Salem's Lot - The Miniseries
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Movie Reviews of Salem's Lot - The Miniseries
Movie Review: Misterious and scary
Summary: 4 Stars
IT is a misterious and scary movie that can scare anyone.
One of Stephen King's best!
The only bad thing about this movie is that it last's too long
but it is one of my favorite and scariest movies.
Movie Review: great modern adaptation
Summary: 4 Stars
I was impressed with the updated take on the original. As an adult, watching the original made me laugh, this definitely brings new life to the story.Movie Review: Such potential
Summary: 3 Stars
Stephen King has not been treated kindly by the movies. For years, his books were turned into films. Most of them bad. None of them on par with the books. This has been remedied in the past few years by the television miniseries, the only format that can do King justice. For while he may be a horror writer, it's King's gift for prose and characterization that makes him shine above others in the genre. The Shining and especially The Stand fared well as miniseries. Now Salem's Lot has been remade. The Tobe Hooper version (also made for TV) was flawed in that it made some unwise changes to the book and had a silly ending but it was genuinely scary. And to that end, this remake largely falls short.
(This review is written from the perspective of someone who has read the book and I assume most viewers will have read it or are familiar with it.)
I don't know why every writer who takes a crack at King has to change plot and character needlessly but it seems they do. This version has far too much setup before anything really happens. Some of the good stuff includes an updated backstory for Ben Mears and a much more sinister history for him with the Marsten house (in this version, he actually witnesses the suicide death of Hubie Marsten instead of only imagining it years later.) This version also includes Dr. Jim Cody and Father Callahan-one of whom was eliminated from the original and the other serving a much truncated role. The Barlow character is also a full-fledged one instead of a speechless Nosferatu that relied on the Straker character (played in the original by James Mason) for a voice and personality.
Alas most of the new material is unnecessary padding and I was largely bored by the first half. For example, a new story line about Dr. Cody having an affair with a patient and getting blackmailed that was not in the book and totally unnecessary. These revisions on the original become particularly annoying when some of the best moments from the book are left out later on or not fully explained. One of the creepiest moments in the novel was when the team breaks into the Marsten House only to find Barlow had already relocated and left them a letter correctly guessing and urbanely threatening each team member. That was completely omitted. They do add a nice touch though with the subsequent discovery of Susan there that I won't reveal.
By failing to stick to the book and venturing out on his own, the screenwriter (Peter Filardi) also introduces a number of noticeable logic gaps. The characters make a point of saying vampires can't enter a home unless they are invited only to have Barlow later do just that without explanation. Later, after their leader is killed the vampires all seem to turn into zombies with one significant exception. While this made for a poignant interaction between two main characters, it made no sense. Certainly many horror films have idiosyncracies and you the viewer must at a certain point just let go and enjoy but the material must rise above them to make this possible. This miniseries was also filmed in Australia and it's evident from the accents of the minor characters that something is amiss as their ill-fitting American accents occassionally slide all over the map. At one point, I wondered if one character had been changed to an Eastern European only to have her accent wander back to New England a few sentences later.
As for the cast, Donald Sutherland is brilliant in an over-the-top performance as the fey yet ominous Straker. He is easily the best part of the movie. Rob Lowe fares well as Ben Mears and Andre Braugher adds gravitas as Matt Burke. I also liked Samantha Mathis-where has she been hiding?-as Susan Norton and Dan Byrd as Mark Petrie, in a role that is closer to the book than the original film. Rutger Hauer was miscast, however, as Barlow in my opinion and as this is such an important part it's yet another flaw that fatally affects the movie. Overall, the second half somewhat redeems the first but this book is still waiting for better treatment.
(This DVD is well-made but contains no extras. Some deleted scenes might go a long ways toward rectifying the plot gaps but as it is the mystery of why this version had to reinvent a perfectly fine wheel will remain unsolved.)
Movie Review: Not great, but not totally bad, either!!!!!
