Is Salem's Lot (1979) the best Stephen King adaptation?
Overall, the best Stephen King adaptation (or live action horror film) is between The Green Mile and Storm of the Century. Salem's Lot is not the best, but, it's my true pleasure to try and address in some sort of substantial way..Visually, the 1970's Salem's Lot is a torn loyalty between being a product of the look of the late 70's and a product of the most artistic endeavour. Sunny, picturesque, conventional and community-like, Salem's Lot is a perfect hunting ground for terror - a perfect choice of location for evil.The Marsten house is an overseer of Salem's Lot: a lurking beast, prowling the outskirts of an innocent and unsuspecting town. Mason's Straker is meant to be nothing but a conventional-looking businessman, of no greater intent than to protect the interests of his business (more allusion to normal America).Ben Mears, played with perfect tension and magnitude by David Soul, is another overseer; an opposite to Straker, someone who dresses very differently, and whose own profession is very different (same but different).Despite not knowing each other, and not having reason to converse, Straker and Mears repeatedly glance one another, aware of the other's potential to be a threat (Straker can't "sucker" Mears the way he knows he can "sucker" other people).Through its intelligence, Salem's Lot is an oversight of life's hidden story: the vampire and the terror of night are metaphors for life's need to express, but through systematic means (I haven't read the King novel, but I'm sure the source material is just as deadly and designed so as to pronounce meaning).Salem's Lot is a sanctuary of meaning, just like Alien and The Matrix are; the 70's miniseries gives us a design of vampire that's arguably more eerie and evocative than any other, and I hardly think I need to talk about the score's greatness (and own eeriness).More than a sanctuary of meaning, Salem's Lot is just a sanctuary outright.
What's a movie or TV show where most of the actors seemed miscast?
Practically every movie adaptation of a Stephen King story. King is one of those authors who often - not always, but often - describes his characters in sufficient detail that the reader develops a pretty clear picture of what the character is supposed to look like. If you were to ask different readers how they envision Jack Torrance, for example, they’d likely all give fairly similar descriptions. Then, when you see the movie, he’s morphed into Jack Nicholson, who looks nothing like Jack Torrance as described in the novel. And this happens time and time again, with nearly every King adaptation. It’s as though the director didn’t even bother to read the book before he cast the film. Blonde, blue-eyed David Soul as dark, intense Ben Mears in the 1976 adaptation of ‘Salem’s Lot’ is a particularly chuckle-worthy example. Richard Thomas as “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough - for that matter, the entire cast of the 1990 adaptation of ‘It’ (with the exception of Annette O’Toole) - would be another. The kids were acceptable with reservations, but for the adults, it seemed as though the filmmakers’ main concern wasn’t casting actors who were right for the parts, but rather with signing on as many familiar faces as possible - no doubt in the hope of attracting a bigger audience.Miscasting isn’t usually a deal-breaker. It isn’t nearly as bad as, for example, tossing an author’s original story into the dumpster and telling a different one using the same characters (yes, I’m looking at you, Andy Muschietti..*), but still, it can be disappointing.*Yes, I know King was OK with Muschietti’s changes to his storyline, but as a fan of the novel, I wasn’t - and it was my money that bought the ticket and my butt in the seat, therefore my opinion is the one that counts.