When I was driving drugs for a few years, I was listening to more audiobooks than I had ever before in my life, and was able to revisit Jerusalem's Lot again in anticipation for the release of the new adaptation in the Fall of 2024.
True to form, I read it again, but still haven't gotten around to watching the movie, despite it sitting on My List on HBOMax lo these many months...
'Salem's Lot (1975)
On this re-read, I was struck by how dense this book is. It's certainly not the doorstop that King will release in the '80s (It, The Stand, etc.), but the story just reads slow to me - that's what I had always thought of it since I first read it around the age of 12 and found the mass market paperback on my brother's bookshelf (he in turn had found it on a shelf at Jerome & Shirley's lake cabin - an unlikely find from that source).
Sure, kids die, go knocking on windows of other kids, and people drink and eat dinner and maybe play badminton, but the actual conflict - the battle of The White versus the forces of The Black (or the red? The Crimson?) - takes up very few pages compared with all the rest. I was shocked to re-read the final battle and how quickly it's just done and dusted with Barlow.
Father Callahan is the character I am most familiar with from this novel (thanks to his after story that we learn of in Wolves of the Calla), and I think the most surprising thing to me on this re-read was the fact that the unkind thought he has at one of the Glick boys' funerals is nowhere to be found, even though he reads it in the version of the book that he finds and reads from Calvin Tower's collection.
(8.8.26 - 8.31.26)
'Salem's Lot (2024)
The most striking thing about this adaptation is the pacing. 113 minutes, and the movie dives immediately into the action. Susan and Ben get their meet cute at Crockett's real estate office, where Ben also learns about the purchase of the Marsten House. Susan's father is conveniently killed off, so no 'Meet the Parents' shenanigans necessary. Matt Burke is transformed into an elementary school teacher (of Mark Petrie and The Glicks), so they're all wrapped up in all of it earlier on.
It's a faithful, fun, and elevated modern update for a not-perfect, but still great novel and a classic core horror original adaptation that I have always found lacking. Tobe Hooper's original feels as slow-paced as the novel. One choice that was held over from Hooper's is the fundamental monstrosity of the vampires. In the novel, the transformation is minimal and downplayed, the undead are life-like and the only change noted is their teeth for the most part. Both in Hooper's version and this newer update, the vampires are transformed, glowing eyes and distorted faces, animalized mouths full of sharp teeth.
Perhaps the most significant change (for me) is the death of Father Callahan. He doesn't get the grand showdown (which he loses in the novel) with Barlow, and instead is a mere casualty of the attack on Mark Petrie's house. He isn't afforded the pathetic end of his story, asking the bus driver to buy him a fifth of whiskey and starting on his long road to drunken hobo.
(9.4.26)
