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Salem's Lot · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film is Lit the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie. I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen the or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in, and get ready for spoilers because this film is lit. The house was a monument to evil, sitting there all these years, holding the essence of evil in its smoldering bones. It's Salem's Lot, and this film is lit. Foreign welcome back to this Film Is Late, the podcast. We're talking about movies that are based on books. We have every single one of our segments. So much to get to. We're gonna jump right in. If you have not read or watched Salem's Lot, we're gonna give you a summary of the film in Let me sum up. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. All right, here's a summary of Salem's Lot 1979, the film slash miniseries so from Wikipedia At a church in Guatemala, a man and a boy, Ben Mears and Mark Petrie, fill small bottles with holy water. When one of the bottles begins to emit an eerie, supernatural glow, Mears tells Mark that they found us again. Knowing an evil presence is nearby, they decide to stay to fight it. Two years earlier, Mears, a successful author, returns from a long absence to his small hometown of Salem's Lot, Maine. Mears intends to write a book about the Marston House, an old, ominous property on a hilltop which has a reputation for being haunted. A Attempting to rent it, Mears finds that it has already been purchased by another new arrival in town, the mysterious Richard Straker, who is in the process of opening an antique shop with his oft mentioned but never present business partner, Kurt Barlow. Instead, Mears moves into a boarding house in a town run by Eva Miller and develops a romantic relationship with a local woman, Susan Norton. He befriends Susan's father, Dr. Bill Norton, and reconnects with his kindly former schoolteacher, Jason Burke. Mears tells Burke that he feels the Marston house is somehow inherently evil, recalling that its original owner, Hubie Marston, implied to have been a child molester, died of suicide there. Mears further recalls a traumatic childhood incident in which he broke into the house on a dare and saw Hubie's ghost. After a large crate is delivered to the Marston house one night, townspeople begin to disappear or die under strange circumstances. Mears and Straker are the main suspects as they are both new in town, but it eventually becomes clear that the crate contains Contained is Straker's business partner, Kurt Barlow, an ancient vampire who has come to Salem's Lot. After sending Straker to prepare for his arrival, Straker kidnaps a young boy, Ralphie Glick, as an offering to Barlow, while Barlow himself causes local realtor Larry Crockett to die of fright when he appears, Ralphie Glick returns as a vampire to claim his brother Danny. After his funeral, the undead Danny infects a gravedigger, Mike Ryerson, and attempts to prey on one of his school friends, Mark Petrie. However, Mark is a horror film buff and manages to repel Danny with a cross. As the vampirism spreads, mears, Burke and Dr. Norton gradually realize what is happening to the town and attempt to stop it. Burke, however, suffers a severe heart attack following an encounter with the newly vampirized Ryerson. Mark's parents are both killed by Barlow, though Mark escapes with the assistance of a local priest. Mears is attacked by Ralph and Danny's presumed dead mother, Margaery Glick, after she revives on a mortician's table, but Mears defends himself using a makeshift cross seeking revenge for his parents death. Mark breaks into the Marston house and a concerned Susan follows him inside and both are soon captured by Straker. Later, Mears and Dr. Norton arrive and enter the house too, where Straker kills Norton by impaling him on a pair of antlers before he himself is fatally shot by Mears. Afterwards, Mears and the freed Mark find Barlow's coffin in the cellar and destroy him by striving a stake through his heart. Fleeing the other vampires in the house, the infected townsfolk, the two set fire to the Marston property. As they leave, though Susan is nowhere to be found. While the house burns, the winds carry the fire towards the town itself. As he and Mark drive away from Salem's Lot, Mears comments that the fire will drive all the vampires from their hiding places and purify the town from the evil that has engulfed it. The story returns to Mears and Mark at the church in Guatemala two years later. It becomes clear that they are on the run from the surviving Salem's Lot vampires and that their bottles of holy water glow whenever a Vampire is nearby. Realizing that they have been tracked down yet again, Mears and Mark return to their lodgings to collect their belongings. And once there, Mears finds Susan laying in his bed. Now a vampire. She prepares to bite him as he leans down to kiss her, but instead he drives a stake through her heart and destroys her. A grief stricken Mears then leaves with Mark, knowing that the vampires will continue to pursue them. The end. That's your summary of Salem's Lot, the miniseries. We do have a guess who this week. Let's do it. Who are you? No one of consequence. I must know.
• 5:14
  Speaker B: Get used to disappointment. She was a very pretty girl and there was a silk scarf tied over her light blonde hair. She had a very pretty face with candid blue eyes and a high, clear, tanned forehead.
• 5:28
  Speaker A: I'm gonna just cut to the chase and say that this is Susan.
• 5:32
  Speaker B: It is Susan.
• 5:33
  Speaker A: Not really. Any other options?
• 5:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, not a whole lot of other options. His steel rimmed glasses flashed in the morning sun. He was as tall as Richie, but he was slender and his face looked defenseless and bookish.
• 5:50
  Speaker A: Steel rimmed glasses. I'm trying to think who has glasses? I don't. I can't remember who all has glasses, defenseless and bookish. I don't even know who Richie is, so I don't know.
• 6:01
  Speaker B: It's not important.
• 6:02
  Speaker A: Okay, well, it could be if I knew who it was, how tall he was, it might be relevant, but I literally have no idea. I'm gonna say that this is. This is Mark.
• 6:13
  Speaker B: That actually is Mark. Very good.
• 6:16
  Speaker A: Nailed it. Which one's Mark?
• 6:18
  Speaker B: The kid.
• 6:18
  Speaker A: The kid. Okay. For whatever reason, I kept getting Mark and Ben, like their names switched in my head and I don't know why. Anyways, I think it's because Mears and Mark. Maybe it's been Mears and Mark. And so I think Mears and Mark.
• 6:32
  Speaker B: Was, I don't know, a tall man dressed in a sober three piece suit. In spite of the day's heat, he was as bald as a cue ball and as sweatless as the same. His eyebrows were a straight black slash and his eye sockets carved shelved away below them to dark holes that might have been carved into the angular surface of his face with drill bits.
• 6:55
  Speaker A: I mean, the three piece suit. In spite of the day's heat, I have to assume that this is Straker.
• 7:00
  Speaker B: Yeah, it is Straker.
• 7:01
  Speaker A: Or the equivalent, whatever his name is.
