Salem's Lot (2004 miniseries)

Salem's Lot
Based on	'Salem's Lot  by Stephen King
Screenplay by	Peter Filardi
Directed by	Mikael Salomon
Starring	Rob Lowe Andre Braugher Donald Sutherland Samantha Mathis Rutger Hauer James Cromwell Robert Mammone Dan Byrd
Theme music composer	Christopher Gordon Lisa Gerrard
Original language(s)	English
No. of episodes	2
Production
Producer(s)	Jeffrey M. Hayes Brett Popplewell Marc van Buuren Mark Wolper
Running time	181 minutes
Release
Original network	TNT
Original release	June 20 – June 21, 2004

Salem's Lot is a 2004 American two-part television mini-series which first aired on TNT on June 20 & 21, 2004. It is the second television adaptation of Stephen King's 1975 vampire novel of the same name (the first version was made in 1979).

Although the novel and original miniseries were both set in the 1970s, this version updates the story to take place in the 2000s. The story is still set in a small Maine town, but the mini-series was actually shot on location at Creswick and Woodend, in Central Victoria, Australia.

Plot summary

The story opens with Ben Mears attacking the priest Donald Callahan in a homeless shelter in Detroit. They fall together from a high window into the street. In the hospital, Ben tells his story and the reasons behind his fight with the priest to an orderly.

Ben, a successful writer, returns to his hometown, Jerusalem's Lot (also known as 'Salem's Lot), intending to write a novel while he deals with the demons of his past. He tells Susan Norton (a waitress and former art student whom he has befriended), that when he was a child in the town he accepted a dare to enter the house of Hubie Marsten. Local legend said that there was something evil about the house and its owner, suggesting that he murdered children. The night he went into the house, Ben overheard Marsten begging for his life before seemingly committing suicide. Ben believes that he also heard Marsten's last victim crying for help, but Ben was too afraid to find or help him. Now Ben planned to rent the house to bring catharsis to himself and to gather material for his novel, but he discovers that it has recently been sold by Larry Crockett to a pair of antique dealers, Richard Straker and Kurt Barlow.

Shortly thereafter, the dark secrets of the town's residents begin to emerge. Crockett is an immoral businessman who is sexually abusing his teenage daughter Ruth. When she spends time with a disabled man named Dud Rodgers whom Crockett employs, Crockett fires him. Eva Prunier, who runs the boarding house where Ben stays, played evil games with Hubie Marsten when they were teenagers. Charlie Rhodes, the school bus driver, is a bully who loves to torment the children he transports, forcing those he doesn't like to walk home. Trailer park residents Roy and Sandy McDougall physically abuse their baby and then blackmail Dr. Jimmy Cody after he begins having an affair with Sandy. Soon after newcomers Straker and Barlow arrive, a local child named Ralphie Glick is murdered. His brother Danny then sickens and dies after being visited by Ralphie, who has now been turned into a vampire. Barlow meets Dud Rodgers one night and offers him a chance to be free of his physical disability, which he accepts. Barlow then vampirizes him. Laborer Mike Ryerson buries Danny after his funeral, then also gets sick and dies. He returns from the grave (complete with autopsy scars) as a vampire to tempt gay high school teacher Matt Burke, who repels him but suffers a heart attack. Ben's blossoming relationship with Susan causes jealousy with her old boyfriend Floyd Tibbits. However, Floyd is bitten by Dud Rodgers and slowly becomes a vampire himself. After starting a fight with Ben, Floyd and Ben spend the night in jail for causing an affray, and Floyd uses his new supernatural abilities to crawl through the ventilation shaft to Ben's cell to taunt him. Horrified, Ben refuses to allow him to enter his cell and Floyd is found dead in his own cell the following morning, having chewed open his own wrists in an attempt to drink his own blood. Ben is persuaded by the mounting evidence that the town is plagued by vampires. Meanwhile, Susan and schoolboy Mark Petrie are captured by Straker when they break into the Marsten house. Mark later escapes but Susan is taken down to the cellar to meet Barlow. Ben and his allies, Dr. Jimmy Cody, Father Donald Callahan, and Mark Petrie begin acting as vampire hunters. In the Marsten house, they find Straker's body mysteriously hanging from the rafters, much like Hubie Marsten's was decades earlier. They then begin destroying the sleeping vampires in the cellar, but Ben is horrified to discover Susan has now become a victim. Instead of destroying her, Ben intends to find and destroy Barlow (who is no longer at the house) in the hopes that Susan might be restored upon his destruction.

