For this year’s 31 Nights of Horror Challenge, the Day 16 prompt is First Time Watch. We watched the movie, Salems Lot on Max.

Storyline

Ben Mears, a writer who spent part of his childhood in Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine, also known as ‘Salem’s Lot, has returned after 25 years to write a book about the long-abandoned Marsten House, where he had a bad experience as a child. He soon discovers that an ancient evil has also come to town and is turning the residents into vampires. He vows to stop the plague of undead and save the town.

Our Thoughts on Salems Lot (2024)

This was not a bad movie but I had high expectations. Unlike a lot of people I enjoy the remakes of Stephen King’s books and some of my favorite stories are his movies. That being said I liked the 1970s version of this remake much better. Sure it had all of the glitz of today’s production but it just felt rushed. I was also a bit bummed they did not keep the iconic front teeth of the vampires too.  

6 out of 10

Trivia 

Writer Gary Dauberman told Den of Geek in June 2019 that his goal with the new version of Salem’s Lot is to make vampires frightening again. He wants to get away from the sexier, more romanticized undead that have infested pop culture for much of the past quarter century, thanks to everything from Interview with the Vampire to Twilight to The Vampire Diaries.

This is the fourth Stephen King adaptation that William Sadler has starred in – The Shawshank Redemption (1994) as Heywood, The Green Mile (1999) as Klaus Detterick, The Mist (2007) as Jim Grondin and Salem’s Lot (2024) as Constable Parkins Gillespie.

The two films showing at the Drive-in are “The Drowning Pool” at 7pm and “Night Moves” at 9pm. Both films were released in 1975, the same year the original novel was published.

As Ben drives through the town during and just after the opening credits, he drives by the town mechanic’s shop, where there is a red 1958 Plymouth Fury being worked on, the same car from “Christine”.