• 7:02
  Speaker B: Yeah. He was a tall man with piercing blue eyes and a ruddy complexion. His hair was a graying steel color.
• 7:11
  Speaker A: That'S not anything that could be any. I'm gonna just guess that this is Dr. Norton.
• 7:19
  Speaker B: No, that's actually the priest, Father Callahan.
• 7:23
  Speaker A: Okay, I forgot about the priest. He's actually not in the movie.
• 7:26
  Speaker B: Yeah, he's not in the movie. He's in the book a lot more than he is in the movie.
• 7:29
  Speaker A: He gets mentioned in the second part briefly, and then he shows up, and then he's in that one scene that's very important, but then we never see.
• 7:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, and then he immediately vanishes. Yeah. Oh, okay, last one. The man turned toward him. The face that was discovered in the red glow of the dying fire was high, cheekboned and thoughtful. The hair was white, streaked with oddly virile slashes of iron gray. The guy had it swept back from his high, waxy forehead like one of those slur concert pianists.
• 8:03
  Speaker A: I'm gonna guess that maybe we're doing a more. Maybe the book is doing a more classic. Not classic. Yeah, maybe classic take of Dracula and that. This is Kurt Barlow.
• 8:13
  Speaker B: It is Kurt Barlow. Yeah.
• 8:15
  Speaker A: And he's not like the Nosferatu.
• 8:17
  Speaker B: Yeah, the movie went like Nosferatu.
• 8:19
  Speaker A: He's literally the one from one of the. He's like. Exactly. Looks like one of the Nosferatu creatures. I'm pretty sure. Maybe from the original movie. I can't rem. But, yeah, absolutely.
• 8:30
  Speaker B: But, yeah, the book. And this is not the only description of Barlow that's in the book. But King very clearly went like Bella, the ghosty Dracula with it.
• 8:41
  Speaker A: Was it the fro. Romani people? Was that the slur? What was the slur?
• 8:45
  Speaker B: Oh, no, it was.
• 8:46
  Speaker A: You don't have to, like, say it.
• 8:48
  Speaker B: I'm gonna say it. It was a slur for gay men.
• 8:51
  Speaker A: Oh, really?
• 8:52
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 8:53
  Speaker A: That's not what I was expecting. I really thought it would have been a ethnicity.
• 8:58
  Speaker B: The character that is describing him as, like, the type of person that would casually use.
• 9:04
  Speaker A: All right.
• 9:05
  Speaker B: Slurs for gay men.
• 9:06
  Speaker A: All right. All right. Those are all of Katie's questions for Guess who I did. Okay. I don't remember. I missed one.
• 9:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, you only missed one. Wow.
• 9:16
  Speaker A: I didn't think I would do that.
• 9:17
  Speaker B: Well, so I kind of didn't either.
• 9:20
  Speaker A: But I have a lot of questions. Let's get into them. And was that in the book?
• 9:24
  Speaker B: Gaston, may I have my book, please?
• 9:26
  Speaker A: How can you read this? There's no pictures.
• 9:29
  Speaker B: Well, some people use their imagination.
• 9:31
  Speaker A: So, as I mentioned in the summary, we open up kind of in the future of when our main narrative takes place. We start with a bookended in Media res. Kind, I guess. I don't know. We start at the end of our story, basically with Mark and Ben in Guatemala on the run from vampires. We obviously don't know at the beginning that they're on the run from vampires, but we know they're on the run from something evil. Cause it's found them again. And I wanted to know if the book started that way in the Guatemalan church where some mysterious man and a boy getting. Filling holy water vials and then jumping back two years to Salem's Lot and figuring out how he got there.
• 10:10
  Speaker B: So the book does open with Ben and Mark living in Mexico, and then it jumps back two years earlier to Salem's Lot. So it has the exact same, like, frame story, bookended structure. Did you ask about the holy water in that slew of questions?
• 10:29
  Speaker A: Oh, I mean, it was in there. I said that I mentioned it turning blue. I don't know if I specifically asked a question about it.
• 10:34
  Speaker B: Water turns blue. And in the book, some of the weapons that they use against the vampires do glow with, like, a holy power. Mostly the crosses.
• 10:46
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 10:46
  Speaker B: Although I think some of the other stuff glows at different points too. But I didn't feel like it was implied that they were glowing because vampires were nearby. What happened in the movie made me think of Lord of the Rings.
• 10:59
  Speaker A: Yes. Very much.
• 11:00
  Speaker B: Like, it turns blue and he's like, oh, no.
• 11:02
  Speaker A: Like when Aragorn sees. At the end of Fellowship, when he sees Frodo's. When he sees Sting, and he's like, yeah, Uruk hai run. Yeah, no, it. Absolutely. They have a little light of. Or whatever it's called. Yeah. So then we jump back to Salem's Lot two years earlier, and we. Which is funny because I feel like this story only takes place over the course of, like, a few weeks. Right?
• 11:28
  Speaker B: A couple weeks. Yeah. No, it really does. It does not take place over the course of very much time.
• 11:33
  Speaker A: Yeah. So then we jump two years. So there's like a whole, like, year and 50 weeks or whatever that we just don't see. You know what I mean? We just jump way forward, I guess. I don't know. I thought that was interesting. But jump back to Salem's Lot and we start setting up all of our characters, which this miniseries takes quite a bit of time, setting up all of the townsfolk we meet, quite a few of them. And one of the people we meet is this new creepy old man named Straker who is opening an antique store in town. And I wanted to know if that was the premise for how Dracula or the vampire shows up. Is that. Is there this Renfield or whatever? Is there, like, a Renfield who shows up in Salem's Lot and buys us. Is opening an antique store as, like, cover for smuggling a vampire in. And also, is he renting the titular. Not titular, I guess, but the Marston house, which is, like the big evil house. Or maybe there isn't even a big evil house in the book. Cause I thought that was kind of interesting. This movie kind of does two things. There's a vampire. It's a Dracula story. Vampire story. But also we have, like, an evil house story.
• 12:42
  Speaker B: And they just kind of. And also then, like, the whole town is also kind of spooky.
• 12:49
  Speaker A: Sure, the whole town is kind of spooky, but the house specifically is, like, evil and, like, attracts evil things. And I guess that's kind of the way that the story in the film combines those two elements is the idea that this house, because it is evil, attracts evil men, is what Mir says at one point.