The survivors face their own psychological demons as the vampires continue to multiply. After Barlow kills Mark's mother, Father Callahan tries to save Mark by confronting Barlow by himself, but finds his religious faith is not strong enough. Callahan is forced to drink Barlow's blood, turning Callahan into Barlow's servant. Larry Crockett, who invited the vampire to the town in the first place, sees his daughter willingly join the vampiric Dud Rodgers in the night. Most of all, Ben still wrestles with his own guilt and personal failures. The town's ranking police officer, Sheriff Parkins, also discovers what is going on in Salem's Lot and decides to leave rather than help to destroy the vampires.

In the hospital, Matt Burke is murdered by the now evil Father Callahan. Ben, Jimmy and Mark deduce that Barlow must be hiding at the boarding house, but as they arrive there, Jimmy is killed by a booby trap in the cellar. Ben and Mark finally manage to destroy Barlow, but not before he taunts Ben, likening Ben to himself as another parasite who preys on the tragedies of others. To Ben's dismay, destroying Barlow has not saved Susan who arrives at the house still a vampire. To tempt him, she tells him that the boy he failed to rescue all those years ago in the Marsten house was already dead, and Ben was therefore never to blame. But when Susan turns to attack Mark, Ben is forced to destroy her with a wooden stake. Ben and Mark then go and set the Marsten House alight, and during a chase with Charlie Rhodes the school bus driver, who was vampirized by the town's children, a gas station is damaged and goes up in flames. As the fires begin to spread throughout the town, Callahan vows revenge against Ben as the town's now vampirized population flock to him as their leader.

As Ben concludes his story, the orderly is deeply moved and frightened by the story, then realizes that Ben wasn't acting alone. The orderly looks in on Father Callahan, but finds him dead, suffocated with a pillow. While he is absent, Mark slips into Ben's room and tells him that the vampire hunt is now over. Ben suffers a cardiac arrest. The orderly finds Mark at a locked exit to the hospital but decides to let him go. Doctors struggle to keep Ben alive as he begins to pass away, finally at peace.

Cast

Main

• Rob Lowe as Ben Mears
• Andre Braugher as Matt Burke
• Donald Sutherland as Richard Straker
• Samantha Mathis as Susan Norton
• Rutger Hauer as Kurt Barlow
• James Cromwell as Father Callahan

Supporting

• Robert Mammone as Dr. Jimmy Cody
• Dan Byrd as Mark Petrie
• Andy Anderson as Charlie Rhodes
• Robert Grubb as Larry Crockett
• Steven Vidler as Sheriff Parkins
• Brendan Cowell as Dud Rogers
• Christopher Morris as Mike Ryerson
• Todd MacDonald as Floyd Tibbits
• Paul Ashcroft as Royce McDougall
• André De Vanny as Danny Glick
• Zac Richmond as Ralphie Glick
• Bree Desborough as Sandy McDougall
• Elizabeth Alexander as Ann Norton
• Julia Blake as Eva Prunier
• Martin Vaughan as Ed "Weasel" Craig
• Betty Bobbitt as Nurse (uncredited)

King casting connections

Samantha Mathis, Christopher Morris and Martin Vaughan also appeared in Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King, written by Peter Filardi.

Rob Lowe played Nick Andros in the TV adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand.

Andre Braugher appeared as Brent Norton in the film adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist.

James Cromwell played Warden Hal Moores in The Green Mile.

Dan Byrd played Paul in the Stephen King sequel Firestarter 2: Rekindled.

