An obsessive phase...

I think I'm having one at the moment. They are periods in my life where I focus my viewing and reading on one particular thing. They vary from a more casual three or four week kind of thing before I move on (which is what the current one is) to a complete obsession that I spend months on. Previous subjects have included spending all my spare time re-reading my favourite Clive Barker novels (which means pretty much all of them), or re-watching my favourite Brian DePalma films one after the other. Yes, I'm a big re-watcher of films - I've seen a lot of my favourites dozens of times. Anyway, currently I'm going through a vampire phase. Sparked of course, by my re-reading of Dracula. Since picking that book up again, I've watched the 1979 film, the 1977 mini-series, and many clips from both 1922 and 1979 versions of Nosferatu as well as Francis Coppola's 1992 film on YouTube. I've also watched bits of Interview With the Vampire.

My reading was sent in a different direction - after Dracula, I've had a hankering for Victorian gothic, which had me re-reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and now H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man. Reading these could send me back to the early films of Angela Lansbury, 1930s Universal horror films, or Paul Verhoeven's film Hollow Man. Which will in turn, send my reading in another direction, and the circle of life keeps turning.

Anyway, my vampire phase intersected with my brief interest in James Mason and I inevitably ended up pulling out the DVD of Tobe Hooper's 1979 mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's novel 'Salem's Lot. A theatrical cut down of the film was distributed to international territories in 1979, and I loved the look of it and wanted to go see it. Of course, I was nine years old and it would have scared the crap out of me and scarred me for life, so my mother quite sensibly did not allow me to go see it. I was, however, allowed to read the book. I remember finishing reading it and immediately turning back to page one and starting again. I devoured that book. It was funny, I gave it to mum to read when I was done and then my teacher at school, and no one really said anything about my tender brain being exposed to Stephen King at his very best.

I had two years of recurring vampire nightmares from reading 'Salem's Lot, but I was kind of hooked on the primal thrill of a really good scare by then. When the mini-series in it's complete form aired on Australian television in (I think) 1983, I loved it. It had all the kids at school talking about it - lots of "did you see?" and "what about..." 

It was a big ratings hit in Australia - the network broadcasting it ran a repeat screening the following year, and again the year after that. It was a period of two years where I was pleading with my parents to buy a VCR, as I wanted to start taping stuff. When our first VCR finally arrived (it's funny, I remember that VCR as clearly as if I'd seen it this morning) we were too late to miss the repeats of Salem's Lot. I had to wait until it became available to buy from Warner Home Video on VHS, which was sometime in the 1990s, before I got to see it again. I remember the first time I saw this film as an adult, I found it cheesy and dated. I never really watched it again until the price of the DVD dropped enough for to finally say "oh, alright". I blame the highbrow and dismissive company I was in when I first re-watched it for my former judgement, as this time I found Salem's Lot to be extremely effective. I used to dislike the lack of fidelity to the novel, but now I enjoy the way the screenplay by Paul Monash plays fast and loose with the novel, conflating characters and re-ordering events in a similar fashion to many of the various stage and screen adaptations of Dracula.

I won't go into comparing the mini-series and the novel even though I've done a bit of that sort of thing on this blog. I actually do believe a film should stand apart from any source text, and be judged on it's own merits. That said, this small town of 'Salem's Lot, with petty, grasping characters played by the likes of Kenneth McMillan, Fred Willard, and George Dzundza, is recognisably the world Stephen King created. I fell in love with Bonnie Bedelia, girl-next-door pretty until the final scene, where she is transformed into a vision of Gothic seduction. James Mason's sneering and disdainful Richard K. Straker and Reggie Nalder's growling Nosferatu faced monster leave strong impressions. And the sequences with the boy vampires floating outside the window, scratching at the glass and pleading to be let in, are unforgettable. It's strong stuff - I can't imagine anything being scarier than this for a 1979 television production. Special shoutouts to contact lens specialist Dr. Morton Greenspoon, Harry Sukman for his scary Emmy nominated score, and production designer Mort Rabinowitz for the Marsten house, represented by a Psycho inspired facade on location and a sensational interior set which easily gets my vote as the best ever decrepit old house of evil.