• 13:06
  Speaker B: Point.
• 13:06
  Speaker A: Ben says at one point. And so the idea being that, I guess that it attracted Straker and the vampire to come there. Is that how that all plays out in the book?
• 13:15
  Speaker B: Yeah. Part of the premise is that Straker and Barlow arrive in Salem's Lot under the pretense of opening an antique store where they import antiques, which is technically true because Barlow's really old.
• 13:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be neat.
• 13:29
  Speaker B: They're not even lying.
• 13:30
  Speaker A: Not lying.
• 13:32
  Speaker B: And they do buy the Marston house to live in. And it does, I guess, attract evil. It's almost like the precursor to the Shining.
• 13:42
  Speaker A: Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Like the evil house thing. Oh, well. And so I thought it was fascinating. And I guess the movie does kind of touch on this because they say. I thought it was a very strange conceit that this guy goes to this, like, 600 person, 2,000 person pop. I can't remember what the sign says. The population of Salem's Lot is relatively small.
• 14:03
  Speaker B: Small.
• 14:03
  Speaker A: A couple thousand at most. I like the idea that he comes there to set up a very fancy.
• 14:11
  Speaker B: So that's actually addressed in the book.
• 14:13
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 14:14
  Speaker B: Because there's a lot of conversation in the first part of the book about, like, among the townspeople, about how, like, oh, it's expensive. He think is going to buy that stuff. That was my thought, is tourists.
• 14:27
  Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
• 14:28
  Speaker B: Because in the summer months when all the rich people come to Maine.
• 14:32
  Speaker A: Right.
• 14:32
  Speaker B: Rich people buy antiques.
• 14:34
  Speaker A: Okay. Because there is the mention in the movie of somebody saying, like, oh, the town doesn't have that many. I think there is a reference to being, like, a summer. Like, people showing up in the summer or whatever. But I did think that was kind of funny. But the movie also does reference. He says something like he's, like, testing it out there, setting up. Straker says something about, like, starting there, but then wanting to, like.
• 14:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, like, expand.
• 14:56
  Speaker A: Expand across the whole. You know, all of New England or whatever. Which obviously has double meaning. But it also kind of explains the idea because I was like, man, that's a tiny town to open a very fancy, weird, like, European antique store. But all right. So then we're introduced to Ben Mears, who is a writer who shows up in Salem's Lot. We'll find out eventually, and I don't know if we know at this point or not, or how early we know, but that he is from Salem's Lot originally and he is returning to write a book about the Marston house, which is this evil house. And he wants to write a story about it when he arrives. But he meets. So he's hanging out in the town to do research on the house. When he gets there, he meets Susan, who is a local teacher, and they hit it off and start going on dates. And I think he. Immediately. She takes him home to meet her parents.
• 15:50
  Speaker B: Immediately, yeah.
• 15:52
  Speaker A: Which I guess was the thing he did in the seventies. I don't know. It's weird. But they go home and he meets her parents, and Susan and her mom are in the kitchen cleaning up or something, and they're talking about how Ben is an author and Susan is a fan of him. She has read his books before. But her mom goes, so, what's his latest book about? And Susan goes, it's about two men. And that's all she says. And her mom replies, after a brief pause, goes, not one of those. Which I thought was very funny. I wanted to know if that line came from the book.
• 16:29
  Speaker B: That exact exchange is not from the book. Although Susan does have a moment. They have a similar conversation in that scene. And Susan does have a moment of concern that her mother is going to open the book and object to a rape scene set in a men's prison.
• 16:47
  Speaker A: So the guy in this wrote the one we're doing. My God, Shawshank Redemption.
• 16:54
  Speaker B: Spoilers.
• 16:55
  Speaker A: Spoilers. Yeah, sorry, let me cut that out. So the author in this wrote, Shawshank.
• 17:01
  Speaker B: Redemption, which brings me to my little parenthetical note here. Side note that Ben is such a painfully obvious author insert character that it really did make me cringe a little. It's like, so. And like, look, it's not that most writers don't do that, but, like, you got to cover that up a little bit. Just a little bit.
• 17:28
  Speaker A: This guy literally wrote Shawshank Redemption in Universe and also walks around town in his little elbow patched sweater or his elbow patched jacket. Yeah, like professor jacket that he wears. It's. It's very comical. So, as I said, the two hit it off. And I had another line that I wanted to know if it came from the book because I thought it was a fun little exchange where again, he's in town to write the book and he hits it off with Susan. They kind of start dating, and she asks them, as they're in the early in their kind of relationship, how long are you staying in town? And he says, depends on how long the book takes. And she says, are you a slow writer? And he says, I'm medium. I think that's what he says at least. And she says, well, I hope it's a long book. And I don't know, I just want to know if he came from in the book.
• 18:15
  Speaker B: I couldn't find that exact exchange in the book, but I didn't have a digital copy to search this time because I. I tried to get it through the library and I had to give up because I was like, number 64 on the list. So if you have a digital copy of this, you go ahead and search for that.
• 18:35
  Speaker A: Does Susan have a former plumber lover who's clearly bad news?
• 18:41
  Speaker B: Make it sound like he's a guy who loves plumbers.
• 18:44
  Speaker A: Yeah. No.
• 18:45
  Speaker B: And not a plumber himself.
• 18:46
  Speaker A: He's a former plumber.
• 18:47
  Speaker B: Former. Former lover.
• 18:51
  Speaker A: I guess he's a plumber former lover and not a former plumber lover.
• 18:55
  Speaker B: Yeah. So Susan does have an ex boyfriend, although how much of an ex he is is kind of up for debate.
• 19:04
  Speaker A: It is in the movie a little bit too. Like, it's kind of alluded to that maybe they went on like a date or something like that, and that he is taking it for that in the.
• 19:12
  Speaker B: Book, they had been together for quite a while. Like, they had been. Her mother says, oh, when you say.
• 19:18
  Speaker A: How much of an ex, you mean how much they're broken up, not how.
• 19:21
  Speaker B: Much they're broken up. Yeah.
• 19:23
  Speaker A: Yes. Which is also alluded to in the movie because she says, like, yeah, like, he's like, oh, like, you know, like, are you guys. And she's like, oh, I saw him for a while. And he's like, saw or seeing? And she goes a little bit.
