Salem's Lot (1979 miniseries)

Salem's Lot (also known as Salem's Lot: The Movie, Salem's Lot: The Miniseries and Blood Thirst) is a 1979 American television adaptation of the novel of the same name by Stephen King. Directed by Tobe Hooper and starring David Soul and James Mason, the plot revolves around a writer returning to his hometown and discovers the citizens are turning into vampires. It combines elements of both the vampire film and haunted house subgenres.

Plot

The prologue shows a church in Guatemala in which a man and a boy, Ben Mears (David Soul) and Mark Petrie (Lance Kerwin), are filling small bottles with holy water. When one of the bottles begins to emit an eerie supernatural glow, Mears tells Petrie "They've found us again." Knowing an evil presence is there, they decide to fight it.

The story then flashes back two years, to the small town of Salem's Lot (formally known as Jerusalem's Lot) in Maine in the United States. Ben Mears, an author, has returned to the town after a long absence to write a book about the Marsten House, an ominous old property on a hilltop which has a reputation for being haunted. Mears attempts to rent the house but finds that another new arrival in town, the mysterious Richard Straker (James Mason), has recently bought it. Straker also opens an antique shop with his oft-mentioned but always absent business partner, Kurt Barlow. Meanwhile, Mears moves into a boarding house in town run by Eva Miller (Marie Windsor), and develops a romantic relationship with a local woman, Susan Norton (Bonnie Bedelia). He befriends Susan's father, Dr. Bill Norton (Ed Flanders), and also renews his old friendship with his former school teacher, Jason Burke (Lew Ayres). Mears tells Burke that he feels the Marsten House is somehow inherently evil, and recalls how he was once traumatized inside the house when he was a child.

'Salem's Lot

'Salem's Lot is a 1975 horror fiction novel written by the American author Stephen King. It was his second published novel. The story involves a writer named Ben Mears who returns to the town of Jerusalem's Lot (or 'Salem's Lot for short) in Maine, where he had lived from the age of nine through thirteen, only to discover that the residents are becoming vampires. The town is revisited in the short stories "Jerusalem's Lot" and "One for the Road", both from King's story collection, Night Shift (1978). The novel was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1976, and the Locus Award for the All-Time Best Fantasy Novel in 1987.

In two separate interviews King said that, of all his books, 'Salem's Lot was his favorite. In his June 1983 Playboy interview, the interviewer mentioned that because it was his favorite, King was planning a sequel, but King has said on his website that because The Dark Tower series already continued the narrative in the Wolves of the Calla and Song of Susannah, he felt there was no longer a need for a sequel. In 1987 he told Phil Konstantin in The Highway Patrolman magazine: "In a way it is my favorite story, mostly because of what it says about small towns. They are kind of a dying organism right now. The story seems sort of down home to me. I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!"

Salem's Lot (disambiguation)

'Salem's Lot is a 1975 novel by Stephen King.

Salem's Lot may also refer to:

See also

Salem's Lot (2004 miniseries)

Salem's Lot is a 2004 American two-part television mini-series which first aired on TNT on June 20 & 21, 2004. It is the second television adaptation of Stephen King's 1975 vampire novel of the same name (the first version was made in 1979).

Although the novel and original miniseries were both set in the 1970s, this version updates the story to take place in the 2000s. The story is still set in a small Maine town, but the mini-series was actually shot on location at Creswick and Woodend, in Central Victoria, Australia.

Plot summary

The story opens with Ben Mears attacking the priest Donald Callahan in a homeless shelter in Detroit. They fall together from a high window into the street. In the hospital, Ben tells his story and the reasons behind his fight with the priest to an orderly.

Ben, a successful writer, returns to his hometown, Jerusalem's Lot (also known as 'Salem's Lot), intending to write a novel while he deals with the demons of his past. He tells Susan Norton (a waitress and former art student whom he has befriended), that when he was a child in the town he accepted a dare to enter the house of Hubie Marsten. Local legend said that there was something evil about the house and its owner, suggesting that he murdered children. The night he went into the house, Ben overheard Marsten begging for his life before seemingly committing suicide. Ben believes that he also heard Marsten's last victim crying for help, but Ben was too afraid to find or help him. Now Ben planned to rent the house to bring catharsis to himself and to gather material for his novel, but he discovers that it has recently been sold by Larry Crockett to a pair of antique dealers, Richard Straker and Kurt Barlow.