Differences from the book

• In the novel, Ben Mears is a writer of fiction who tells the story of Jerusalem's Lot to a priest in Mexico. In this adaptation, he is a war correspondent/journalist who writes non-fiction, tells his story to a doctor in a hospital and begins to die at the end.
• In the novel, Hubie Marsten was a Satan-worshipping gangster from Boston who committed unnamed atrocities in his house in the 1930s. Ben Mears saw a vision of the undead Marsten when he went inside the Marsten house as a boy. In this adaptation, Marsden is alive when Mears is a youth, and Mears overhears Marsden committing a murder and then committing suicide.
• In the novel, Susan Norton is a college graduate with an art degree and a budding artist living at home, and is not employed. In this adaptation, she is still an art graduate but is working as a waitress in her mother's cafe.
• In the novel, Mark Petrie is 12 years old and still in the sixth grade. He is a nice, studious boy who just moved to 'Salem's Lot. In this adaptation, he is in his mid-teens and is a troubled delinquent.
• In the novel, Straker is bald, physically slight but immensely powerful, and courtly. In this adaptation, he is white-haired, heavily bearded and stockily built.
• In the novel, Eva Miller is a widow who has no relationship to Hubie Marsten. In this adaptation, she is called Eva Prunier who inadvertently assisted Marsten when she was younger.
• In the novel, Larry Crockett is a loving father to Ruthie, and the hunchbacked Dud Rogers secretly lusts for her. In this adaptation, it is implied that Crockett commits incest with his daughter and Dud Rogers is Ruthie's gentle-souled friend.
• In the novel, Father Callahan is a kind-hearted, alcoholic priest struggling with his faith. When Mark Petrie is captured by Barlow, Father Callahan challenges the vampire to a test of faith. Barlow lets Mark go, Callahan loses the battle of wills, and Callahan is forced to drink Barlow's blood. His faith broken and his body now "unclean" so that he cannot enter a church, he then just leaves town a broken man (knowing that everyone else is likely to die). In this adaptation, the character of Callahan remains the same but he becomes Barlow's living servant and stays in 'Salem's Lot to rally the vampires after Ben and Mark flee the town. Ben hunts him down and the story opens with their final struggle.
• In the novel, Matt Burke is a white male who dies in the hospital of a heart attack and never joins the vampire hunt. In this adaptation, he is an African American (and implied that he is gay) who joins the hunt in the town, suffers a heart attack but is killed by Father Callahan in his hospital bed.
• In the novel, after Susan Norton is vampirized she appears at Mark's window one night. Ben Mears kills her while she sleeps during the day in the basement of the Marsten House. In this adaptation, Susan becomes a vampire slightly earlier, and Ben kills her outside Eva's boarding house at the end of the story as she is about to attack Mark.
• In the novel, Larry Crockett never realizes there are vampires in 'Salem's Lot. He dies near the end of the story in his office, apparently having been repeatedly bitten by his vampiric daughter, Ruthie. In this adaptation, Crockett tries to commit suicide but is saved by Ben and Dr Cody, but is killed at the end by the whole town of vampires when they consume his flesh.
• In the novel, Ben and Mark drive away after killing Barlow, and go to live in Mexico. It is a year before they go back to the town, after reading in a Maine newspaper about strange disappearances in the 'Salem's Lot area. Ben and Mark then set fire to the woods, knowing the fire will spread and destroy the town. Knowing that, without their leader Barlow, the remaining vampires will be more vulnerable and Ben and Mark intend to hunt the rest of the vampires over the coming months and years. In this adaptation, Ben sets fire to the Marsten house (with the wind blowing the fire towards town) before he and Mark depart, ensuring that the vampires will have no place to hide when the sun comes up. They never return to the town.
• In the novel, Dr. Jimmy Cody is a likeable doctor with no backstory. In this adaptation, he is being blackmailed because he is sleeping with another man's wife.
• In the novel, Parkins Gillespie is the town constable, and Homer McCaslin is the county sheriff. In this adaptation, Parkins is the county sheriff and there is no constable.

See also

• Vampire film

External links

• Salem's Lot at the Internet Movie Database
• Salem's Lot at Rotten Tomatoes
• Online Review of the DVD with screencaps
• Official Website
• Another review with pictures