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Author
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Topic: "Salem's Lot" - 2004
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Ron Yost
Master Film Handler
Posts: 344
From: Paso Robles, CA
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 06-18-2004 12:04 PM
There is a new 'miniseries' of Stephen King's "Salem's Lot" airing this sunday and monday on TNT that may be better than most of what's in theatres at present, sad to say:
Possible SPOILERS ahead!
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Maine, the Land of Vacations and Vampires
By Virginia Heffernan
Published: June 18, 2004
Copyright 2004, The New York Times Company
"New England is an ideal setting for horror stories, offering, among its many macabre charms, creaky houses, churchyards, shotguns, three dismal seasons and the periodically uneasy coexistence of Protestants, Roman Catholics and skeptics. In the years since Stephen King of Maine came to preside over horror in fiction and film, it has become difficult to imagine that any other region of the United States could frighten us so profoundly.
Sunday night, on the first installment of "Salem's Lot," a TNT mini-series based on Mr. King's vampire novel of the same title, Maine's fearsome qualities are in full, dark bloom, despite the film's having been shot in Melbourne, Australia. "Salem's Lot" represents the abundant vision of Mikael Salomon, the Danish director and cinematographer, who has evidently lavished attention on his storyboards.
The chiaroscuro tableaus, both indoors and out, are appointed with evidence of decay, including cinder-dusted antiques and rusty farm machines. Some of that equipment seems — as tractors in New England often do — spiritually tired out from trying to till such ungenerous and stony land. The most memorable scenes here take place in a vast landfill, seen almost exclusively at night; the gray-white expanse is a masterpiece of putrefaction whose alien appearance suggests a ghostly modern Stonehenge.
This "Salem's Lot" is a significant improvement on the undistinguished 1979 mini-series starring David Soul, and it ought to please the many fans of Mr. King's 1975 novel. The special effects here, including the physiognomic morphing that is the sine qua non of recent horror movies, has an unholy smoothness. Scenes of crouched beings scurrying across ceilings will excite wonder and fear and not ridicule, as analogous images in the earlier movie did.
The script of "Salem's Lot" does justice to the mini-series's effects. This new adaptation, by Peter Filardi ("The Craft," "Flatliners"), wisely revises the real-world menaces that cast a shadow over the characters in the novel. References to war crimes in Vietnam have been replaced with references to crimes during the nation's recent wars. Likewise, the drug that the Salem's Lot locals fear is ecstasy, not the hallucinogens of the 1970's. In a movie full of hospital scenes, the medical details are scrupulously rendered. (The bloodstreams of the locals are in danger.)
Another seemingly minor sorrow of contemporary life has been tapped for its scary implications. This is what might be called the "Antiques Roadshow" tragedy, and it's acute in New England, occurring at the moment that you discover that a family treasure, renowned in your household for its provenance or craftsmanship, is worth almost nothing to the rest of the world.
When the marvelously sinister antiques dealer Richard Straker (Donald Sutherland) — who does brisk business on the Internet, we're told — offers to pay a woman $60 for a letter box hand-carved by her father, her disappointment amplifies a strain of suffering that has long interested Mr. King. A family's greatest possessions often have little value independent of the family that created them.
For a film so centered on a place, "Salem's Lot" also has a strong — and enormous — cast, beginning with Rob Lowe as Ben Mears, a writer who has come home to Salem's Lot to write about it. Mr. Lowe has talked of dimming his prettiness for the role, and he's pulled it off; he's become the hoary writer that Johnny Depp became in "Secret Window," and that Jack Nicholson became in "The Shining."
Superbly ominous performances also come from Rutger Hauer and James Cromwell, who is so credible as a villain that he may never play a twinkly-eyed farmer again. Andre Braugher and Samantha Mathis thrive in roles with less moral definition. That their characters — Matt Burke, an English teacher, and Susan Norton, a love interest — come to underwritten ends ought not to be seen as a reflection on their work.
Instead, the hasty way the movie is resolved (the problem ending has been revised but is still senseless and unsatisfying) calls attention to this genre's great flaw. The interest of a horror movie lasts for seven-eighths of it, while suspense mounts and credulity deepens. When it's over, however — when you must re-enter a universe in which the dead no longer rise to suck blood — there's nothing to do but turn on the lights. And those house lights don't work very well in Stephen King's Maine."
SALEM'S LOT
TNT, Sunday and Monday nights at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time
Directed by Mikael Salomon; written by Peter Filardi; Mark M. Wolper and Jeffrey Hayes, executive producers; Brett Popplewell, producer. Based on the novel by Stephen King.
WITH: Rob Lowe (Ben Mears), Andre Braugher (Matt Burke), Donald Sutherland (Richard Straker), Samantha Mathis (Susan Norton), Robert Mammone (Dr. James Cody), Dan Byrd (Mark Petrie) Rutger Hauer (Kurt Barlow) and James Cromwell (Father Donald Callahan).
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Ron Yost -- looking forward to this one, and seeing Samantha Mathis and Donald Sutherland (two of my faves) again. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Didn't know if this belongs here or in The Afterlife. Sorry if I chose the wrong forum.
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