• 19:35
  Speaker B: Both.
• 19:36
  Speaker A: Or Whatever.
• 19:37
  Speaker B: So it's an ill defined relationship, I suppose. In the book his name is Floyd. The movie changes it to Ned. Oh, you're right, it is Ned for some reason. And I don't think he's a plumber in the book.
• 19:53
  Speaker A: He is in the movie.
• 19:54
  Speaker B: Right. His dad said plumber, like Ned. I'm not really sure what he does in the book. I don't think.
• 20:00
  Speaker A: I just thought it was funny that he was a plumber. I don't know why. Because the first time we see him, he's in his plumbing van.
• 20:06
  Speaker B: He's a plumber lover.
• 20:07
  Speaker A: Yes. So another. As I said, a lot of this first part is setting up all of the. The assorted miscreants in this town because it is a town full of characters. And two of the other people that we're introduced to are Bonnie and Larry. Who? Larry Crockett is like a real estate agent.
• 20:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, he's the town real estate agent.
• 20:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. Played by. We'll get to it later. But played by a well known actor. Lots of people in this was blowing my mind. I have notes about it. We'll get to. I didn't recognize like any of the names while reading the. The IMDb credits. But then while watching the movie I was like, oh, I know every single person in this movie. Which I thought was interesting. We are introduced to Bonnie and Larry and they. There's a subplot that Bonnie is married to some guy. He's like, runs the wreck, like the towing business in town or whatever. I can't remember his name. Larry.
• 20:58
  Speaker B: Not Coley. Coley, that's his name.
• 21:01
  Speaker A: And she is having an affair with her boss. She works for Larry Crockett and she's having an affair with him. And I wanted to know if the affair subplot with Bo Larry came from the book.
• 21:13
  Speaker B: There is a character named Bonnie and she does have an extramarital affair. But it isn't with Larry Crockett. It's with another guy in the town.
• 21:23
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 21:24
  Speaker B: A younger guy.
• 21:25
  Speaker A: We'll have to see if that.
• 21:25
  Speaker B: Scandalous.
• 21:27
  Speaker A: So Ben then runs back into his. One of his high school teachers. Like his writing teacher.
• 21:33
  Speaker B: English teacher. English teacher.
• 21:35
  Speaker A: Burke, I think is.
• 21:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, Mr. Burke. In the movie it's Jason Burke. And the book it's Matt Burke. They did some random name changing for like no reason in this movie.
• 21:46
  Speaker A: No reason. Yeah. But he. So he meets up with him again and they're having a conversation. They go grab some drinks together and they're talking about like why he's there and he's writing this book about the Marston house. And he explains that he has. He's like, do you believe in evil? And he explains that he thinks that the Marston house is, like, evil is somehow inherently evil and that it attracts evil men to it. And I wanted to know if that underlying hypothesis by Ben or by other townsfolk or whatever came from the book.
• 22:14
  Speaker B: Yes, it does. Ben has a theory that the Marston house is like a beacon of evil looking out over the town. This book has much ruminating on the nature of evil. Yeah, quite a lot of ruminating on that.
• 22:29
  Speaker A: The movie has a couple scenes where they bring it up specifically, one where they're talking to, I think, the priest or whatever. Do you believe in evil? Like, capital E, evil or whatever? I don't know. They don't really go into it that much.
• 22:41
  Speaker B: Well, there's some. There's some ruminating on, like. Like, our interpretation. Like, an older interpretation of evil. Like, the idea of, like, vampires and demons.
• 22:51
  Speaker A: And that's what the movie scene references were.
• 22:53
  Speaker B: Like, how that, like, kind of fell out of fashion in the modern era and now we think of evil in a more, like, realistic, concrete, human way. Yeah, yeah. As I said, much, much ruminating.
• 23:05
  Speaker A: The movie references those lines, but doesn't really care to explore it very much. Like, it just kind of is thrown in there as referential to something from the book. But it's not really, like, a huge thematic through line. I wouldn't say necessarily, but we'll get to that more later. So we talked about Straker setting up the antique store. And he kind of operates as Renfield kind of in this story. And so he gets a big box delivered that shows up from Europe, I think. I don't know if they ever say where it's coming from specifically, but he gets this big, weird, weirdly cold box delivered because Ned and somebody else. Oh, Ryerson, the Gravedigger, they go pick it up. Originally it was supposed to be Cully that was gonna go pick it up, but he hires them so that he can go find out if his wife is cheating on him with Larry Crockett, which she is. And they. They pick up this box from the port or whatever and they take it back to the Marston house. But they're talking about how it's, like, weirdly cold and it's, like, moving around in the back of the truck and stuff like that. And I was like, oh, so we are just really doing Dracula here. Like, at this point, we're, like, straight up just doing Dracula. And I wanted to know if that was similar or, like, if it played out like that. In the book, a big box from, you know, not Transylvania shows up or whatever.
• 24:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, we really do just do Dracula. And actually in the book, there are also several smaller boxes delivered alongside the big box, which is never confirmed to be his boxes of dirt. But that's how I intervene. We all know those are the boxes of dirt. The box is not described as cold in the book, but one of the characters who delivers it keeps remarking on how weird it is that there aren't any custom stamps on it.
• 24:56
  Speaker A: Okay, so they drop the crate off, put it in the basement, and then they bolt. And then when Straker arrives, he gets back and he goes down into the basement of the house. And I did like the reveal of this because they don't show it to you until he walks into the room. He, like, sees. He looks down to the basement. He has, like, a little bit of a look on his face. But then he walks into the basement and the camera just kind of dolly tracks with him and reveals that the box has, like, exploded. There are just shards of the box, like, everywhere in the basement. And I wanted to know if that came from the book because I liked that reveal. I thought that was a really well done reveal.
• 25:31
  Speaker B: This is not from the book. There is something kind of similar ish that happens that I actually liked a little bit more because I thought it was super creepy. So in the book, after the two men get the box into the cellar, they realize that they forgot to leave the keys to the locks. And then one of them has to go back down in the cellar to leave the keys behind. And while he's down there in the dark, like, a loud noise goes off and he swings his flashlight over to the box, and one single metal band that was wrapped around it has snapped on its own. And I was like, I would pee myself. I would pee right then and there.
