[00:00:00] Matthew: All right, I'm gonna start us recording [00:00:02] Clip: Okay [00:00:05] Matthew: Okay, so things are recording where they need to be And I will make a mark. Wait a minute, my headphone cable is stuck getting strangled. [00:00:20] Ian: Well, you got, if you're gonna make a mark, you need to make a Ben as well, or else they're n- neither of them are gonna survive. Thank you. Sorry. [00:00:27] Clip: You found us again. We have to go further [00:00:53] Matthew: Welcome to another episode of the IMMP, the Inter Millennium Media Project podcast. My name is Matthew Porter. [00:01:01] Ian: And I'm Ian Porter. [00:01:03] Matthew: I'm his dad, he's my son, and it's that time of year once again. [00:01:08] Ian: Ooh. [00:01:10] Matthew: The season of the spooky. [00:01:12] Ian: Yes. [00:01:13] Matthew: I like Halloween, partly because it gives us another excuse to watch lots of horror movies and the like. [00:01:17] Ian: Ah, yeah. I mean, I've never been big on the Halloween theming. Like, I don't decorate my house a lot, but I will say this podcast has made me enjoy the rich cinema history- ... of the spooky in ways I'd never done before. [00:01:31] Matthew: Cool. Very cool. [00:01:33] Ian: And I kinda shoulda known that we'd have... I, I shoulda known that we'd have, A, a story like this coming up, and that we would see this writer . [00:01:44] Matthew: Yes, and we've got now a, uh, a, a theme here for our October episodes as we lead up- Yep ... to Halloween. And we're gonna be talking about two adaptations of Stephen King novels. [00:01:58] Ian: Oh, boy. Stephen King. [00:02:02] Matthew: And weirdly enough, this is the first time we're dealing with a Stephen King adaptation in more than 200 episodes of this podcast. [00:02:12] Ian: Oh my goodness [00:02:13] Matthew: it is, isn't it? Isn't that amazing? [00:02:16] Ian: It's... That is wild. [00:02:17] Matthew: There's so much for us to, uh, to talk about on that theme, and I'm sure we'll come back to him. But this month it's gonna be a Stephen King double header. [00:02:26] Ian: Oh my word. Oh, ooh. Ooh, that means I get to work on this side project of mine, The Stephen King Survival Log. If you find yourself in any of these situations, you immediately know it's a written by Stephen King story and how to not die. Because the man has, has themes. He has points. He has connections that I wanna talk about later in all of this. [00:02:59] Matthew: Very cool. Very cool. [00:03:01] Ian: Okay. [00:03:03] Matthew: And when I was a kid, I read a lot of Stephen King, so at some point we'll have to go back to his original novels. Okay. But what had a bigger initial impact on me were some of the adaptations. So we're going back to what might have been the first Stephen King adaptation that I saw. And it's also, I think, the first thing that I encountered that depicted vampires in the modern world. [00:03:35] Ian: Yeah. [00:03:36] Matthew: The, 1979 was the modern world at the time. Mm-hmm. Before that, vampires were something from old gothics stories and novels and horror movies, like Dracula, the, the quintessential vampire story. But they weren't something that took place in a recognizably here-and-now kind of setting. [00:03:57] Ian: That's so interesting because I've grown up with vampires in modern day being so ubiquitous. I, I've grown up in the eras of Buffy and Twilight. [00:04:10] Matthew: Yes. [00:04:10] Ian: Vampires, uh, uh, Vampire the Masquerade. The idea of a vampire getting into a van- and driving across town is not new to me. And [00:04:21] Matthew: yet- And that has been an impulse for so long. I mean, when Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, he was trying to take this ancient kind of story and bring it to the present day. [00:04:31] Ian: Yeah. So I admit, I did not know when we started watching the 1979 Salem's Lot miniseries anything about Salem's Lot. [00:04:43] Matthew: Oh, good. [00:04:44] Ian: Not... And I specifically, I, I more so than I sometimes for the podcast kept myself ignorant of everything. I avoided looking at the poster. So I- Oh, wow ... did not even see the image of a vampire on the cover art. And yet I was immediately, after the first two scenes, able to pick up on vampire because it is pulling from such a long tradition. And that modernization, but also the sequence of foretelling and signs is so strong in this that I don't feel like it's a spoiler to say that this is a vampire story because it wears it on its sleeve with a, a pride of legacy- [00:05:30] Matthew: Yes ... in [00:05:31] Ian: that sense. [00:05:31] Matthew: There is a certain tone, there is a certain pacing that, in the '70s at least, still persisted in vampire stories and was one of their hallmarks. Whether that's continued to the more modern ones you've talked about I think is debatable. Mm-hmm. But certainly this borrowed from a great many things, including some specific visuals that, uh, we can talk about where those came from. Mm-hmm. It didn't update things as much as vampire stories began to be updated just a few years later. [00:05:59] Ian: Yeah, there's a lot of- versions of this later and updates and changes, and this had an impact and became part of that conversation. But the conversation changed afterward. [00:06:10] Matthew: So this is the 1979 miniseries adaptation of Salem's Lot. It was, it was a two-part movie. The miniseries was a buzzword then, so anything that was, was more than one episode but wasn't an ongoing series, they called a miniseries. Yeah. Uh, we saw it in its complete form, but it was a two-hour and change movie once you- Yeah ... take out the, the time that they had built in for commercials. [00:06:34] Ian: Mm. Yeah, and there are little bits that have some pacing oddities because of that transition across format over time. But I'd say that it held up as a movie in terms of structure, and it feels like it was filmed that way. So I don't feel like we are... I don't feel like we're changing anything talking about it as a singular movie. it treats itself like an extra-long movie, and that's how it'll get classified, I think, in our in our internal catalog here. [00:07:06] Matthew: I, I agree. and while we haven't previously talked about Stephen King, we have previously seen things by this director. This was directed by Tobe Hooper- [00:07:17] Ian: Oh ... [00:07:18] Matthew: who in the '70s was well known for horror movies. Specifically his big breakout was the 1974, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Not the kind of horror movie I like. [00:07:30] Ian: No. [00:07:31] Matthew: And he also made Poltergeist, which we have talked about for this podcast. [00:07:38] Ian: Yes. And honestly, I can see some of that same directorial style with Poltergeist, 'cause Poltergeist was all about the, the rolling building kind of tension and the bursts of release. [00:07:54] Matthew: Yes. [00:07:54] Ian: , It was a, a sequence of inflating balloons, some of which may pop before the end. [00:08:01] Matthew: And there's something of the, the Spielberg influence of, uh, on Poltergeist, and Poltergeist came out, a few years after this , and it had that Steven Spielberg influence of you establish a kind of normal place, suburbs or small town or whatever, and then weird things are injected into it. We kind of get that here, although we start out with, oh, it looks normal on the surface, but we already know there's something very weird going on here. [00:08:29] Ian: Yeah. [00:08:30] Matthew: Because the movie starts with a flash-forward. [00:08:34] Ian: That is brilliant, I will say. It... Starting with that flash-forward is wonderfully off-putting in, like, you, you think, "Okay, I'll settle in. A story will start telling itself to me. It'll, it'll build." And it starts out with just, like, congratulations, in media res. You're in the action. Did you think you had time to make popcorn? You don't. [00:09:01] Matthew: And you say action, but there isn't a whole lot of action even at this beginning here. I guess. It just- There, there's meaning, but it's- Yeah ... the whole movie, at least the first half of the movie, is a very, very slow burn. [00:09:13] Ian: It is. But there's something about two guys running into a church with bang of the door. [00:09:19] Matthew: Yeah, [00:09:19] Ian: scooping up s- scooping up holy water in a terror. Like, they are absolutely, you know, deer-in-the-headlights wide, and they're checking the