#SALEM LOT MOVIE COMMON SENSE MEDIA SERIES#

King is also known for keeping one foot in the far more open-minded environment of adolescence, and indeed, most of ‘Salem’s Lot‘s most horrifying elements revolve around children confronting and conquering the growing legion of vampire loyalists. Even the romance with Susan seems like a midlife crisis (though Ben is barely out of his 30s), a chance to recapture his youth. In a real sense, Ben is using the Lot like an artistic vampire, drinking in the drama from decades before to hopefully resurrect his floundering faith in his own talent. King was ahead of his time as much as right on the current money when he tied Ben’s wayward nostalgia to a takeover bid by the undead.Ĭertainly he is haunted by visions of evil inside the Marsten House (they still “live on” for him) and he’s hoping to rekindle his muse by visiting the place where he lost his innocence. The entire Goth motif is married to the notion of outsiders relying on dark forces to outwit - and outlive - their conservative counterpart. Again, in modern society’s ceaseless quest for immortality, our fanged fiends seem to hold as much scare sway as they did before. While the bloodsucking horror is incredibly heinous (King loves to languish over passages of guts and grue), the fact that it comes about so fluidly, so organically, makes ‘Salem’s Lot a sensational read, even some 30 years after it first frightened fans.Īt the center of the story are vampires, those smooth seducers offering the promise of everlasting life and the grotesque gift of agelessness. In perfectly plotted sequences (relatively unscathed from King’s slight “modifications”) we see how terror trickles in, slips in between the spaces of sedation, and slowly strangles a community to death. Every community in our country is now as distant and disconnected as ‘Salem’s Lot - either from its past, its population or its problems. Indeed, it’s a powerful message in today’s languor as lifestyle mindset. King is often quoted as finding the ennui in the locale, the lack of real interest by the people being targeted by unearthly forces of evil as the most frightening facet of this book to him. Ben begins to believe that something sinister is afoot, and along with school kid Mark Petrie, they uncover the awful truth – vampires have taken root in the small town, and the Marsten House seems to be their new central stomping ground. Neighbors and co-workers start disappearing. As the men’s curio shop prepares to open, strange things start to happen. An antique dealer named Straker has leased the home for his boss, a man named Barlow. While inquiring about renting the Marsten place, Ben learns that a new tenant has taken over. He meets up with local career gal Susan Norton, and a minor romance begins. This baneful little burg with its own house of horrors (the Marsten manor, location of a brutal murder/suicide years before) has haunted Ben, and even with success, he needs to return to fulfill some manner of flawed human destiny. The novel’s main storyline revolves around Ben Mears, a frustrated writer who returns to the Maine town of ‘Salem’s Lot where he grew up. Some may argue that it’s too much of a good thing, but in King’s qualified hands, this wickedly original scary story as social commentary becomes even more potent. It is his attempt at putting the completionist spin on his now legendary vampire opus. Around 50 pages of previously unreleased material has been reinserted into the book, as well as the inclusion of two short stories (from the Night Shift collection) “One for the Road” and “Jerusalem’s Lot”, and some interesting illustrations.

#SALEM LOT MOVIE COMMON SENSE MEDIA SERIES#

His Dark Tower series is nothing more than one continuing story, constantly updated and expanded to suit the author’s seemingly infinite imagination.Īnd now his second novel, ‘Salem’s Lot, is getting the unexpurgated treatment.

His mid-1980s revision the apocalyptic epic The Stand is considered one of his best - a masterwork of a true futuristic fright containing the ultimate war between the powers of light and dark. Yet when it comes to books, especially those from horror master Stephen King, we can’t seem to get enough of the spooky stuff, and don’t mind when he fleshes out a favorite tome to fit his fancy. There are valid arguments on either side for perfecting/preserving that which came before, but many of them get lost in misguided tours of the moral high ground, a place where ownership and aesthetic meet to wage their never-ending battle for ideological domination. When George Lucas announces another jerryrigging of his Star Wars canon, or Ted Turner mandates that the black and white movies in his catalog should all be colorized, we immediately leap upon our harried high horse and decry the violation of the vintage. As fans, we usually frown on the revisiting of classics from our past.

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