Salem's Lot

 Year of Release:  1979

Director:  Tobe Hooper

Screenplay:  Paul Monash, based on the novel 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King

Starring:  David Soul, James Mason, Lance Kerwin, Bonnie Bedelia, Lew Ayres

Running Time:  183 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Writer Ben Mears (Soul) returns to his childhood home of Salem's Lot, a small town in Maine, where he hopes to write a book about the nature of evil, inspired by the sinister Marsten House, the local "haunted house".  However, Ben is not the only newcomer to Salem's Lot.  Debonair antiques dealer Mr. Straker (Mason) plans to open a shop with his mysterious partner Mr. Barlow (Reggie Nalder).  Before long the town is plagued by a mysterious disease and a spate of disappearances.  It quickly turns out that Barlow is a vampire who is feasting on the townspeople, who become vampires themselves.  Soon, it is up to Ben, horror-obsessed teen Mark (Kerwin) and Susan (Bedelia), daughter of the local doctor, to stand against a town of the undead.

Directed by Tobe Hooper, who made his name with the classic horror film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), this was originally shown as a two part miniseries on NBC TV in America, and it has been released subsequently as a 150 minute TV movie and a 114 minute theatrical movie which lops off over an hour of material and includes more gruesome alternate takes of certain scenes to increase the gore quotient.  The three hour version has a slow start, and is definitely too long, and has some obvious breaks for adverts.  It also pulls some of it's punches in deference of TV standards and practices.  However, sometimes it really works well. David Soul, best known for the TV show Starsky & Hutch (1975-1979), is pretty bland, but James Mason steals the show as the silkily sinister Straker.  The production is full of veterans, such as Lew Ayres and B-movie stalwart Elisha Cook and soon-to-be familiar faces such as Bonnie Bedelia, who is probably best known as Bruce Willis' estranged wife in Die Hard (1988) and would appear in Needful Things (1993), another Stephen King adaptation about a sinister antiques dealer in a small Maine town; Fred Willard who would go on to appear in This Is Spinal Tap (1983) and the Anchorman films; and Kenneth McMillan who would appear as the grotesque Baron Harkonnen in the David Lynch film Dune (1984).  The novel is a solid slice of early Stephen King, and the film follows it fairly closely.  The main difference is that Barlow in the novel is a suave Count Dracula style vampire, but here he is a grotesque, silent monster, inspired by Nosferatu (1921) with blue-white skin, bat-like ears and rodent-like teeth, with shining yellow eyes.  It is pretty slow to begin with, opening like a kind of off-beat soap opera, but if you stick with it, the second half is genuinely creepy,  The floating vampire children, with their shining silver eyes, scratching and tapping at windows, begging to be let in, are memorably eerie.  The decayed interior of the Marsten House is creepy, and Barlow's sudden appearances are quite frightening, particularly when he appears as a small, crawling bundle on a kitchen floor, before rising up to unveil himself in front of a terrified family.  This has become something of a cult film in recent years, and while some may struggle with the length and slow pace, it is worthwhile sticking with it.

Ben Mears (Davis Soul) in Salem's Lot

The Mangler

Year:  1995
Director:  Tobe Hooper
Screenplay:  Tobe Hooper, Stephen Brooks, Peter Welbeck, based on the short story "The Mangler" by Stephen King
Starring:  Ted Levine, Robert Englund, Daniel Matmor, Jeremy Crutchley, Vanessa Pike
Running Time:  106 minutes
Genre:  Horror

This gruesome horror film is based on a 1972 short story by Stephen King.  In the small town of Riker's Mills, Maine, police detective John Hutton (Levine) is called to investigate a series of bizarre fatal accident at the Blue Ribbon Laundry, where a woman where a woman was pulled into an automated laundry press and folding machine called "The Mangler".  Hutton is immediatley suspicious, especially of the laundry's sinister owner Bill Gartley (Englund).  Further accidents occur, all of which result in seriosu injury or death and all seem to be connected to the Mangler.  Hutton's brother in law, Mark (Matmor) becomes convinced that the Mangler is possessed by a demon. 