bottle. [00:09:29] Matthew: Oh. [00:09:29] Ian: Like, it's glowing. There was something about, like, they had an energy to them already. [00:09:33] Matthew: That's interesting. It seemed to me as if it, they, they had been running. Then they're, they're in horrible shape. Their clothes are in tatters. They're filthy. They're in this tiny church in Guatemala, and I got the impression they finally figured they had a place they could rest for a little while. Yeah. Because they stop there. They kneel down. They pray. They refill their, their holy water bottles, and they seem to have a rule. They're only allowed two little blue bottles of holy water because in other parts of the story, we see holy water. That's the, the dosage that they, they get. [00:10:05] Ian: Yep. [00:10:06] Matthew: And the holy waters are also... As they fill them, they are detectors of some kind, and this is never explained. [00:10:15] Ian: Yeah. [00:10:15] Matthew: Why they have this superpower or why. Maybe it's the holy water of Guatemala. But yeah, the holy water bottle starts glowing, and the older of these two guys says, "They found us again." [00:10:29] Ian: Uh, there's a weird element here where it's like there's something about the- They are ragged and they are focused, but there is that pumped up energy to them that, like, we've got a moment to rest but we have to keep moving kind of frantic I was talking about. [00:10:45] Matthew: Mm-hmm. [00:10:46] Ian: And I see these two, and Ben and Mark here, our two characters, are immediately giving off energy that I'm used to from later stories being this mark of the haggard vampire hunter character. [00:11:00] Matthew: Mm-hmm. [00:11:01] Ian: I'm immediately seeing future predictions off of this future moment, things like characters out of Buffy, characters out of Supernatural, things like that. There's something about the haggard people fighting off the- ... supernatural creatures of the night, going into the church like, "Okay, we got a moment, but if we stick around here, everything goes to hell." [00:11:27] Matthew: Yeah, and they are... There is that energy, but they're acting more like prey than, like, than hunters. [00:11:33] Ian: Right. There's that level in between. But I m- I'm wondering if I read it differently because I've got all this other media pulling a different tone into that same kind of moment. [00:11:44] Matthew: That may very well be. I was looking at this as, "Oh, this is a wild update of the stuff that I'm used to from, from Dracula and Dark Shadows." [00:11:51] Ian: Hmm, yeah. It's a very different take. [00:11:54] Matthew: And, uh, and I've... S- mentioning Dark Shadows is interesting. Dark Shadows was kind of set in an indeterminate present day, but it was so gothic in tone. Hmm. It was more like we're bringing the present day b- back to Dracula, as opposed to we're bringing Dracula to the present day. This movie is very much set in the present day. Yeah. And we talk about these two guys in the church in Guatemala. They were instantly recognizable to anybody who watched television in the 1970s. [00:12:22] Ian: Yeah. 'Cause these are- ' [00:12:23] Matthew: Cause the older guy- [00:12:25] Ian: Yeah, but this is David Soul. [00:12:27] Matthew: Yes. Hutch from Starsky & Hutch. [00:12:32] Ian: Uh, he is, he is so absolutely like the guy you think of if you think of like a '70s actor [00:12:41] Matthew: Big time TV star [00:12:43] Ian: He ju- he just looks like that. [00:12:45] Matthew: Yeah. [00:12:47] Ian: Man, and man is option one of the player choices when it comes to selecting '70s action star look. Between Starsky & Hutch, Salem's Lot, he was in episodes of Si- Streets of San Francisco at least. Yeah. At least one of them. A, a couple of different other things. Disappearance of Flight f 412. There's a... Like, he's just got one of those faces and one of those, he's been all over the place kinda, IMDb pages. And he was a singer with, multiple charting songs, so his voice is recognizable [00:13:20] Matthew: And the kid, the younger of these two men, who's a teenager, is Lance Kerwin, also somebody instantly recognizable to anybody who watched TV in the '70s because he was the, the boy in- Oh so many '70s things. He was the, you know, he's a wholesome all-American boy, but he's got an edge, and he had a certain amount of acting range, but not a whole lot beyond that, at least not that he got a chance to show on television. But he was in so many things, both series that he did and sh- showing up as the guest star for an episode or two as the boy that- Oh "Oh, it's that guy." Even people who didn't know his name would've said, "Oh yeah, it's that guy," and probably he was in, you know, Tiger Beat Magazine all over the place and things like that as the, the non-threatening good-looking boy. [00:14:09] Ian: That makes sense. so it is man and boy in church. [00:14:14] Matthew: Yes, being very upset about the fact that their holy water is glowing. [00:14:21] Ian: Damn it, why'd we put these LEDs in the bottom of our bottles? Uh, but, yeah, doing that and then cut to two years earlier, I'm like, you know, now, now that we've swept you in the ankles- Right ... let's go back to the story. [00:14:39] Matthew: So whoosh, it's two years earlier in the town of Salems Lot, Maine, [00:14:45] Ian: where- Yeah [00:14:47] Matthew: , Ben Mears, um David Soul's character, drives up to this big house on a hill on the outskirts of town and just stares at it, and continues to stare at it as the dapper older gentleman, played by James Mason- Yeah ... leaves the house, gets into his well-maintained classic Cadillac, and drives away. And David Soul is the one who seems most creepy here, because he's just driven up to this house and decided to stare at it. [00:15:22] Ian: Yeah. For- It's like, you know he, he's out-creeping the guy who is supposed to be creepy here for a moment. And boy howdy, is James Mason putting so much creepy into every moment he's on screen. He's like... I, I've seen this guy in North by Northwest, t- uh, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and such, but he is just like, "Ooh, this, this scenery is chewy." Om, nom, nom. He just puts everything. Everything is dripping molasses. So the fact that David Soul's able to out-creepy him at that start is amazing. [00:15:55] Matthew: And yet it's, uh, Mason is such a smooth and controlled version of that through so much of it- Mm ... that when he gets to really let loose at the end of the movie, it's so much fun to see. [00:16:05] Ian: Oh, [00:16:05] Matthew: yes. But you know there's so much creepiness going on behind the scenes with this guy. And yet he's just at his house and leaving and driving to his job, and I keep expecting David Soul's character to start harassing him and asking, "Have you considered selling your house? I can guarantee you cash buyers." [00:16:24] Ian: Yeah. [00:16:24] Matthew: It's just, "No, go away." [00:16:26] Ian: He's gonna start sending him, uh, uh, mail with the, you know, the Google Street View- ... of your property on the cover of it. It's like, "Ah." Like, what in the world over here? But- Um, yeah. Ben Mears has arrived in town and he's, here in town about this house, about the Marston house. B- because he's a writer and he's writing a book about it Oh. Yes. So step one of the Stephen King survival log. If a person arrives in your town and they say you they are a writer, immediately calculate the distance between where they're from, where you are, and the center of Maine. [00:17:16] Matthew: Yes. [00:17:17] Ian: I'm gonna work on the math as to what this is, but there is a range and radius where you're just a dead man. Because if a writer shows up- ... anywhere near Maine in a Stephen King book, things are a problem. [00:17:29] Matthew: And- [00:17:30] Ian: Seriously, the moment he said he was a writer, I paused- ... the movie. [00:17:35] Matthew: And there is so much self-insert in so much Stephen King fiction. Absolutely. The kind of stuff that would be dismissed as Mary Sue if a woman did it, but he's got so many, uh, of, off the top of my head I'm thinking of This and It, and I believe there are others where it's, oh, guy who has nothing to do other than to write a book about something creepy. Yeah, where, in Maine preferably. [00:17:59] Ian: In Maine, exactly. Like, that's why I need to figure out what the triangulation math is on this, because it's ev- every time it's, you know, writers in