• 26:12
  Speaker A: Absolutely. So I mentioned it earlier that Culley hired Ned and Ryerson to take the box so that he could go try to confront Bonnie about having an affair. And that happens. And I wanted to know if any of the scene came from the book because. Holy. This scene is the scariest thing in the movie, though. His. His acting. And this is horrifying. And, like, the way it all plays out is so tense. But he shows up with a shotgun and confronts Bonnie and Larry for having an affair. And he, like, holds Larry at gunpoint and threatens to kill him. And Larry just kind of like, lets it. I was like, buddy, what are you doing so many times. I'm like, you could. I'm pretty sure, like, when he has him grab the gun, I'm like, okay, you're holding the gun now.
• 26:55
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 26:55
  Speaker A: You just move and then, like, fight him off. Like, what are you doing? I think you could fight this dude off. But anyways, I want to know if any of that scene came from the book. Because that whole scene is, I thought, just terrifying.
• 27:08
  Speaker B: That scene actually is from the book, close to verbatim. Pretty similar, obviously.
• 27:14
  Speaker A: Different characters based on what you said earlier, because you said it wasn't Larry, that she was having an affair with.
• 27:19
  Speaker B: And while it is definitely up there, I personally wouldn't even call it the most horrifying scene in the book. There was other stuff.
• 27:27
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 27:28
  Speaker B: So I mentioned to you a couple times while reading that there were an absurd number of characters in this book. And that is true. And it was often really frustrating because it was nearly impossible to keep track of everyone. But the point, I think, was to show some of the kind of petty, like, quote unquote, small evils of the townspeople. Cause a lot of them are pretty awful. Like, they're mean, they're selfish, greedy, nosy, judgmental, et cetera. And those evils are what end up making many of them susceptible to Barlow's, quote, unquote, big evil. Like, for example, the character that Bonnie cheats with in the book is then outside at night because they got caught and Culley threw him out of the house. That's what happens to Larry, too.
• 28:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, in the movie.
• 28:21
  Speaker B: But then Barlow draws him in with a promise of revenge and then having Bonnie all to himself. So he plays on that unsavory desire to pull these people in. And it's interesting to me that this scene is almost the singular example of the nastiness of Salem's Lot that makes it into the movie. Like, almost everything else ended up getting cut.
• 28:50
  Speaker A: Yeah, I was. As you were talking about that, I was trying to think of anything else. Like, was there anything else, like, oh, where these characters are, like, kind of. And the only other closest thing is, like, the fact that Mark's dad's kind of shitty to him, but he's not even that bad. He's just kind of like a dad who doesn't understand.
• 29:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for real.
• 29:05
  Speaker A: And is not, like, great about it.
• 29:07
  Speaker B: He means well, but, like, generally kind of doesn't understand.
• 29:10
  Speaker A: And he's not a very good dad. Yeah.
• 29:11
  Speaker B: But, yeah, like everything else, almost everything else ends up getting cut. And then in the movie, Chloe and Bonnie just leave Town.
• 29:18
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 29:18
  Speaker B: So the scene doesn't end up really meaning anything.
• 29:21
  Speaker A: I thought they were gonna go somewhere or like something was gonna happen with them. We see them driving in the car the next day and we see like her face bruise because he like beats her up or whatever. But yeah, it never. They just disappear. And I didn't even. Until you just said this. I forgot that like nothing.
• 29:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, they just like this scene happens and then they just vanish from the movie.
• 29:38
  Speaker A: Yeah. But I do think that is trying to maybe do a little bit of. The only reason to include that, I think is to do what you're talking about with the kind of references to this like small evils of a quiet northeastern town. But yeah, it is the only moment like that in the movie really. So the vampire has showed up now and stuff really starts to pop off and couple kids are out running through the woods and one of them gets grabbed. We find out, eventually gets grabbed by Straker because Barlow's box is still. Just got delivered and is in the basement still, I think. But he. Straker kidnaps one of these random. One of these little kids in town, takes him to the house and leaves him for Barlow. And then the next night or whatever, that kid shows up. I think it is brothers or friends. I don't know.
• 30:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, the kid that gets kidnapped is Ralphie.
• 30:35
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 30:35
  Speaker B: And then he shows up at his brother Danny's window.
• 30:39
  Speaker A: And I wanted to know if this scene came from the book because it was the. Maybe the creepiest visuals in the movie is the scene. And I saw people talking about this in relation to this movie that a lot of people who like watch this as like little kids on TV or whatever. Like this is a scene that's. These scenes with the people flying up to the windows really stuck with people because all this smoke comes billowing up and then out of this smoke this little pale kid floats up to the window and is floating around scratching at the window. And it is very creepy. And he's trying to get into his brother's room. And I wanted to know if that scene came from the book.
• 31:20
  Speaker B: So that does not happen in the book. We don't actually see what happens to Ralphie, but it's strongly implied that Straker just outright kills him as an offering to Barlow. At any rate, we never see him come back as a vampire.
• 31:37
  Speaker A: Okay, interesting. But yeah, that the visuals for that. And I. So I wanted to mention it because it happens quite a few more times and it's very effective. And I've. So one of the Things they specifically did is instead of using wires to do, like the floating thing, they use a camera jib arm so that it's. It allowed them to push it through the window so he can actually come through the window. Because it's basically just a big long.
• 32:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:04
  Speaker A: And then there's like a. He's basically stuck to the end of it. And a jib arm is just a big thing you use in movies to put a camera on the end so you can do big sweeping, like vertical moves and stuff like that. But they. Instead of a camera, they just put the kid on the end of it and push them through the window. But it allows them to do things where you can, like, go through windows and stuff, but also you can't. Because of the perspective they're shooting at it. Everything. And with all the smoke and darkness, you can't. You can't see anything that reveals, like, how he's being levitated. So it works pretty well. It's pretty effective visual effect, which I thought was cool.
• 32:40
  Speaker B: And I will say, because I don't think you have a question about this. More generally, the vampire is floating up to the windows and tapping on the windows does come from the book.
