Salem's Lot

This "TNT Original" production is the second TV miniseries made from Stephen King's second novel. Like most adaptations of King's work, it's a pale, mediore reflection of a powerful and original story.

It's handicapped from the getgo because Rob Lowe plays the lead (David Soul played the lead in the 1979 version and was just as wooden as Lowe). Worse, they let Lowe narrate, and his voice-over's are coma inducing even when they focus on murders and childhood traumas. Richard Burton could read the phone book and make it sound dramatic; Rob Lowe reads Stephen King and makes it sound boring.

Much of the supporting cast is superb. Andre Braugher and James Cromwell are reliably brilliant actors, and when they've got the screen, they manage to pull us into story. Similarly, Dan Byrd gives a stand-out performance as 10 year old Mark Petrie. None of these actors is given as much screen time as Lowe, and the film suffers greatly for it.

The villains in the piece are badly miscast. Donald Sutherland is too old to be a convincing physical menace. Moreover, he overacts badly and without any enthusiam. He gnaws the scenery rather than chewing it. Rutger Hauer plays the vampire Barlow too low key to generate any terror. Hauer plays his first scene wearing eyeglasses, which undercuts his image and leads to distracting questions like how do vampires get fitted for a prescription? Hitchcock used to say, "The better the villain, the better the picture." These weak bad guys are the center piece of a weak film.

The effects are competent, but the horror scenes are too poorly staged to be frightening. And when they depart from King's originals, they invariably loose the narrative and logical coherence so crucial to making horror horrifying. So, in the novel, when Braugher's character confronts a vampire in his bedroom, he revokes his invitation to it in the name of God and the vampire flys off in a rage. In the TV version, Braugher tells the vamp to leave, he doesn't, then later flys off for no apparent reason.

What most filmmakers don't get about horror, and about fantasy in general, is that it has to play by the rules. Any deviation from the internal logic of the story is fatal. Fantasy has to be MORE, not less, logical than straightforward drama.

What makes Stephen King such an effective horror novelist is that he meticulously develops the reality of the world and the characters. It's not till after you've become totally invovled with story that the supernatural elements kick in, and you believe them implicitly, largely because you have so much already invested in the characters by that point. A miniseries ought to provide the room to explore the intricate plot lines and character developments that distinguish King's work. But, like the '79 version, this miniseries is in just two parts, barely three hours of screen time.

Someday, someone may turn Salem's Lot into an 8 or 10 hour miniseries with all the impact and creeping terror of the original. Let's hope it doesn't star Rob Lowe or David Soul.

Salem's Lot (2004)
GRADE: C