Maine. Oh, goodness. Um, but no, yeah, that, that's a little bit silly and a little bit on the nose, but the fact that his next action is, I think his next action is to go to the, uh, is to go to a shop to ask about if that house has ever gotten for sale. [00:18:26] Matthew: Yes. He wanted to rent a house. He wanted to know if that house was available. It's not. And he- winds up, you know, staying somewhere else. But he, again, he's just acting so creepy trying to get all this information out of people. [00:18:43] Ian: Yeah. [00:18:45] Matthew: And we see him in various spots, and there are different things that's happening in between. But we see him make new connections and strike up old connections that he had in this town. He goes to his old English teacher from the high school, who he talks with a lot and, and, uh, who's proud of the fact that his student went off and became a professional writer. And, uh, and that's also where we start to see, uh, Mark, who has, has written this year's version of the history pageant about, and we learn a little more about this town in the background. [00:19:18] Ian: Yeah. Which it, it's very interesting, like the amount of history and world building here was deep enough, I started to question, like, it, it, it's the sort of thing that pulls you in. It makes you start wanting to take notes, I will say. Because this whole, like, the town of Salem's Lot used to be called Jerusalem's Lot, but it's been shortened. And there's this, you know... It is plagued with thinking about , its history people went off to war and never came back. And I started thinking like, "I think this is a vampire story, but I can't tell who's where." I was certain the creepy old house up the hill was gonna be the vampires, but I'm starting to get suspicious of everyone. This is weird. [00:20:03] Matthew: And I like that little detail, the fact that the town was called Jerusalem's Lot before the name was shortened. Jerusalem's Lot is the title of a short story that Stephen King wrote. Oh. And it was essentially, and it was a town called Jerusalem's Lot, but it was essentially Stephen King's, uh, having a chance to have fun writing a Lovecraft story. And it was pretty good. Ah. It's in one or two of his short story collections, worth reading. But he must have just liked the name enough and thought it was creepy, so he was gonna use it again for this, , vampire story. [00:20:34] Ian: Yeah. [00:20:35] Matthew: But apart from how creepy this writer is behaving, so much of what's going on and so much w- of what we learn in this very slow-paced set of opening acts is about the town and how just under the surface, there are all these conflicts and affairs and, uh, violence and other things that, uh, it's, it's, it's a soap opera into which- Oh, yes this writer happens to have shown up. [00:21:04] Ian: Oh yeah, and he is like, he's the guy who moved away from town but he used , to live here so he's got these connections. But things have been going on since then, and there's this deep history where we're getting little bits of, , "Oh, that's old news" between these two people. And, " " Oh yeah, the teacher still remembers him." But, the kids are acting oddly because they're all so wrapped up in , their plays and performances. And the same guy he goes to try to buy the, house from or, rent a place from is having this affair and such. And I will say that's Fred Willard- [00:21:38] Matthew: Yes [00:21:38] Ian: who is, who shows up kind of like, "Oh, hi. It's you." [00:21:43] Matthew: A very normal and understated role for Fred Willard. [00:21:46] Ian: Yeah. But another one of those it's that guy moments where someone else's ubiquity on TV at the time is used as much as their acting in some ways because it's these friendly faces you might have seen elsewhere. [00:22:03] Matthew: Oh, [00:22:04] Ian: that's a good point. It adds, it adds to that element of returning to a town you might have known. [00:22:09] Matthew: Yeah. "Oh, I know these people, and I'm comfortable because I recognize them." And the fact that it's, that it's been cast with this guy is shorthand for the kind of guy he is, this character. [00:22:19] Ian: And yet he's also sometimes playing against type a little. [00:22:23] Matthew: Yes. [00:22:24] Ian: And that adds to the uncanniness. I'm not quite sure what the modern equivalent would be, but there's something about, like, there is a, a pool of actors that are known for a style, and having them lets you borrow that collective unconscious. [00:22:46] Matthew: Yeah. [00:22:46] Ian: And this, this first half is leaning on that a lot. [00:22:50] Matthew: Mm-hmm. [00:22:50] Ian: And the only reason I know it hooked me in the same way is that I've seen older media. I don't know if a modern audience would have that same immediate reaction, and yet I can feel like it might have been a piece of what this was intending. [00:23:05] Matthew: Probably, and I think you're right. Just as we were saying that David Soul and Lance Kerwin would be immediately recognizable and you'd know certain things about their characters you watched TV back then, and you wouldn't know that now. The same thing for a lot of the rest of this cast, like Fred Willard. It's like, "Oh, it's a Fred Willard character." Now it's... Most people would know Fred Willard probably from, you know, Christopher Guest mockumentaries. [00:23:26] Ian: Mm-hmm. [00:23:27] Matthew: And, uh, and which, which gives you a different impression than you would have had in 1979. [00:23:33] Ian: yeah, 1979, you still would've seen him in, you know, Silver Streak and things like that. [00:23:40] Matthew: Right. And Ben also meets a, a, a grade school teacher, Susan, and- Yeah ... and they waste no time hitting it off. [00:23:51] Ian: Zero time. [00:23:51] Matthew: Very, very fast developing romantic relationship between these two. And Susan is played by Bonnie Bedelia, who on the podcast here we have seen before as, uh, John McClane's wife, or ex-wife, in Die Hard. [00:24:05] Ian: Yeah. Uh, honestly, with how the, with how the relationship goes, it's probably an upgrade. [00:24:17] Matthew: Probably. [00:24:18] Ian: Oh, boy. Um, but yeah, there's an element here also with everyone acting odd. There's something of this town getting set up and multiple hooks of what the creepy might be. [00:24:31] Matthew: Yes. [00:24:31] Ian: Having not looked and seen the, the image saying this was vampire, I was here wondering, are we dealing with vampires? Are we dealing with an immortal town? Are we dealing with a mind control person? I know it's something spooky, but there's just enough oddity going on that I start to question if the vampires are the threat. [00:24:52] Matthew: I am fascinated by y- the fact that you experienced it in this way, without that, without any initial, without even the, the promo knowledge you would've had, you know, if you were a TV viewer in the '70s. Because, um, even from that opening scene in Guatemala, I don't know that they actually mention vampires. It's just- [00:25:12] Ian: No [00:25:13] Matthew: ... they have found us again, and holy water is something that they need. And Ben, when he starts confiding in his old English teacher from the high school, he starts asking questions about, "Do you think that a house can be evil, like, in its bones, in its beams and foundation?" [00:25:32] Ian: Yeah. [00:25:33] Matthew: And that's an idea- Inherently. Yeah. [00:25:34] Ian: Yeah. Inherently evil is a phrase he likes using. [00:25:37] Matthew: And it's funny, they start with that, and they don't really develop that idea because the house is not necessarily evil. The house is a g- e- useful headquarters for evil. [00:25:47] Ian: Mm-hmm. [00:25:48] Matthew: But the evil... And based on the way that James Mason is playing this character, Straker, obviously there's something creepy going on with him, and they're opening a new shop in town full of antiques. [00:26:02] Ian: Yeah. [00:26:02] Matthew: And yet his partner, who is known by name but nobody has seen his partner, he's off in Europe on a buying trip. "Oh, don't worry, he'll be here soon. Now, he may, he might not be here in time for the shop opening, but he'll be here soon." [00:26:17] Ian: And so many of the townspeople are like, "Oh, hey. Yeah, they're opening a shop or something. I've never seen it." And so many of them pop up with the, "But who would buy antiques in this town?" And that little sentence and