• 32:50
  Speaker A: Okay, well, that was. I didn't ask that specifically. That was kind of rolled into my. I meant for it to be rolled into my question here that I just asked, but. Okay, so that element of it does come from. Yeah, sorry, yeah. I should have rounded that out to say, did that happen at all or was it inspired by anything? But, yeah, this exchange. I just wanted to know if it came from the book because I thought it was very funny. I believe this is when the sheriff or constable or whatever comes to talk to Straker. I'm pretty sure about. They find. I think this might be after the kids have started. Gone missing and things are going bad. And while they're out searching for the kids, they find a piece of black fabric. And Ben's like, hey, Straker wears black suits all the time. Maybe it's related to him. And so the constable goes to talk to Straker and they're having a conversation. He's like, oh, yeah, I need you. Those black suits you wear, can you bring them down the station? Or whatever. And as he's leaving, Straker says, ciao. And the constable turns back around and goes, ciao. And he's like, yes, it's Italian for goodbye or whatever. And he goes, I didn't know you were Italian. And he goes, I'm not. The word is. And I Thought that was very funny, and I wanted to know if it came from the book.
• 34:01
  Speaker B: It doesn't. That exact exchange is not in the book. There's a kind of similar exchange where Straker does say ciao to Perkins Gillespie. Yeah. Who then is like, ciao, but what he says back is goodbye. Constable Gillespie. That is the familiar Italian expression for goodbye.
• 34:23
  Speaker A: I think that's what he says in the movie.
• 34:24
  Speaker B: I think he also add the joke at the end.
• 34:27
  Speaker A: Oh, I didn't know you. You were Italian. I'm not. The word is. So they just add the button on it. But I like that. I thought that was funny. Then Danny dies in the hospital. So Danny gets bit by his brother, who comes in through the window. He falls ill. They take him to the hospital. He ends up then letting, I think, his brother in again in through the hospital window. And then one of the nurses or whatever finds him dead in his bed. And so they have a funeral for him. They bury him. And then the gravedigger, Mark Ryerson, or whatever his name is, is burying him and doing it by hand with a shovel. I was like, God, that would take forever. He really. It's like the 70s. You don't have a. Like a back, like a power.
• 35:05
  Speaker B: I don't know. It's a very small town.
• 35:07
  Speaker A: It is a very small town. But it just seemed like, man, you're gonna be doing that for, like, six hours just to bury one per. All right, whatever. So he's. But he's burying it and then he has, like, just, like. I guess he just gets, like, a weird feeling from the coffin or whatever, and he jumps down into the grave and he opens it up and Danny is there, like, alive as a vampire. And I wanted to know if that happened in the book, if he, like, jumps down into the grave and opens a little kid's coffin because he's got, like, a weird feeling or whatever. I assume the idea is that, like, the vampire is like. Danny as a vampire is like, you know, calling out to him or summoning him, whatever. Entrancing him.
• 35:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, that. That scene is as much more expanded in the book. And that is the idea is that Danny is, like, compelling him from inside what I assume. Yeah. To open it up. And he keeps thinking about how, like, Dany's eyes are open inside the coffin and then thinking, like, if I open it up, I can just close his eyes and then I won't feel this weird feeling. So he does, and Danny's eyes are open. And then the sun finishes setting and the scene ends.
• 36:19
  Speaker A: I actually thought it would have been really creepy. Which they don't do this. He just is looking at it and then. And you can tell, like I said, it's that idea of like something is compelling him to like jump down in there and open it. But it would have been super creepy if he heard something in the coffin. And that is what could like you know, like a scratching. Because they do like the him like the vampires like scratching at the windows or whatever. Like a similar thing where he hears like scratching or something and we're like, wait, did he hear? And I think that would have been super creepy. I don't know. Why? I don't know. It's fine. It works. But also the moment where Danny then pops up and bites him. Very cheesy.
• 36:53
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 36:54
  Speaker A: This movie has a lot of the like scare moments have not aged great. Yeah, they are very corny. Yeah, yeah. In a way that just doesn't quite a lot of the, all of the tension and a lot of this movie has aged very well and still works very effectively. But like the jump scary moments and like the big like ah, the vampire's biting them now moments are like, they're not done great. They're like, they're very. I think one of the issues is that, and maybe it's a TV thing because they can't show much. So they like freeze frame sometimes. And I also think a lot of times these are like the lead ins to commercial breaks.
• 37:36
  Speaker B: Oh, absolutely.
• 37:38
  Speaker A: So they like literally like somebody will like ah, like a vampire will like go to bite somebody and it will like freeze and like fade to black and you're like, oh, it's okay, it's a commercial break. But it does make for a very silly kind of experience. And it undercuts some of what are supposed to be the scariest moments in the movie and turns them into just being kind of silly.
• 37:59
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, I totally agree.
• 38:02
  Speaker A: So then Danny tries to go get. He's a full vampire now. He shows up at Mark's window one evening and tries to let Mark get Mark to let. Because they were friends or whatever. And he tries to have Mark let him in. But Mark is a smart kid. He's really into monsters.
• 38:19
  Speaker B: He's genre savvy.
• 38:20
  Speaker A: He is genre savvy. He is super into monster movies. And so he knows all about vampires. And so he grabs a little cross that he has on like one from one of his model sets or something and uses that to scare away to repel the vampire. And I wanted to know if that all happened from the Book specifically the idea of Mark like being genre savvy and knowing about monsters and using that to help fend off the vampires.
• 38:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I have more thoughts on Mark later, but I would honestly say he's more genre savvy in the book than he is in the movie. And this scene does happen, but it happens slightly differently in the book. Mark actually invites Dany in and then slaps him across the face with the cross instead of just holding it out to him. And I was kind of of two minds about that change. Bitch. Slapping a vampire with a cross is objectively hilarious.
• 39:14
  Speaker A: Pretty funny.
• 39:15
  Speaker B: Pretty funny. But the book also makes a huge deal about the vampires having to be explicitly invited in. And then Dany is never a problem again for Mark, even though he was invited in. So it just felt like a small plot inconsistency to me.
• 39:30
  Speaker A: And also, why did he invite him in? Did he invite him in? He didn't realize initially or something is the idea in the book.
• 39:36
  Speaker B: I think he invites him in specific to slap him with the cross.
• 39:40
  Speaker A: Seems very strange.
• 39:41
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I thought too.
• 39:43
  Speaker A: You could have hit him with the cross through the window or. I don't know. It just seems weird. Why would you invite him?
• 39:48
  Speaker B: That was the thought that I was having as I was reading. I was like, that doesn't make sense.