Summary: 3 Stars
I remember trying to watch the newer television version of Salem's Lot when it was first on TNT a few years ago, but it just didn't grab me at the time. I hate watching a mini-series on television that has a ton of commercials. Also, the little bit that I saw of the show didn't appear to be any more chilling or scary than the original version had been. For some strange reason, television and Stephen King simply don't mix very well. Almost everything by King that's been done for television has turned out to be rather mediocre at best. Some of it has been downright awful. That's not to say that I don't own the DVDs of The Stand and The Shining and Nightmares & Dreamscapes. I do. It's just that I seldom watch them, except for maybe "Battleground" in the Nightmares & Dreamscapes series. That was an EXCELLENT adaptation of a Stephen King story. The best that's ever been done for television. I wish the rest of King's stuff that's been done for television was just as good as "Battleground," but it isn't. Which brings me back to Salem's Lot. I found a good price on the DVD and decided to give the movie another chance, but without the commercials. I'm glad I did. Though the mini-series still had its share of problems, I certainly enjoyed it more this time around. Rob Lowe takes over the role of Ben Mears from David Soul, playing a writer who returns to his small hometown to write a book about evil and ends up having to fight it tooth and nail. Rutger Hauer plays the vampire, Barlow, and Donald Sutherland plays his assistant, Straker. Both of them take over the evil Marsten House that overlooks the town of Jerusalem's Lot, and it isn't long before people start disappearing. Andre Braugher and Samantha Mathis play Ben's friends and accomplices in fighting the vampires. James Cromwell plays Father Callahan, the priest who lacks the faith to destroy the evil that's taking over his town. It's been so long since I read the novel that I unable to tell just how well the newer television version actually holds up. I will say that it's difficult to find someone to root for. None of the characters appear to be very likable. Still, the special effects are well done, and both Sutherland and Hauer steal the show with their over the top performances. It's easy to see that both men were enjoying themselves and hamming it up to a certain degree. Rob Lowe does a good job with his character, but David Soul was infinitely a more likable actor in the original series. I liked it that one of the search dogs in the movie was named Cujo, though he wasn't a St. Bernard. The movie runs three hours in length, and the last third is by far the best part, though there is one scene in the middle where a vampire in a jail cell squeezes into a tiny air vent in an attempt to get to Lowe, who's in a cell that's further down the corridor. That was a cool effect! While not a 5-star film, Salem's Lot is definitely not a 1-star movie, either. I am happy that I now have it for my "Stephen King" film library. Last, the DVD doesn't have any extras on it. It would've been nice if there had been an interview with Stephen King and maybe some of the cast and crew, explaining why Salem's Lot was being remade and what they hoped to accomplish with the newer version. No such luck. It's like everyone took the money and ran!!!Movie Review: $25 million dollar 3 hour feature - review
Summary: 3 Stars
tecnical review:
I screened this from the DVD put out by TNT.
the budget on imdb.com says $25,000,000 (estimated) for a TV Movie. Which is considered high-end production on similar level
as HBO original productions. Heck there are many feature film's with a smaller budget that sound better. Take "Thirteen
Ghosts" for example, which had an amazing soundmix for a horror film (budgeted at $20 million for 1/3 less running time).
TNT was only the U.S. distributor, not the company making the film. The production companies The Wolper Organization & Warner
Brothers Television & Coote Hayes Productions in Austrailia cuts corners on the wrong places, like the sound mix on a horror
film, which is what a vampire movie falls under. This genre relies on the sound in a film to sell a film much more so than
being presented in high definition video. Look at "28 Days Later" shot on miniDV video.
The sound for Salem's Lot had rustle over much of the dialogue which meant they were using body lav microphones. Big shows
like The West Wing use them for their long walk and talks, but they also have a wardrobe dept. who sew in the lav mics into
the costumes. If this were a feature film at least some of that would have been ADR'd. The foley was pretty bad too as it
sounded to me like there wasn't any for much of the walking scenes in the film, it was intermittent footsteps.
At least they had a good instrumental soundtrack.
This film was telecined and mastered in high definition video. I thought it was filmed and lit very well.
The American Society of Cinematographers, USA gave 'Salem's Lot' the ASC 2005 Award Nomination for Outstanding Achievement in
Cinematography in Movies of the Week.
the sound mix to be poor in this feature, so much so that I could barely understand the dialogue in many scenes. Watching in
Dolby Digital 5.1 with a surround setup i found dialogue hard to hear for first half of the film. the narration voiceover was
in 5 channels for some reason, but the main dialogue in the center channel was muffled.
While _SOME_ of the scenes in the last third of the film had some decent sound design with directional surround sound, a lot
of the dialogue was just muffled, the reverb in the prison scenes sounded so bad (= fake-sounding modulated voices) like a
preset METAL ROOM on a digital audio workstation was used with bad ADR looping. The sound department certainly had their work
cut out for them and with a budget and a schedule which was not up to the task of a 180 minute feature on a $25 million
budget.
It's up to the sound designer/supervising sound editor/ sound effects editor/designer who create a sound for a horror film to
scare the audiences with the visuals. It's all about the suspense and editing with the picture. A truly collaborative effort more so on a horror film than on a typical drama.
-Byron McCloud