multiple people having that is another element of, like, why? What is it about this town that means no one would want something old? [00:26:38] Matthew: Yeah. I mean, we're thinking small town in New England, antiquing is probably a thing. [00:26:45] Ian: Yeah. [00:26:45] Matthew: If, if... We would, we would expect them to say, "We've already got too many antique stores here." [00:26:49] Ian: Exactly. But- But no, they're like, "No one wants antiques." And I'm like- ... why? [00:26:55] Matthew: And they're specifically bringing antiques from Europe, which is interesting. These are globe-trotters. [00:26:59] Ian: Yeah. [00:27:00] Matthew: And- And, [00:27:01] Ian: and, a- and you get the interesting thing of, like, um, the house is decorated in an older style. [00:27:09] Matthew: Yes. It's a very specific spooky house kind of architecture. [00:27:13] Ian: Oh, yeah. This is qui- this is quintessential Victorian spook. Just like we just need to add in the audio or something. Just, you know, you know, "On this old, on this old haunting, we're going to be looking at w- these beams and rafters and figure out if they're inherently evil or if they were added in later." That's absurd stuff. There's something about that. [00:27:37] Matthew: It's House Hunters Supernatural. We have- We have this crypt and we have, we have this barren field, and we've got this house on a hill in Salem's Lot, Maine. What are they gonna choose? [00:27:52] Ian: Oh, House Hunters Supernatural is so good. [00:27:58] Matthew: And while everybody's waiting for this antique shop to open, everybody's waiting for, uh, the, the partner to show up, and they're having all of their affairs and conflicts and everything else where, I think you were saying the, the real estate guy played by Fred Willard is having an affair with his secretary who's married to the truck driver, they actually have a job to do for Mr. Straker There is a shipment coming in from Portland, a sideboard in a big box. , And , through the real estate guy, he hires someone to drive a truck there with an extra guy and bring this back to Salem's lot. With all these weird detailed instructions like, "Do not open it, of course. Bring it down into the basement through the o- outside stairs." [00:28:46] Ian: I love this [00:28:46] Matthew: episode. "Buy padlocks and chains and chain all of the doors- [00:28:51] Ian: Yeah. See, I think- ... [00:28:51] Matthew: and padlock all the entrances to the house after you've done this." And s- nobody asks any questions, just, "Oh, okay." [00:28:57] Ian: Yeah. Well, that's the funniest thing. All of this is given. They deliver it. They bring it into the house, and they're just like, "Oh, I'm not doing the rest of that." And they throw the padlocks down- ... and then they leave. [00:29:10] Matthew: And part of this is because they are afraid, because these two guys... Oh, and by the way, the truck driver who was hired to do this isn't the one who's actually driving to do it. He had two other guys do it for him with his truck so that he could go and stake out his house to catch his wife fooling around with the real estate guy, and we get this whole weird, violent, uh- [00:29:31] Ian: Yeah ... [00:29:31] Matthew: side story, which, well, we really didn't need, I think. [00:29:35] Ian: We really didn't. It, it closes off one of these strange soap opera threads we had, but it was creepy and lasted too long- Yes I will say. [00:29:46] Matthew: Absolutely. They were padding this to some extent. They [00:29:48] Ian: were padding it a bit. [00:29:49] Matthew: And these guys, they load this sideboard into the truck. It's this big crate that they stand on end at the back of the truck. As they're driving, it starts to move towards the front of the, the bed in the truck, and this freaks them out. And I'm thinking, "You guys are not professionals at this. You did not secure your load." Yes. "Of course it's moving around. What do you think it's gonna ha- is gonna happen every time you, you touch the brake?" [00:30:18] Ian: It's gonna slide towards [00:30:19] Matthew: you. And it's like, "Oh my gosh. There's something creepy going on." No, it's inertia. Come on, guys. [00:30:24] Ian: I do love the fact that let's be honest- ... coffin-like shape of a box. . I don't, I don't remember, I don't think there was any dis- specific, like, this way up on the box. [00:30:33] Matthew: No. So So they just assumed, oh, stand it up like a statue. [00:30:37] Ian: I know. They just assume. I love the idea of the fact that... 'Cause we see them moving this around being bad movers, let's be honest. I just love the idea that the vampire on the inside has been, like, riding the entire time on his side in his coffin. Yes. Like, they didn't put it bottom down. [00:30:55] Matthew: Morbius [00:30:55] Ian: on it. He's, he's, he's sliding up to the top, not to eat them, just to knock, like... Can you tip me to the side please? Yeah. I'm getting a crick in the neck. [00:31:02] Matthew: Keep their head down maybe. It's like, "Come on guys, a little courtesy." [00:31:06] Ian: Exactly. [00:31:06] Matthew: Now I'm, I've gotta ask though, at this point did you know that it was a vampire story yet? [00:31:10] Ian: At this point I figured out it was a vampire story. Okay, there we- At this point I was like- Transporting a [00:31:14] Matthew: coffin shaped thing. [00:31:15] Ian: Yeah. I, that's the thing. I kept on going like, "Oh, it's a vampire story. Is it a vampire? Oh, it's a vampire story. Is it? Oh, no, this feels like a vampire story." And by now it was locking in. the fact that it had all these hallmarks of other kinds of paranormal stories I think says something to it being built into a world of supernatural weirdness that makes the vampire one of the potential threats. Yeah. It was establishing a world that was creepy in other ways, and this happened to be where the vampires in that creepiness occur. [00:31:54] Matthew: Right. So these truck drivers, they're also freaked out by the fact that this box is weirdly cold on the outside. So yeah, by the time they get it into the basement, they are not sticking around to follow all these other instructions. One of them wants to open it because he's curious. Right. And the other guy's just saying, "No, forget it. Just leave." And they do. [00:32:13] Ian: Between, between this and Quatermass, we've got people holding things that are getting weirdly cold- ... as a regular thing. Okay. [00:32:22] Matthew: So we still don't see what's in here, but with this kind of meanwhile in this other part of town, we start to see other things happening. Yes. Something attacks Fred Willard as he's running out of the house without his clothes on, uh, trying to get away from the, the husband of the secretary he's been having an affair with. [00:32:41] Ian: Yep. [00:32:42] Matthew: Two kids, classmates of Mark's, who were at Mark's house to practice for the pageant, are taking a shortcut through the woods on the way home as- You [00:32:54] Ian: know [00:32:54] Matthew: another part of your, uh, survival guide. [00:32:56] Ian: Oh, absolutely. If you are in a... If, if you f- if you realize you are in a Stephen King story, your best place to go is the middle of a crowded mall. You want to be near people, and you want to be near daylight and- ... every other sound and tone. Like, this is a time to s- to be as visible as possible. Go to a party. Do not go alone. Stay away from drainage and woods, Lan- ... woodlands. You need to... You wanna be, like, at a high, dry floodplain with people. [00:33:35] Matthew: And these, some of these scenes are also giving us a very clear sense of what the Duffer Brothers were drawing upon for Stranger Things. [00:33:42] Ian: Oh, yeah. Very much that same, like, "Ah, we'll take a shortcut. It'll be fine." It will not be fine, kids. [00:33:49] Matthew: Yeah. One of the kids goes missing as this- Yep ... weird supernatural wind comes up. [00:33:55] Ian: And that's interesting 'cause it, that's also when I'm like, "Okay, this is a vampire story. What powers, what type of vampire are we talking about?" And they're, I'm like, "Oh, we're really getting the classical Dracula full power set." We're getting the wind moving, , the transformation possibly. We're getting the, the maximum power vampire going on here. [00:34:15] Matthew: Very, very classical vampire brought into the modern day. [00:34:20] Ian: Mm-hmm. [00:34:21] Matthew: And to skip ahead a little