• 39:52
  Speaker A: This is kind of strange. Yeah. So we talked about Ned earlier who is the. The ex boyfriend of Susan. And I have. I guess I haven't even asked if Susan and Ben having a relationship if those characters, you know, if Susan exists in the book and her getting into a relationship with Ben comes from the book. But assum. That all does. Does Ned then show up and jump Ben? Because that cracked me up one random evening. Ben is like, comes back to his room, his boarding room that he's staying in and he like walks in and then like Ned just like jumps out from behind the door and just starts pummeling him. And I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 40:32
  Speaker B: It does. That character does jump Ben, but again it happens differently in the book. It's after Ned, Floyd has already been bitten and he's started turning into a vampire and he does just kind of like similarly blindside Ben as he's getting into his car and then beats him up. Yeah, the reason I mention that he was already starting to turn into a vampire in the book is because so he's sensitive to sunlight. So in this scene he's wearing a trench coat, wraparound sunglasses and a fedora and it was fucking Hilarious to me that Stephen King managed to predict three separate items of clothing that would one day be strongly associated with douchebags and then put all of them on this douchebag at once.
• 41:25
  Speaker A: That is very funny. He is. He's dressed like. Yeah, yeah.
• 41:28
  Speaker B: That was, like, incredible.
• 41:29
  Speaker A: Most annoying kid in your sophomore class who now has really unfortunate opinions about women and probably did then. But, yeah, no, that is. And to be fair, the trench coat has kind of always been like, a creep thing. At least.
• 41:45
  Speaker B: Like, that's true. Yeah, that's fair. And I don't. And I don't know the history of the wraparound sunglasses, but the fedora, I'm convinced, is a more modern douchebag associate. That's like an in 2010 Internet thing.
• 41:59
  Speaker A: 100%. Yeah. No, there's no way that in the 70s, like, the fedora was seen as, like, a signifier of. Yeah. Like incels or weird guys or whatever. Yeah, I don't. At least I don't think so. 100%. That's a modern convention.
• 42:13
  Speaker B: Anyway, I kind of loved that.
• 42:15
  Speaker A: That is pretty funny. He really lucked into that one. Yeah. So the mark's family then gets attacked by the vampire. Kurt Barlow shows up. The priest. There's a Catholic priest in town. He shows up and is, like, having a conversation with Mark and his parents about.
• 42:30
  Speaker B: Because they're concerned that Marcus. They're concerned that Mark is so into monsters.
• 42:34
  Speaker A: Well, and no. And also specifically, Mark had said Mark told them that he saw Danny.
• 42:39
  Speaker B: Oh, that's right.
• 42:40
  Speaker A: He's like, I saw Danny floating outside my window. And they're like, that's why they call the priest. They're like, he's having visions or whatever. Like, you know, so they're talking about that. And while that's happening, the house just starts shaking and a window blows out and the vampire just appears inside. Which I guess he didn't have to be invited. I guess not that time. I don't know. But one, I thought the effect was really cool because like, a big, like, black, like, cloth, like, flumps into the middle of the kitchen on the floor, like a pile on the floor, and then, like, rises up out of the floor and it's the vampire. Which I thought that effect was really cool. And I wanted to know if that seemed like it came from anything inspired by the book. But two, the vampire kills his parents. And the way he kills them is he. Three Stooges head bonks them together, which was very funny to me. You can't have that be. I'm sorry. But like, you can't have that be the action of murdering people. You can't. Unless it's more gruesome. Unless it's, like, bloody or. You know what I mean? Which, again, I guess it's because it's a TV movie, they couldn't make it more gruesome. And, like, maybe the idea was that he, like, smashes their heads, like, graphically together, but in the. In what we see, he just, like, bonk. Like. Like, again, like three stooge bonks them together, and then they're dead. And I wanted to know if that happened in the book.
• 43:57
  Speaker B: Okay, so much to discuss here. So this whole scene does happen, and it's pretty similar to the book, but it happens later. Okay, so in the book, when this happens, the vampire hunting crew has already formed, and Mark and Father Callahan are a part of the crew, like, from the beginning. And they go to Mark's house to try and convince his parents of what's going on. And at which point Barlow shows up and he does rise up out of a shadow on the floor, which I thought that effect was also cool.
• 44:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. Maybe it's supposed to be a shadow. I couldn't. This is like a black shape. I thought it could have been like a. Like his cloak could have been a shadow.
• 44:42
  Speaker B: Also similarly unclear about why he didn't need an invitation. In the book. I think Stephen King was playing a little fast and loose.
• 44:49
  Speaker A: Unless there was something else there that maybe there was something we missed earlier that makes that make sense. Because there is some stuff the movie does go to great lengths to set up. Some little details, like setting up the idea that Mark is, like, an escape artist and can undo knots and stuff like that. So maybe this was set up somehow that they had already invited. Maybe they had invited Straker in and that allow. I don't know. I'm just wondering, because Striker then walks into the kitchen, Right. So I don't know.
• 45:15
  Speaker B: Anyways, he's a human, so he wouldn't need.
• 45:17
  Speaker A: He wouldn't need. But I'm wondering if maybe they had invited him in and then that by. By extension.
• 45:21
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 45:23
  Speaker A: Yeah, anyways, Point. Continue. Sorry.
• 45:26
  Speaker B: So Barlow does kill Mark's parents by smashing their heads together.
• 45:30
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 45:31
  Speaker B: But you were correct in the interpretation, because in the book, he, like, crushes their skulls.
• 45:36
  Speaker A: That. That makes way more sense. So they're trying to keep that. Yes, that specific. You gotta change it. You just gotta change it.
• 45:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, you. You have to change it.
• 45:44
  Speaker A: He's gotta, like, break their necks or slice their. Their Throats. Do anything else? Because the comical head bonking together.
• 45:51
  Speaker B: No. Ridiculous.
• 45:52
  Speaker A: And, like, so ridiculous that we have to have Mark go. Because they. I guess they realize we had to have Mark go over to his mom and be like, I think she's dead. Because, like, we never would have assumed she was dead from that. So, yeah, it's. That was so funny. So he's able to escape, or Mark is able to escape because the priest who's there is able to, like. Like, Straker offers him a deal, basically.
• 46:19
  Speaker B: He. Yeah, Straker. Well, that's not quite what happens in the book. Barlo.
• 46:24
  Speaker A: Barlo.
