Salems Lot (1979)
- Jun 10
- 2 min read
Director Tobe Hooper's entire career had stalled a tad after the flop of the troubled but worthwhile "Eaten Alive". Other projects had to be done and were to his credit.
Stephen King's popular pulp success "Salems Lot" (1975) had been a great best seller with its Gothic atmosphere and sense of conquering moodiness and a hostile threat to the American blue collar everyday world. Here Hooper had another directing job and went with it. It proved a great television success as well as a second wind for Hooper.
The cosmic evil over the landscape storytelling of King's early stories and novels are mostly conservative minded and morally driven. This is a vision that Hooper gets right in the movie. Hooper's basically consevative moral to tragic rightwards view in his stories and plotting comes out very well in this early effort. He does do the novel well. He doesn't do a cheap movie out of it or a B movie effort here. The Californian locations standing in for rural fictional Maine are Gothic inspired old mansions to forest glades that really do give off a sense of place and time to this story. There is a sense of storytelling that is Gothic American to all this. Great story tropes of older Hollywood to Hammer horror do make it here in his stories and scripts. Characters do go through personal darknesses to adventorous episodes in their souls as in classic hauntings of a Dracula vs Abraham VanHelsing to a Monster vs Victor Frankenstein. I would think that the small town damned and damnable in this story do lead into their fates after all this is confessed but here I've digressed. Hooper does go into American Gothic material to roost, the good American small town of peace, sweetness and comfort is a cover over grimness, terrorism and actual superstitions coming home to roost.
Hooper has an eye for historical terror and horror efforts so he uses still living faces such as Elisha Cook Jr and Marie Windsor into the movie plot, parodying their former Americana faces while still using their at the bottom of the dregs roles to still living presences. Here also is a sense of goodness gradually dying off and being cut off as a vampiric Gothic tale should have done. The curse of the towns worst dregs and terrors on top of it all do haunt the town and King's 'what goes around does come around' tale of evil on its head are so haunting indeed. The chickens do come home to roost in the tv movie as well.
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