bit, there's the search for , the little boy who's missing. there's a scene then at night in his brother's bedroom, and his brother feels- Oh terrible at the fact that he didn't take better care of his little brother. This was the creepiest thing I had seen maybe ever at this point, where the little brother, after the f- uh, the, the little brother floats up to the second-story window of his big brother's bedroom and starts scratching at the window until his, his brother opens it to let him in. Because his brother, in this sort of half-dreaming state, is pleased to see his little brother. But the makeup that they give the brother- Oh ... with this pale makeup with the dark eyes and the lighting, this is where Tobe Hooper had a vision of what this should look like and how creepy it could be. This was- Oh, yes so creepy for television. [00:35:21] Ian: If I had not seen or read, , that this was directed by the person who made Poltergeist, I would've still been able to connect it because there is something about the way Hooper does that ethereal creepiness, the portal to another dimension, the, the supernatural just aura off of something is coming through here with the, the pitch black behind him and the fog that rolls around to obscure. [00:35:48] Matthew: Right. Another- It's- ... of that classic vampire supernatural control, the fog- Yes ... that goes where he wills. [00:35:55] Ian: Mm-hmm. [00:35:57] Matthew: And it shows you Hooper's range that he could do this kind of creepiness, whereas he broke out with just violent slasher movies. [00:36:05] Ian: Yes. [00:36:06] Matthew: Which don't necessarily have that same kind of nuance. [00:36:09] Ian: Mm-hmm. [00:36:10] Matthew: But I love that scene. It still gave me chills when watching it again. [00:36:14] Ian: Oh, yeah. That was, that was terrifying. And you feel that transition from sleepless night of worry into panicked, i- into relief followed by panic, and then this transition to this morning where he has seen horrors [00:36:35] Matthew: He starts to exhibit these symptoms of, of some malady, some kind of anemia sort of condition. Yes. And that's something which, as the plot goes on, we see this spreading throughout the town, person by person. Yeah. And eventually, The older brother succumbs to this and he passes away. And after his funeral, he comes to Mark in the same way, his friend, his classmate. Yep. The big- older brother comes to Mark's window in the same creepy makeup in the fog. And again, even having seen the earlier scene, this is still chilling. [00:37:11] Ian: It is. [00:37:12] Matthew: But Mark is, is... And we've established, by the way, that Mark is a fan of creepy stuff. Yes. He loves monster movies. He's putting together... I, I recognized all these models from when I was a kid, the- [00:37:23] Ian: Oh, goodness, [00:37:24] Matthew: yeah ... the Aurora, I think they were made by Aurora, the m- uh, classic movie monster models and posters, and magic tricks, and he can pick locks and escape from ropes. And he breaks across off of the graveyard, one of his models, and holds it up and drives away- Yeah his classmate at the window because he recognizes this is a, is a vampire. [00:37:47] Ian: Oh, yeah. We see the younger brother take the older brother, then the older brother try to take, Mark, but now Mark's the one who drives them away, which also shows that this is, like, a repeated hunting technique. [00:37:58] Matthew: . And from here, as the plot develops, we get an interesting take on this vampire idea because they are presenting it, they're describing it as a pandemic. [00:38:15] Ian: Ah. [00:38:16] Matthew: And in some ways, it has the structure of a zombie movie. What we would recognize- Yeah ... as a zombie story now, but it's specifically about vampires, where... And we have Ben explaining to, we're talking to the doctor, somebody's explaining that it's, they're, they're ex- they're expanding geometrically. You know, one vampire creates two, and each of them will create two more, and suddenly it's the entire town. Mm-hmm. So it becomes survival horror in that sense of Can we stop this from happening to the town? How do we stop it from happening to us? Is there anything that could be done about this? And they know clearly that this house at the edge, of town where Straker lives is central to this. [00:39:02] Ian: Oh, yeah. We get to see as the infection part spreads, the, this terrifying, creepy bit with, um, I think it's Jeff Lewis as Mike the gravedigger- [00:39:12] Matthew: Yes [00:39:13] Ian: who falls into the grave of, uh, one of the boys as he's being, after he's being buried, and we see the body, like, open its eyes and bite him. And then he wanders into the bar later, and they've already got him in part of the very pale makeup, and he is just looking wide-eyed and horrified and disturbed and he's acting with such a strange cadence. [00:39:41] Matthew: Yes. [00:39:43] Ian: There's this element of infection happening. [00:39:45] Matthew: And they do have the classic vampire power of hypnosis as part of this. [00:39:51] Ian: Mm-hmm. [00:39:51] Matthew: But it's, it's done fairly subtly. It's not you look in a vampire's eyes and you are completely mind controlled. It's the way that the people who are affected by this can talk to you. This creepy, intent, but almost soothing way of speaking to you very directly with a certain cadence. It just stops you in your tracks as you listen to them. It doesn't necessarily persuade you to do something, but it stops you from doing whatever you were going to do to interfere with them. And an interesting bit, every time we see that power being used- [00:40:29] Ian: Mm-hmm [00:40:29] Matthew: Hooper adds to the scene some kind of either audio or visual effect of a metronome. Yes. The scene you're describing, he's sitting in a rocking chair in the guy's guest room. He's just rocking gently and we see the motion, we hear the squeak of the rocking chair. Later on, when Mark is being affected by this, somebody has reached up and has hit a light, so there's this light swinging back and forth, and the light is changing in this kind of metronome effect as he is being hypnotized. It's a wonderful detail that is just- Yeah ... it's so powerful. It almost makes you feel like, "Oh, I understand why he can't continue, why he has to stop and listen." [00:41:09] Ian: It's, it... This is gonna sound like a weird comparison, but the way they show vampire hypnosis and the way various, uh, creators have tried to show, like, the Bene Gesserit voice in Dune- with this, like, there is something in this that is reaching past the normal words and into the back of your brain. Yes. [00:41:37] Matthew: Yes. [00:41:37] Ian: There, it's, it's, there's that trying to mimic the idea of something that is grabbing onto the animal of a human and grabbing you by that part to yank the conscious being with you. [00:41:51] Matthew: Mm-hmm. [00:41:51] Ian: And that swinging like that metronome, that, that calm voice that sounds almost like you're giving a trained animal a command. [00:42:03] Matthew: Yes ... [00:42:04] Ian: is so intense and so poignant there. But yeah, there's always this element there that's adding to it in a, in a creepy, interesting sense. [00:42:14] Matthew: And as things come to a head, and more and more people in the town succumb to this, and there are fewer and fewer of them left who know what's going on and have been able to avoid it, Ben and Mark and the doctor, and for a while Mark's parents, and, um, I don't know how long, uh, Susan's parents survive. [00:42:33] Ian: I don't know. [00:42:34] Matthew: But... Oh, that's right, Susan's dad is the doctor. I forgot, so [00:42:38] Ian: yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes. [00:42:39] Matthew: And eventually we do see Barlow, this mysterious partner of Straker's, who's gonna be coming to town any time now. Of course, that's who was in the, quote-unquote, sideboard. [00:42:52] Ian: Of course. [00:42:53] Matthew: And we finally get to see him, and you talked about this being a classic vampire-type thing. This is a classic vampire in the Nosferatu sense. [00:43:02] Ian: Oh, [00:43:02] Matthew: yeah. Full-on Nosferatu appearance. Um, a little bit cheap on the makeup in terms of some of the, the coloring and such, but clearly that kind of, uh, of image. [00:43:17] Ian: Mm-hmm. [00:43:18] Matthew: And with all of the- all of the, the bigotry and other things