Friday Fiction: Salem’s Lot, 1979 TV Miniseries, Based On A Novel By Stephen King

With Halloween fast approaching, I tried to think of something scary to review. So I thought, what is scary to me? One image, one scene, immediately came to mind.

Danny Glick.

A lot of you won’t know this reference, but my fellow Gen X-ers probably will. Poor little Danny Glick, floating outside that window.

I am talking about the 1979 TV miniseries, Salem’s Lot. That scene. You know the one. Danny Glick floating outside his friend’s second-story window, scratching at the glass. No words, just that strident, thumping music that increased in volume and intensity.

Those of us at that certain age have this scene engraved on our psyche. We didn’t have VCR’s or the internet. Before this movie, the creepiest thing we saw on TV was the monster-of-the-week on Scooby-Doo! Horror fans today might consider this scene mild, but you must remember - I was ten years old, sitting in front of my television in the dark. This was true horror!

This scene alone is why I can’t stand my curtains to be open at night. I can’t sleep unless they are fully drawn!

Based on a Stephen King novel and directed by Tobe Hooper (who also directed Poltergeist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), it had to be scary.  This 2-part miniseries focused on writer Ben Mears returning to his small hometown of Jerusalem’s Lot, only to find the town slowly being taken over by vampires. Don’t you just hate when that happens?

Mears comes back to town to write about the abandoned mansion named Marsten House. The house is a classic horror trope – looming on a hill overlooking the town, its builder, Hubie Marsten, murdered his wife and then killed himself. Rumors swirled after the tragedy, linking Marsten with missing children and dark art rituals.

The house has been abandoned for decades but doesn’t stay empty for long. A mysterious figure named Kurt Barlow sends his assistant to buy the house. We don’t see Barlow for a long time, adding to his mystique. Townspeople, even children, begin to disappear. Mears and a small band of renegades band together to rid the town of this evil.

This is not a slasher/gory/fast tempo scarefest. Hooper instead goes the creepy route. Eerie lighting and lots of fog invoke that Gothic atmosphere of dread.  The music keeps you unsettled, matching the slow tempo and gradual increase in terror. It’s just enough to keep you on edge.

Loosely based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Stephen King was teaching a writing course when he had the thought – what would happen if this classic tale was relocated to modern-day Maine? He takes the medieval castles and Victorian ideals of the original novel and trades them for the small-town mentality of rural America. By doing this, his story was able to incorporate the suffocation you can experience in a small town. Hooper translated this cloying sensation perfectly to his adaptation.

If you are looking for something different than Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees or Billy the Puppet, I highly recommend both the book and movie Salem’s Lot.

The book is available on Amazon in Kindle format, paperback, and audiobook (If you are lucky, also at yard sales! Just last month I found a near-mint paperback for 50 cents!). The 1979 series is available for rent on Apple TV, Prime Video, YouTube, and Fandango at Home. According to Google, you can watch it for free with ads on the Roku Channel and Tubi. I might have to revisit this old favorite.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to close my curtains. I don’t care if it is 8:00 in the morning!

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Cammi Woodall is a daughter, sister, friend, reader, and writer. She spends her time writing about battlefields, strong-minded princesses, royal court intrigue, and fantastical magic. Her free time is caught up in the stories of Stephen King, Leigh Bardugo, Dean Koontz, and Sarah J. Maas. Cammi enjoys sharing her love of stories and hopes to encourage readers to branch out and try new genres.