Salem's Lot (1979)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1979
	Director: Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre)
	Actors: David Soul (Starsky & Hutch TV-series), James Mason, Lance Kerwin, Bonnie Bedelia (Die Hard), Fred Willard (This is Spinal Tap), Geoffrey Lewis (The Devil's Rejects)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Horror, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 10.08.2014, DVD, 11" computer screen.
Synopsis: Ben Mears (Soul) comes back to his birth town to write a book about a house he believes to be haunted. Meanwhile a mysterious couple of antique-dealers moved into town and acquired that same house.
Review: I bought the double DVD of this 3-hour long TV-film after reading a review of the recent movie treating of a similar topic, or at least referring to a town with a similar name: The Lords of Salem by Rob Zombie. Although the town of Salem's Lot (short for Jerusalem's Lot as I learned while watching the movie) is fictional, the real town of Salem is famous for having been the place of a witch hunt (the real ones, not the communists) that led to the immolation of many innocent women at the end of the 18th century. Also there was a retrospective about the director Tobe Hooper at the MotelX Horror Film Festival in 2013. He is renowned for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Poltergeist (1982) but unfortunately has not been much present in the cinema world since then. I wrote unfortunately because I love the director's work on Salem's Lot: cameras are always framing perfectly the elements that guide the viewer's eye, even when in motion, for example a close-up of one character's back rotates around him to reveal another character behind him, and then closes up on that character's face, all without any cut. The camera movement in some shots are so good that they must be used as teaching material in cinema schools. Any cinema enthusiast should watch this movie for that reason only. Salem's Lot is adapted from a successful novel by Stephen King, and I read about it in a special edition of the Mad Movies magazine dedicated to the author, which was my third motivation to watch the TV-film. You can recognize the style of King in the story taking place in a small Midwest town, in which a character comes back after years of absence, and evil slowly setting up to conquer the place. It actually reminded me of his recent Under the Dome (which was adapted into a TV-series). I could also recognize the talent of the author in some very well-written lines of dialog, like when someone tells the hero that it is a bit early in the year for an outsider to visit the town, and he replies that he is not an outsider (then cut). Salem's Lot as a style quite typical of the 70's-80's (including the music) which could be criticized, but that I enjoy a lot. Some characters seem out of place, like the cheating realty agent or the ex-boyfriend, but that's also part of the King's style (also the fact that SPOILER they all eventually die). Anyway, the excellent actors make you forget the weaknesses of their characters ; I particularly liked James Mason, Fred Willard, Geoffrey Lewis and of course David Soul in a perfectly fitting role. I realize I forgot to mention the scares, which are few throughout the movie but very efficiently made. No blu-ray edition of the movie exists. I started to watch the DVD on my home cinema but stopped after 5 minutes because the TV format made it look too cheap. It looked much better on a smaller screen and once the visual aspect forgotten, I could realize the other qualities that make it as good or often much better than other horror productions intended for the big screen.
Rating: 8 /10