that, that, that represents and certainly represented in the Germany in the 1920s- Yes may come along with that. But it's also, at this point, it's, it's a reference back to this original vampire kind of media. Mm-hmm. And talking about this as a pandemic story or a zombie story, in some ways it's an interesting take of the plague aspect of the Nosferatu story. [00:43:43] Ian: It is. [00:43:43] Matthew: Where there it, it didn't have kind of the exponential spread made explicit. And again, and, and like I was saying, we tend to see that more in zombie stories now, but even that is, is a classic vampire trope. [00:43:57] Ian: Yeah. It's, it's interesting because it turns that plague element and those references of, the Nosferatu and Dracula things, you've got pieces of it, but they kind of feel in the wrong order. [00:44:11] Matthew: Hmm. [00:44:12] Ian: The castle on the hill is not where the vampire lives, it's where the vampire is going- [00:44:18] Matthew: Oh, [00:44:19] Ian: yeah ... and arriving to. And the village nearby is aware and already weirded out, but once he arrives in the castle, it starts becoming like the fearful village in the shadow of Dracula's castle that we see in some of those versions of the story. But by the time it's happened, because everything's out of order, the town cannot become paranoid and protected enough before the evil wipes over it. It's the, it's the puzzle pieces in a different order, and it changes the result in that same way. Yeah. But the fact that it has those classical elements in terms of the style of vampire, in terms of the plague element, it makes those parallels clear. [00:45:08] Matthew: Yeah. Before Barlow arrives, he is a subject of curiosity and anticipation in the town. [00:45:17] Ian: Mm-hmm. [00:45:18] Matthew: And by the time he arrives and starts acting, well, it's too late to do anything else. [00:45:22] Ian: Yeah. And it's, it's interesting to see a version of the Dracula story that is treating, that is treating its, modern location as more the small village instead of the civilized town that Dracula's moving to [00:45:39] Matthew: And without being explicit about it, without really explaining it, they do make this town seem very isolated. There's no particular reason it should be. It's on main highways. It's a two-hour drive- Yeah ... to Portland, and yet it does seem weirdly isolated. Maybe because most of the people in this town rarely have a reason to leave. [00:45:58] Ian: There's something almost like, "Well, we don't get people in here." Why? I don't know. It's part of the weirdness. It's like, it's like the town itself repels people from visiting. [00:46:08] Matthew: Yeah. And Straker's the first stranger to show up in so long. He's... That's why he's the subject of, he and his partner Barlow, are subject of curiosity, and Ben is kind of considered suspicious until people realize, oh, this is Ben Mears, who grew up here. [00:46:22] Ian: Yeah, which means he comes through. He's part of the community already. [00:46:28] Matthew: And all of this, of course, comes to a head in a final confrontation or two with the vampire. Before the final, final confrontation, there's this interesting- scene involving the town priest [00:46:41] Ian: Yes [00:46:42] Matthew: where it's Straker and Barlow, who doesn't really talk. The priest is trying to reassure Mark's parents that his obsession with the darkness, and weirdness, and horror stuff is not a huge problem. And they portray the priest as being a c- almost a caricature of post-Vatican II modernism. Yeah. And he is ... He, he does everything just shy of saying, "There is no such thing as anything supernatural. The kinds of things we're talking about are understood by psychology. We're in an age of science." And he is a person of learning, but not a person of faith, the way they portray him in these very brief scenes in which we see him. But then it comes down to a confrontation between him and Barlow, the Master Vampire. \ The priest of course has a cross, and that keeps the vampire at bay. But Straker is saying, "Well, why don't you get rid of that and just have, just rely on your own faith, your faith versus his?" And un- ultimately, the priest does not survive that encounter. [00:47:50] Ian: No. Well, not from what we see. Yeah. Yeah. [00:47:54] Matthew: Mark's parents are, are killed in that confrontation as well. [00:47:58] Ian: Yeah, which is honestly, like, for this giant town-spanning thing, this final fight to take place in this cramped little kitchen- Yes ... is so fascinating. It's, it's the entirety of the supernatural terror of the town is brought down to the scale of a family dinner. [00:48:22] Matthew: Yes. And you're right, it's, it's kind of weirdly abrupt and brutal the fact that his parents are just killed instantly through violence. They are not attacked by a vampire in a vampire kinda way. It's just the vampire's strength. [00:48:37] Ian: Yep. [00:48:39] Matthew: But now we've got Mark, who wants revenge for his parents. And we've got Ben, who wants to get to the heart of all this and put a stop to it. Yeah. And we've got Susan, who wants to know where the other folks are and, keep them from getting hurt. Oh, and Susan's dad, the doctor, who's with Ben. Yeah. They all converge on the house, and we finally get to the house where the, the grand confrontation is. And this is where I think the, the production saved up a lot of its budget- [00:49:12] Ian: Yeah ... [00:49:13] Matthew: for the scenes in the house, because we get a greater variety of cinematography. They obviously had more cameras and more lenses to shoot the inside of this house, which has... We've been building up to seeing the inside of this house for so long. Oh, [00:49:28] Ian: yes [00:49:29] Matthew: And it's, it's shot pretty well. And sometimes we get images where we're seeing people moving around on one floor, and we can see what other people are doing on another floor just based upon the way the architecture is and where they've put the camera. [00:49:41] Ian: Yeah. They've got... There's a lot of fun with angles and, and frenetic, movement in this. [00:49:48] Matthew: And this is also where, uh, James Mason as Straker gets to pull out the stops. [00:49:54] Ian: Yes. ' [00:49:54] Matthew: Cause now they're on his turf, uh, and he, while still in his dapper suit- ... starts to get violent, and he kills the doctor, Susan's father. [00:50:06] Ian: Mm-hmm. [00:50:06] Matthew: And at first it's just Susan and, Mark. And Mark is taken away and tied up. I don't know why. He was being saved for later, I guess. I d- [00:50:16] Ian: yeah. There's something- And- ... very like, you know, "Oh, he'll be good as a, as fuel for my master," kind of thing. Yeah. Because this is where we really get Straker as a version of Renfield- [00:50:27] Matthew: Right in [00:50:27] Ian: that sense. [00:50:28] Matthew: It's, it's interesting. Renfield, and yet in this story, the Renfield character is the socially presentable one. [00:50:34] Ian: Yes. It's like dapper Renfield time. [00:50:39] Matthew: and as soon as we see Mark tied up in a chair, it, we, we can instantly remember, "Oh yeah, he was talking to his dad about how he can get out of any ropes because all the magic he's been practicing." [00:50:52] Ian: Oh, yeah. [00:50:52] Matthew: They don't even bother showing us that very much. It's just, "Oh yeah, you, you remember that checkbox." [00:50:58] Ian: It's like, "Roll. There's an 18? Got it." [00:51:02] Matthew: So he's there, and Susan's been taken away. And Ben and the doctor have shown up, and they've got guns, and they've got wooden stakes, and they've got little bottles of holy water. Once again, two little blue bottles. That's apparently all you're allowed per customer. [00:51:15] Ian: Uh, yeah. [00:51:16] Matthew: And, uh, but the doctor does not last too long- No ... thanks to, uh, to Straker, and a elaborate wall display of sharp antlers. [00:51:25] Ian: Yeah, that would, that was wildly violent. Uh, I did not expect to have flashbacks to the final fight- from Enter the Dragon- [00:51:34] Matthew: Yes ... [00:51:35] Ian: in the middle of Salem- at the end of [00:51:38] Matthew: Salem's Lot. Very similar. Very similar. [00:51:39] Ian: Very similar. Okay, then. Uh, but- [00:51:44] Matthew: And eventually, it's Ben and Mark, and it leads down to the basement for a final confrontation at the last minute, in the nick of time- Mm-hmm ... with