So I’ve just been watching the “World Premier” of Salem’s Lot which has been on TNT at least 15 times in the last few weeks. Anyway, I haven’t read the book, and I missed a couple of scenes, so I was hoping someone could clear a few things up for me.
It seems clear that some minor plot points from the book are glossed over in the movie. But the ending is somewhat confusing to me.
It appears that Ben Mears (Rob Lowe) is in the hospital relating the events of the movie to a staffer. At the very end he says something and the dude runs out of the room to where Mark Petrie (Dan Byrd) is apparently. There he finds someone who appears to have been suffocated with his heart monitor attached to someone else. Then Mark escapes the hospital because the staffer lets him out saying ‘I don’t believe it, I can’t believe it’ or some such.
So my questions are:
[spoiler]Was Mark a vampire? When was he transformed? Why was he cooperating with killing off Barlow the whole time?
What was the deal with Straker (Donald Sutherland)? He was the one who had to be “invited” into the town, but there are several obvious scenes where his reflection is visible in a mirror, so I’m assuming he wasn’t a vampire at all.[/spoiler]
I assume that these questions are elaborated more in the book. I was wondering if anyone who had read the book could clear things up for me.
That wasn’t just anyone. That was Father Callahan. Remember at the beginning of the movie, when Mears finds Callahan in a soup kitchen and tries to kill him? They both went to the same hospital, and then Mark just finished the job that Mears started.
[spoiler]Mark was never a vampire. He just wanted to kill Callahan because Callahan had been working with the vampires by the end of the movie.
Straker wasn’t a vampire either, he was Barlow’s “attendant”. In other words, a human loyal to the vampires. At the end of the movie, Father Callahan was in the same boat.[/spoiler]
Actually, there were some significant plot differences between the movie and the book, mostly in the second half.
In the movie, the vampire hunters don’t stake Susan when they find her body; Callahan drinks Barlow’s blood, goes all evil, and kills the schoolteacher; Ben and Mark kill Barlow, Ben kills Susan, then they set fire to a bunch of stuff and talk about cleaning out the rest of the vampires after the fires burn down. The movie ends with Mears dying in a hospital after trying to kill Callahan in the big city.
In the book, the vampire hunters do stake Susan when they find her body; Callahan drinks Barlow’s blood, doesn’t go all evil, realizes that he’s done something awful and been cursed, and leaves town in shame; the schoolteacher dies of a heart attack or something; Ben and Mark kill Barlow and then just skip town. The book ends with Ben and Mark coming back to Salem’s Lot months later; the killings have slowed down considerably due to the lack of nearby victims, and Ben and Mark start a brush fire which they expect will consume the whole town (it being late summer and all), and talk about killing the rest of the vampires after the fires burn down.
That was actually one of my favorite scenes in the book and I don’t think they did it justice in the new movie.
[spoiler]In the book, the vampire mom bites the doctor and they manage to drive her away and she says something pretty creepy “our circle grows” (which was Susan becoming a vampire, although Ben doesn’t know it). Then the doctor says something like “she bit me, with her filthy mouth.” Ben and the doctor rush to sanitize the bite and the doctor says “put the cross on me” Ben puts the cross on the doctor and he says he’s okay, but he knows he was almost turned into a vampire. He says before they cured his wound he wanted to bite Ben and the cross made him sick to his stomach.
I’m sure I’m not doing it justice but it was a GREAT scene in the book and they did it so half heartedly in the movie! I also thought the scene where Father Callahan helps Ben to kill Susan was great and the movie version was pathetic.
[/spoiler]
Although I’m not a fan of some of Stephen King’s later work, Salem’s Lot was incredible. The movie would have been better if they’d been more faithful to the source material.