Salem’s Lot

When the sun sets…that’s when the show starts,’ comments Susan Norton (Makenzie Leigh) to Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) at a drive-in screening of thrillers Night Moves and The Drowning Pool in writer/director Gary Dauberman’s adaptation of Stephen King’s game-changing vampire novel, originally published in 1975. It’s been the subject of a legendary tv adaptation, three hours long but cut to feature-length for European release (but not in the UK where the series went out on the BBC in Sept 1981). Larry Cohen did a meh sequel, and there was another mini-series with Rob Lowe in 2004. None of these ventures are particularly true to the book, so with King as executive producer, this much-delayed version hit UK cinemas this week, yet goes exclusively to streaming on HBOMax in the US. That’s a strange strategy, because this Lot is way better fare than duds like the recent Firestarter reboot, and this would almost certainly have cleaned up at the thrill-hungry US box-office in the wake of the Joker folly…..