Barlow, who is... It's been daylight all this time. In, the, you know, the house is dark inside, but Barlow has been in his, coffin. And there's this creepy chamber in the basement that has lots of other half-made vampires in there. Yeah. We get another one of those great hypnosis scenes. [00:52:09] Ian: Oh, yeah. Um, but I think this is where they figure out to use fire. [00:52:14] Matthew: Yes. they get, they get Barlow with a stake through the heart, but then they burn the place down. [00:52:21] Ian: Mm-hmm. And the idea... And they, they, they're just like, "Fire's working. Lean in on fire." [00:52:28] Matthew: And we even got a little bit of, uh, uh, foreshadowing about the fire when we heard in the background a bunch of the history pageant at the school- Yep talking about the fire that started near the old Marston house and swept down the hill towards town. It's, "Oh, just like this fire's doing." [00:52:47] Ian: Exactly. Oh, good to know that the path will go that way. Because the u- the answer is, you know, if the fire hurts them or at least keeps them at bay, what do we do? The whole town's infected. We burn the whole thing. [00:53:00] Matthew: Yeah. It makes you wonder if the fire in the 18th century wasn't for similar reasons. [00:53:07] Ian: Yeah. It's, it, it's one of those contextual things where you, like, you re-listen to a piece of this and you're like, "Oh, my goodness. That was the last time they tried to get rid of this guy." They've been fight- This isn't a new fight. This has been going on for a long time. Which also implies that, like, is a house inherently evil? Well, maybe it's because that house is acting as some kind of beacon. [00:53:33] Matthew: Hmm. [00:53:34] Ian: It's not that the vampire was creepy. It's that the house draws things like vampires to it. [00:53:40] Matthew: Oh. [00:53:41] Ian: Maybe Ben was right. [00:53:42] Matthew: Yeah. It's, if this remains unoccupied long enough, some other vampire in the world is gonna say, "Oh, yeah. Prime real estate. A new town has risen and become populated." [00:53:53] Ian: Y- you see this? Hmm. This is how you get vampires. You gotta do something about that. We're gonna have to lay traps in this area, you know? Gonna have to come through and spray for vampires every few years, you know? Otherwise, in a century they'll, they'll be popping up all over the place. [00:54:09] Matthew: Orkin the Vampire Slayer. Like- [00:54:13] Ian: Yep. Oh, boy. [00:54:16] Matthew: So they're... So it w- seems like Ben and Mark are the only survivors. For some reason they believe they're gonna be hunted by vampires. I'm not quite sure why they assume that. But I guess they figure there must be some survivors in the town. And they're- And there [00:54:31] Ian: was some... Uh, I, I will say there was something about Mark that means that he wasn't immediately eaten. They were wanting to- Oh ... hold him and use him. [00:54:40] Matthew: Yeah. [00:54:40] Ian: So there's an element of like, "I don't know what it is about me, but I am more valuable than base food to the vampires." [00:54:48] Matthew: That's a good point. [00:54:48] Ian: "So maybe I'm something they will chase." [00:54:51] Matthew: It's his extensive knowledge of vampire lore no doubt. [00:54:54] Ian: Yes. [00:54:56] Matthew: And they're also mourning Susan, who they presume is trapped in the house and vamprifi- vampirified, and is perishing with the rest of the vampires. And that's how they ended up in Guatemala [00:55:09] Ian: Yeah [00:55:09] Matthew: By running away from, uh, Salem's Lot, Maine, as far as they can. And as we saw at the beginning, they didn't run far enough. The vamps have found them. [00:55:22] Ian: The holy water is glowing, which they don't establish anywhere. [00:55:26] Matthew: No. Is this another of Mark's weird powers? [00:55:30] Ian: Yeah, is that part of it? I don't know. Is this something they figured out on the run? [00:55:34] Matthew: Yeah. [00:55:35] Ian: But it's the most unexplained part is the first thing we see. [00:55:39] Matthew: Yes. Well, you really can't just assume that when you haven't established that either in anything you've said or you're not... And, and also you're not relying on any existing vampire lore that suggests anybody who's met a vampire can use a bottle of holy water as a vampire detector. [00:55:56] Ian: Yeah. [00:55:59] Matthew: And of course, the vampire that finds them is Susan. [00:56:03] Ian: Yeah. [00:56:04] Matthew: And she's a vampire, and being a vampire, she has advantage on, uh, rolls for hotness and seduction. [00:56:12] Ian: Of course. [00:56:12] Matthew: And she is waiting for them in this little hovel that they've apparently been living in for a while. And classic kind of scene where it looks like Ben might be succumbing to her charms, but instead he is preparing to stake her through the heart, like, before they move on to run away some more. [00:56:28] Ian: And he's very sad. He's like, "Oh, well, that's completely gone." Yeah. "And, you know, I've staked her, but, uh, we'll run off again and continue to live. That's the whole point." Right. So yeah. [00:56:41] Matthew: So a lot of very, very classic vampire tropes and elements put into this more pandemic and zombie-like story structure. And in the modern day, which was a fascinating development, a novelty for me when I was watching this when I was 13 or 14. [00:57:02] Ian: Yeah. It, it honestly, yeah, it was, it was... It actually kept closer to traditional vampire narrative than I expected in some ways. Hmm. Very interesting to see, though. [00:57:15] Matthew: Well, I think we might be coming up on our final questions. [00:57:19] Ian: I think so. [00:57:20] Matthew: So stay tuned for those, listeners, so we can talk about, whether we recommend this and what else we might want done with this story. But in the meantime, if you're enjoying the Intermillennium Media Project podcast, please go to immproject.com, and that's where you will find all of our back episodes, more than 200 of them now. It's also where you will find ways to, contact us. You'll find a contact page there. You can get us on our Discord, uh, via email, on Blue Sky and Mastodon, and you can also contact us through our PO box in the genuine US mail. And also, you'll find on that website ways to get more content and to support the show. On our Patreon, you can support us and, uh, starting at $3 a month, get additional bonus audio content. And at our store, linked from immproject.com, you can buy T-shirts and coffee mugs and all kinds of fun things related to the show and related to some of the things that we have talked about on the show. [00:58:23] Ian: Mm-hmm. [00:58:24] Matthew: And Ian, where can people find you? [00:58:26] Ian: I can be found online as ItemCrafting in most places, be that ItemCrafting.com or as ItemCraftingLive on Twitch. Most every Thursday, I'm playing games and building crafts on camera. Happy to chat with any of you and talk about any of the things we've recorded on podcast or whatever you've been watching recently. [00:58:46] Matthew: Some of the classic '90s point and click stuff you've been playing is fun. I like that. [00:58:49] Ian: Oh, thank you. Yeah. It's, it's fun to break out some of those older things and just- Yeah ... see, you know, FMV video- ... doesn't quite land within, within the realm for our, our podcast here. But it's still got some of those same techniques and styles. [00:59:02] Matthew: Yep. [00:59:04] Ian: And Dad, where can people find you? [00:59:06] Matthew: You can find me at bymatthewporter.com, and from there you'll find links to anything else I'm doing. So you'll find my blog. You will find a link to my YouTube page where I review, uh, movies and movie theater experiences, well, as well as talking about mysteries and about writing. And at bymatthewporter.com, you can find out about my book, Questions for the Dead, a Martin Rodak psychic mystery, which is available now. You can buy it in e-book form or as a paperback at your favorite online bookseller, or ask for the paperback at your local, real world bookstore. [00:59:42] Ian: Uh, if you enjoyed the, the, the bit of supernatural and modernity for, we had in this m- this movie, I think there's some fun there with your take on, you know, psychic abilities in the modern day- in Rodak. I like that. [00:59:57] Matthew: Yeah, imagine if Mark there, uh, worked for Jim Rockford. [01:00:02] Ian: Oh, yeah. Very much so. [01:00:05] Matthew: