Long before "True Blood" or "Twilight" brought vampires to small-town America, horror writer Stephen King imagined the creatures invading his backyard in rural Maine (technically, a fictional place called Jerusalem's Lot).

Salem’s Lot Review - The Salem’s Lot 2024 film offers a blend of horror and humor, but can it live up to the iconic 1979 miniseries?

Stephen King's novel Salem's Lot is about a classical vampire in a small American town. So why do the adaptations make the vampire Barlow into just a beast?

"Shouldn’t we all stay together?" says 11-year-old vampire hunter (and comfortably the best character) Mark Petrie (Jordan Preston Carter). The response he gets — "There’s no time. Half an hour until sunset!" — is nonsensical enough to be almost enraging.

Salem’s Lot is one of Stephen King’s best books, and though Tobe Hooper’s 1979 TV miniseries adaptation is an uneven creature of the night, it features one scene—of a young vampire trying to gain entry into a friend’s home via a second-floor bedroom window—that’s the stuff of nightmares.

Despite Stephen King’s prodigious output of fiction and the 50-odd movie adaptations of his work, he remains a tough nut to translate. The argument could be made that the only filmmakers to capture the delicious dread lying under the skin of the creepier King story have been Brian De Palma (“Carrie”) and Stanley Kubrick (“The Shining”),

It and Annabelle’s Gary Dauberman says his love of Stephen King, The Conjuring, and great vampire movies like Lost Boys informed his new movie, streaming on Max.

Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device Stephen King has shared his enthusiasm about the upcoming Salem's Lot adaptation in the best way possible.