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Lunch » Tags » Movie » Reviews » Salem's Lot - The Miniseries (2004)

Salem's Lot - The Miniseries (2004)

1 rating: 3.0

Horror and Television movie directed by Mikael Salomon

The vampiric Stephen King tale returns to the small screen, 25 years after the first made-for-TVSalem's Lot, a Tobe Hooper-directed ratings hit. This time it's Rob Lowe as a successful writer who returns to his haunted hometown. As a kid, something awful … see full wiki

Tags: Movie

Cast: Rob Lowe, Donald Sutherland, Robert Mammone, Andre Braugher, Samantha Mathis

Director: Mikael Salomon

1 review about Salem's Lot - The Miniseries (2004)

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A Modern Re-make

Feb 5, 2005

by tomtom13
posted in Movie Hype

Rating:

'SALEM'S LOT first aired on TNT in 2004. The budget for the two part miniseries was equal to that of a major motion picture and the look and feel of the film seems like a movie, not a television miniseries. Despite having been published around 25 years agao, the book that the movie is based upon remains one of Stephen King's most popular works.

'SALEM'S LOT is King's examination of what would happen if Dracula came to America. Author Ben Mears (Rob Lowe) returns to his hometown of Jerusalem's Lot, commonly known as Salem's Lot, to get some privacy and work on his latest book. Around the same time that Ben returns home, an antique dealer purchases an infamous house on the hill overlooking town for his "employer". A few days later strange events begin happening. A boy named Danny Glick disappears. A dog is impaled on the fence surrounding the community's graveyard. Danny Glick's body is found but looking not quite like Danny. The events quickly esculate until Ben and a small group of others realize that Dracula is in 'Salem's Lot and if they don't do something fast, no one will escape alive.

The movie changes several things from the original novel. However, a movie and a book are not the same things and overall the movie stays true to the spirit of the novel. My only complaint is what ends up happening to Father Callahan. Salem's Lot was one of the few books that Stephen King ever considered writing a sequel to, mostly because of Father Callahan. He later decided against it, but Father Callahan didn't disappear and has a major role to play in the Dark Tower series.

There have been a lot of comparisons of this movie with the made-for-tv 1979 version that was directed by Tobe Hooper. There really isn't much of a comparison. The 1979 version gains points for effort, but that's about it. Overall, the 1979 version is a mess of bad acting, bad writing, bad lighting and sets, and cheesy "special effects". That film does not hold up well and is nowhere near suspenseful, let alone frightening. This version holds up much better and though it makes more changes to the original storyline, this version flows much better, has better writing, excellent acting, and good special effects. It's a modern re-make made right.

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