Dracula adaptations, in which the monster has all the charisma, this is a kind of democratic vampire film and shifts interest to the members of the opposing force.

A pleasing modification is also made to the authoritarian whiteness of King’s narrative world, with two of the bravest vampire hunters reimagined as African-Americans.

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For Professor Andrew Dix’s full article, visit the Conversation.

Notes for editors

Press release reference number: 24/182