November 17, 1979 may have been the most frightened I have ever been by the filmed medium. My beloved mom and I were in the living room alone, 38 years has muddled the fact of whether or not anyone else was in the house. Chances are, gauging our binary fear, the answer was no. My father was in the hospital for a few nights receiving cancer treatment. At this point in the game, I was unaware of that knowledge, and would be for a couple more months.
That night was CBS' premiere airing of the mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's novel, "Salem's Lot". The film is quite legendary and notorious for being among the most frightening of the made-for-TV medium at the very tail end of a decade famous for it. The 70's small screen gave us "The Night Stalker", "Trilogy of Terror" "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark", and "Bad Ronald", after all.
A little history: Before we had moved to this house, I had vivid memories of a particularly creepy paperback book I saw resting on top of my sister Linda's stack of textbooks at the breakfast table. For those of you younger than 30, please reference here: Textbook. I had been monumentally creeped out by the Salem's Lot cover. It wasn't just the simultaneously innocent and malicious facial expression, but that damned drop of blood that answered the question of which one of those two adjectives should be used to describe the gargoyle-like vampire's face on the paperback's front. (See the title heading of this post for a representation)
I had no idea when it started what we were up against, and the film's director Tobe Hooper (of Texas Chainsaw Massacre infamy) let us know none too quickly. By the opening credits, I was pinned up against the footrest of my Mom's orange recliner as she crocheted nervously. The scene where Geoffrey Lewis and a partner drop off the crate in the Marsten House basement never left my mind. Nothing particularly evil happens through the bulk of the scene, and it seems to go on forever, but I'm still creeped out by it as much as the much more notorious scenes in the film.
Then the Glick bastard disappears, starts hanging outside of windows of friends and family in a terribly unnatural way, and by night two, BARLOW makes his presence known in another poor kid's kitchen. At that point, my Mom and I, both holding on to our heroic dog Ginger, were glued to this story and to the floor/recliner. Smart? Nope. This was terrifying... but we both loved a good story. A trait all of us kids inherited from Mom. The subject of both the book and the movie come up in family discussions to this day. I for one, won't forget my Mom and I's monumental battle against Stephen King's goddamned imagination.
I just watched Salem's Lot during the Halloween Season last fall and it holds up remarkably well despite some dated clothing and hairstyles. David Soul plays a great tortured soul (Do you believe a thing can be inherently evil?), a young Bonnie Bedelia as his paramour, and Lance Kerwin, who was a TV star at the time on a show called "James at 15", whose star was soon to fade, rounded out the cast. Bedelia was amazing on the recent dramedy, Parenthood that just finished its run on NBC. It appears her career actually outlasted the others, who were much bigger stars at the time.
The Lot means a lot (pun intended) to me. The affore-mentioned Linda left a yellow copy of "The Shining" laying around that I read over the course of a couple of weeks in late 1982. I really loved this Stephen King guy! Even at 11 years old. My Mom, very excited by how I had taken to reading, bagged up a bunch of her old paperbacks and drove me down to a now-legendary store in Kenosha, WI. called The Paperback Exchange. Not as much a bookstore as a trade-in library, the place's selection was incredible. I traded in those donated novels of my Mom's into a stack of Stephen King's work. The Dead Zone, The Stand, Night Shift, Firestarter, and of course, Salem's Lot, among others. The book still packed a mean punch when I finally read it in the summer of 1983.
Linda sparked the fire, my Ma stoked it, and I couldn't have been happier. Talk about support and encouragement! That's how it's done. Of course, Stephen King is one of the most famous novelists of all time, and is experiencing a bit of a renaissance as we speak, but back then, when he was just starting to exercise his dominance, I was all in.
And in a late fall evening of 1979, his work crossed media avenues to attack my unexpecting mother and myself, and I'll never forget it.
And I'll always be grateful for it.
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