All right. Well, I think it's time- Okay ... for final questions. [01:00:09] Ian: I think so. [01:00:11] Matthew: I, we're gonna continue... I think we can regard this as a movie. Uh- Mm-hmm ... so screen or no screen? [01:00:19] Ian: I think this is a screen. This was good. It was a, it was a good classic take on a vampire film, and it was very compelling for some of its scenes, really grabbing me for like just doing a type of story I knew very well, and being good at just its tone-setting and uncertainty that when I didn't go in knowing vampires, I was still getting the vibe it was going for every time. It was great at doing those classic bits, but it didn't rely on them as its only source of style, and that's a wonderful sign. [01:00:56] Matthew: I was really, uh- I'm really unsure about my answer to this question because on the one hand, I think it holds up well. I enjoyed watching it again. I'm glad we went back to it. But on the other hand, it suffers greatly from some of the conditions placed upon it by the fact that it was produced for network television with a lot of commercial breaks spread over two nights of television. It is repetitive. It is very slow. I would really like to be able to edit this into one reasonably, sized feature film running somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours total. It would work much better. But that said, I don't think that those limitations should stop someone from watching it. So I still recommend it. You go in knowing what you're gonna see. It is '70s television. It is network television, and you can almost see where the commercial breaks were supposed to be. And yet it's still compelling enough that I, I say screen. I recommend it [01:01:55] Ian: Well, you said you wanted a concise new version of Salem's Lot. I've got good news for you, Matthew Porter [01:02:02] Matthew: Do you? [01:02:03] Ian: Yeah. Salem's Lot's had a lot of adaptations over time. Because we watched, yeah, this was the one from '79, but there has been since then a 2004 and a 2024 film versions of Salem's Lot. I take it that the two-part 2004 miniseries really strays from the original story, though. [01:02:26] Matthew: Oh, really? [01:02:27] Ian: It was a TNT, miniseries, and its poster is the most 2004 thing I think I've ever seen. Because I do believe that their version of Ben Mears is there with slicked back black hair and a, and a leather coat. Which is just a look for you. [01:02:48] Matthew: Yeah. [01:02:49] Ian: Uh, the 2000- [01:02:49] Matthew: Well, I mean, if you're gonna have him as being so incredibly '70s in the '70s version, it makes sense to have him incredibly in whatever time he is. [01:02:59] Ian: It is, yeah. , The 2004 one I think, I take it, is much closer to the story- [01:03:07] Matthew: Yeah ... [01:03:07] Ian: uh, from the book And similar in some ways to the miniseries we watched [01:03:12] Matthew: Yeah, because the, the series we saw is fairly, uh, fairly faithful to the book. [01:03:18] Ian: Yeah. not faithful to the book at all from what I understand is the, the '87- Return to Salem's Lot. [01:03:29] Matthew: There wasn't much to return to, was there? [01:03:32] Ian: No. And I don't know what to think of the description that, it was written by Larry Cohen And he took inspiration from the play Our Town To create a story about someone arriving in this town to find out that it's being run and li- and is, and is all run by vampires who, like, kinda talk the, are trying to talk this, uh, person who arrived into becoming a vampire, it sounds odd. [01:04:05] Matthew: So it's, it's vampires just going about their o- ordinary, quote-unquote, "lives" as citizens of this town? [01:04:16] Ian: Uh, yeah. I think it kind of... The description I tried to read after I finished watching the miniseries makes it sound almost more like the, the, A Return to Salem's Lot- ... i- is a marketing piece done by the vampires to make Ben and Mark look like local terrorists- ... than it does an actual story. It's like, "Well, there's those two guys. Those two awful people who burned down our town. We're just vampires trying to..." I'm like, "What is, what am I reading here?" It sounds odd, and I don't know what to think. Yeah. And I don't know if I want to see it. [01:04:54] Matthew: I, I am weirdly fascinated. I might have to seek this out because that kind of setup, and comparing it to Our Town and- Of all the possible sequels to this, this miniseries, that is not what I would've come up with. [01:05:12] Ian: Yeah. And it's the fact that A Return to Salem's Lot got a theatrical release. Like, this is the one that got into movie theaters? What is going on over here? [01:05:23] Matthew: Wow. [01:05:25] Ian: So that's odd [01:05:30] Matthew: So it's, it's had a number of treatments in terms of revivals and reboots. [01:05:36] Ian: Yeah. [01:05:38] Matthew: And w- what do you think it should have at this point? Especially not just Salem's Lot as a property, other adaptations of the novel. Let's back it up to say specifically the '79 miniseries. [01:05:52] Ian: Mm. Okay. [01:05:52] Matthew: Is there a, a reboot of this, which I guess would just be another adaptation of the book, or some kind of a specific sequel to the '79, uh, miniseries that you'd like? [01:06:04] Ian: I think that a continuation of the '79 miniseries, intriguingly enough, just becomes the adventures of Ben and Mark, supernatural hunters. [01:06:15] Matthew: Right. [01:06:16] Ian: Which is fine, but there's other things that do that. It doesn't have to be Salem's Lot related. [01:06:22] Matthew: Yeah. [01:06:23] Ian: And I think it sounds like there are currently good new versions taking the same sort of stuff. So I don't think it needs a reboot of this version. [01:06:37] Matthew: Mm-hmm. [01:06:37] Ian: I think the thing this is based off is getting reboots already. [01:06:41] Matthew: Yeah. [01:06:42] Ian: So this one can be a loving rest in peace and stay there this time. [01:06:46] Matthew: Yes. Yeah, I would say, you know, make this a rest in peace. Uh, use the appropriate, uh, wooden stakes or other accoutrements as required. But, um, it's worth going back to, but we don't need to do more with this version. [01:07:02] Ian: I will say I'm very fascinated because trying to look up stuff about Salem's Lot as a story, I have not been a Stephen King fan, and yet apparently Salem's Lot is a linchpin in his little, in his world and works. [01:07:16] Matthew: Yes. [01:07:17] Ian: Because Salem's Lot is one of the pieces that ties a lot of his stories together in things like The Dark Tower series, which turn his disparate horror stories into a multiverse of cosmic terror. [01:07:32] Matthew: There is a whole specific subset of fandom that is all about drawing all those connections and tying all of Stephen King's stuff into a consistent, complete, elaborate, interconnected universe. And yeah, Salem's Lot is a central part of that. Couple of towns in Maine, including Salem's Lot- Mm-hmm ... uh, feature very prominently in that network. [01:07:56] Ian: It's when I started realizing there's characters from Salem's Lot who have entire Wikipedia pages- ... just about the people, because this character shows up in three other stories- ... as a c- as a through line, and I'm just like, "Huh? How?" Well, like, it- In, uh, suddenly that strange tone. I'm like, "How did the '79 miniseries do a good job of being world-building setup for a multiverse saga before any studio was trying to do multiverse sagas anywhere?" And yet it worked. And I'm looking at this and saying, "I kinda don't need more Salem's Lot, but if anyone's gonna do it..." I don't know if the new one does or anything. I'm fascinated to see if they're trying to lean in on this. So it's, it's a stay dead. It's a, it's a rest in peace. It's a stay dead. You don't have to, but I'm intrigued if you try. [01:08:58] Matthew: Or how can we get those references to Salem's Lot into other adaptations and other Stephen King properties? [01:09:04] Ian: Right. So who knows? [01:09:10] Matthew: Well, this has been a fun start to our October theme. [01:09:13] Ian: It has. And we've got more king weirdness coming up, don't we? [01:09:19] Matthew: We do. We do. This is gonna be fun. We've got another episode before Halloween rolls in. So join us in a couple of weeks for more spooky tales of media from the 20th century. [01:09:33] Ian: And in the meantime, go find something new to watch.