In the bizarre world of horror movies, this offers the unique, at least as far as I know, site of the central monster being an item of laundry equipment, with it's sidekick apparently being a demonic refridgerator.  Ted Levine at least tries to give his part of the troubled but dedicated police officer witha  past some gravitas, while Robert Englund, whose face is encased in old-age makeup, with one bad eye and both legs encased in stylised metal leg braces doesn't so much chew the scenery as rip off great bleeding chunks with his teeth.  His dememnted performance is actually the only really entertaining part of the movie.  Otherwise your saddled with a movie where the main monster is a vast piece of metal, gears, chains and wheels which can't go anywhere.  This means that it depends on the victims actually going to it and climbing or falling into it, rather than it being able to do much itself. 
The film obvioulsy had a relatively large budget and the production values are pretty good, but it is surprisingly badly made.  The script desperately tries to pad out Stepehn King's slim story , and the usually reliable Tobe Hooper never manages to conjure up any suspense or scares, and for some reason lights the whole thing like a disco with smoke billowing almost constantly.  The special effects are pretty average.
A major box office flop on it's original release, this has become something of a cult film.  However, if you want my advice, don't waste your time.  Somehow this nonsense spawned two sequels to date.

Robert Englund in The Mangler              

Poltergeist

Year: 1982
Director: Tobe Hooper
Screenplay: Steven Spielberg, Michael Grais and Mark Victor, from a story by Steven Spielberg
Starring: Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Beatrice Straight, Dominique Dunne, Oliver Robins, Heather O'Rourke, Martin Casella, Richard Lawson, Zelda Rubinstein
Running Time: 114 minutes
Genre: Horror, supernatural

Summary: The Freeling family, estate agent Steve (Nelson) his homemaker wife Diane (Williams) and their children sixteen year old Dana (Dunne), eight year old Robbie (Robins) and five year old Carole-Anne (O'Rourke), live in a bland quiet California suburb where kids play with remote control cars on the streets, guys have their friends round to drink beer and watch the game, family breakfasts resemble a warzone and the parents indulge in a nice relaxing toke of weed when the kids are in bed.
However, Carole-Anne seems preoccupied by the ghostly "TV People" which only she can see and hear in the static of the family's television sets. Eventually the seemingly benevolent ghosts emerge from the TV set and enter the structure of the house. However one night, during a thunder storm, Robbie is attacked by the strange old tree in the front lawn and the ghosts snatch Carole-Anne, taking her through a portal in her closet. However, her family can still hear Carole-Anne's echoing voice through the static of their TV set.
With the family constantly plagued by a barrage of supernatural forces they become increasingly desperate in their attempts to save their daughter and put an end to the strange events.

Opinions: This movie is credited as being directed by Tobe Hooper (best known as the director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)) however it is widely believed that the film's co-writer and co-producer Steven Spielberg also acted as co-director. Over the years members of the film's cast and crew have claimed different things as to how much of the film, if any, was directed by Spielberg and how much was Hooper's. Whatever the truth of the matter, this is a Steven Spielberg film. Everything about it has his stamp: The cluttered seemingly safe suburban environment, the mix of sentiment and horror, the sense of playfulness with the thrills, the otherworldly forces being viewed with a genuine sense of wonder as well as fear and also the John Williams score. In fact the film could be seen as a darker companion piece to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), another Steven Spielberg film about an otherworldly visitor encountering a suburban family, however while the alien in E.T. is friendly, the ghosts in Poltergeist most definitely aren't. In fact the two films were released a week apart in June 1982.
This is horror as a ghost-train ride. It's fun, there's intentional humour, there are plenty of thrills. The special effects are good and it's scary enough for the duration of the movie, but it's unlikely to prey on anyone's mind much once the credits have rolled. Also, although there is some gore, things never get too nasty (presumably due to Spielberg's influence). In fact, possibly the most Tobe Hooper sequence is the one where rotting cadavers and skeletons pop up out of the ground.
The film's storyline bears some slight similarity to a 1962 episode of The Twilight Zone called "Little Girl Lost" written by Richard Matheson, about a young girl who slips into another dimension and, in her house, her parents can hear her calling, but can't find her.
Part of why the film is effective is the fact that the long opening passage, before the supernatural elements kick in, while a little too cutesy, does establish the background and the family dynamic. The film was a huge success, and in my opinion part of the success was due, as with Stephen King novels, to the fact that the horror elements were moved to an instantly relateable and recognisable world. Instead of a creepy, decaying old mansion, the haunted house here was an ordinary non-descript suburban family home in a new, pleasantly dull housing development.
The film has become notorious for being supposedly cursed after several cast members of this film and it's two sequels, including Dominique Dunne and Heather O'Rourke, met untimely deaths. Some have attributed the curse to the fact that real skeletons were used in a scene. Of course it is all more likely to be just a tragic coincidence.
Howeverm the film remains an enjoyable and entertaining chill ride for fans and non-horror fans alike.



Zelda Rubinstein prepares to face a nasty Poltergeist