Just in time for All Hallows’ Eve, TV Week chats with the cast of this Stephen King spine-tingler, about a small 1970s town preyed upon by a bloodthirsty new neighbour
In 1975, fresh off the success of his debut novel Carrie, a young Stephen King showed he wasn’t just a one-shriek pony — delivering a follow-up that was just as rich, complex and blood-curdlingly original as its predecessor. Salem’s Lot introduced us to Ben Mears, a writer returning to his Maine hometown in search of inspiration, and to reckon with some deep-seated childhood trauma while he’s at it. Alas, Ben isn’t the only new resident on the Lot. An ancient fiend has also moved in, and begins feasting on the townsfolk.
As with all of King’s horror, there’s more at play in this narrative than just cheap thrills, as the author uses his vampire to explore a community in decline, where evil was lurking in the shadows long before the bloodsucking Kurt Barlow and his sinister butler Richard Straker arrived.
The book was adapted into a 1979 miniseries starring Starsky & Hutch’s David Soul, followed by another in 2004 starring Rob Lowe. Now, a new Max/Crave original film sinks its teeth into the material, keeping the ’70s setting but putting its own spin on the timeless themes.
“I think something Salem’s Lot has that’s so unique is it’s really the transformation of this whole town,” says Spencer Treat Clark, who plays doomed gravedigger Mike Ryerson. “The town is like a living organism. Stephen King had [vampires] more as a metaphor for this town in decay. Rather than it being just a straight-up monster movie, it’s about this town getting subsumed and taken over — and the rot from the inside.”
Following in the footsteps of Soul and Lowe to play Ben is Bad Times at the El Royale alum Lewis Pullman. As ever, our hero leads a group of unlikely allies — including a priest struggling with his faith in humanity and a 12-year-old kid out to avenge his friends — to save what’s left of the town’s soul. “The folks on the outskirts of the town — some of the underdogs — are the ones who are maybe seeing things differently than the others and are paying attention to things that people who are more tapped into the zeitgeist only are going to miss,” Pullman muses. “It’s fun to watch a crew of those kind of people solve problems.”
Speaking of problems, as a fan of the book, Pullman was keenly aware of the challenge facing writer-director Gary Dauberman here. “There’s a reason why it’s only been adapted as miniseries [in the past],” the actor says. “It’s a beefy book and there are so many characters. Gary was the perfect person to go in and find what was truly at the heart of this story — what were we really going to miss with the runtime that we had? What was integral?”
That said, the changes made weren’t just for time. Makenzie Leigh, who plays Ben’s love interest Susan Norton, a local girl itching to leave Salem’s Lot for the big city, teases: “Gary wanted to change certain things about the plot to keep fans of the book excited and surprised . . . and my character, specifically, was one of the characters whose arc was changed.”
Another character tweak? Our heroes’ on-call physician Dr. Cody, who in the book was a Caucasian man, is played by the great Alfre Woodard. For her part, the Oscar nominee appreciated this macabre story on both a visceral and thematic level. “I was frightened,” she chuckles, reflecting on the first time she screened the movie. “In a lot of films that do horror, you can tell who is the problem. But this . . . I really like that there were young people and children — no one was exempt from coming under the seduction of the vampire. You never know where the danger is coming from.”
What’s more, small town terror is a uniquely chilling proposition. “Usually, these things happen in a metropolitan area,” Woodard continues. “There’s somewhere to go, somewhere to hide, but in a small town there’s no way out. You know everyone, you have history, and that’s the thing that makes it exhilarating . . . [The story] is very community-focused, which makes it alarming because bit by bit the community is compromised. That’s one of the things that was so horrific for me.”
Salem’s Lot, streaming on Crave