• 46:25
  Speaker B: And. Yeah, Barlo and Father Callahan, like, face off one on one. And that allows Mark to escape.
• 46:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. In the book or in the movie, Striker is like. Because he's like, oh, he'll kill the kid. Because the vampire has Mark and the priest is, like, holding a cross and he's like, here, put down. He's like, he'll put down the kid if you put your. Test your faith against the vampires, like, put down the cross and test your faith against his faith or whatever. And he does. Well, he doesn't even. This is another thing that I thought was confusing in that moment. Sees like, okay, I'll do it. And so they let the kid go, and Mark runs away, but the priest is still holding the cross. And then the vampire just walks over to him and knocks the cross out of his hand. And I was like, like, well, what good was the cross then if he could just, like, what was it doing in that moment? So, okay, I didn't understand, like, if. Okay, if the cross was the one thing holding him at bay, he could apparently can just walk over and knock it out of the priest's hands. So what was it doing? And I don't. I didn't get that at all.
• 47:30
  Speaker B: Okay, so this is, I think, where the story benefited from having Father Callahan be more of a character. Cause we do spend some time with him, and we know that his faith is, like, a little bit shaky. And so initially, he is able to kind of ward off Barlow and he feels really confident about it. But then when they square off one on one, they have a little. Yeah, they have a little tete a tete, and his faith falters.
• 48:04
  Speaker A: Gotcha.
• 48:04
  Speaker B: So Barlow is able to knock the cross out of his hands, and then he forces Father Callahan to drink his blood, and he becomes unclean and can no longer enter the church.
• 48:14
  Speaker A: Okay, that was not clear in the movie at all, because it just seems like he just walks over and is like, well, your cross. Fuck your cross, like. And I was like, oh, well, what was that? What? Okay, that makes more sense though, because.
• 48:24
  Speaker B: You have to have the faith behind the cross itself is not enough. You have to have the faith behind it.
• 48:29
  Speaker A: Got it. Okay. Speaking of crosses, we then cut to Ben, who is at the mortuary with Dr. Norton. And they're there because they're in looking at Marjorie's body. Marjorie has just died, who is the mother of Danny and Ralphie.
• 48:47
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 48:48
  Speaker A: She's now dead and they're there kind of to see what's going on with her. Anyways, Dr. Leaves for a minute and Ben is sitting in the room and he makes a cross out of tongue depressors and tape for, like, bandaging like, wounds or whatever. And he makes his own little tongue depressor cross. And right as he finishes, Margaery comes back from the dead as a vampire and tries to attack him and he's able to ward her off with a tongue depressor cross. And I wanted to know if that came from the book because I thought that was very funny.
• 49:22
  Speaker B: It does. I can't remember if it's Ben specifically that makes it, but somebody does make a cross out of tongue depressor. Incredible.
• 49:31
  Speaker A: Fantastic. It seems also when Ben said. Or Ben says one of my least favorite things or says the stupid. He's like, well, guess there are no atheists in foxholes. I was like, you. Because I think the idea is that Ben is like, he's an atheist because they say at one point he's a leftist. Yeah, they're like, he's a. They're like doing. Or the police or whatever, like doing research on him or whatever. And they're like, yeah, he's a. I can't remember specifically what they say, but they're talking about how he's like a leftist and an atheist or whatever. But apparently he's able to, because, yeah, in this moment his faith is strong enough, I guess, because he's able to stick the tongue depressors on her forehead and burn her with the cross and she just vanishes. She just disappears. And then the carts in the room fall over awkwardly, clearly yanked by fishing cable. I think the idea was supposed to be that like. Like when she, like, voips out of existence, like the. The energy, like, you know, like pulls a bunch of stuff towards her, but it's so. It looks pretty cheesy. So then we get to finally get to go see the Marston house. We've only ever seen it from the outside at this point. But we now get to the Marston house and Mark shows up to break in to the Marston house to kill the vampire, to get revenge. Because as he was leaving after it killed his parents, he turns to the vamp, he's like, I'm going to kill you. And so he shows up with some stakes to break into the house. I love these shows. He's got the steak and each hand, he's just like dual wielding stakes, like, I'm here to fuck shit up. And he breaks into the house. And the inside of the Marston house is super gnarly in this movie. I thought it was really incredible set design and I wanted to know if it felt like it was inspired by the book.
• 51:19
  Speaker B: So the inside, it's not really described with a lot of great detail, but it is supposed to be like completely derelict and falling apart. So I would say that the movie nailed that.
• 51:30
  Speaker A: It's the most derelict, falling apart building I've seen in a movie.
• 51:33
  Speaker B: It looks horrifying.
• 51:35
  Speaker A: And the walls look like they're rotting. It's like this weird organicy looking wall.
• 51:42
  Speaker B: They look like they're rotting or rusting.
• 51:46
  Speaker A: Every possible gross thing that you could imagine is happening to the walls. There's also the lighting in it is really beautiful and creepy, but there's like all these like dust and like, almost like feathers or something like floating around in the air. That makes it really creepy and weird. I. I thought it was just a stunningly gorgeous set design.
• 52:05
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 52:07
  Speaker A: Anyways, so sounds like that came from the book. But then the second part of that. Does Mark break into the house to try to kill the vampire to get revenge for his parents dying?
• 52:16
  Speaker B: Yes, but this is also something that happens differently. And he's not, at this point, he's not trying to get revenge for his parents because they haven't died yet. But he has become aware of the vampire problem. So what happens in the book is that it's actually Susan who's going to break in because she has decided that the men are taking too long talking things over. And she's like, I'm just gonna go do it myself. So she drives over there and then she like grabs a fence post and go over to the house and there's a great kind of red herring where she's like looking down at the house and then somebody like grabs her shoulder and you're like, oh, no, it's Straker. But it's Mark. Mark is there also, and he was also planning to break in, to be fair, but he was being a Little smarter about it and was better prepared.
• 53:04
  Speaker A: So they kind of switch it kind of where like she sees him going in and like goes in after him, whereas he sees her going in in the book and is gonna follow her. And they do the red herring even in the movie where she goes in after him and then he jumps out of a room to stab her and we' but then he realizes it's her.
• 53:20
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So he sees her and stops her because he knows that Straker's in there. And then they like join forces and they think they see Straker leave, so they go inside to find and kill Barlow. But then Straker comes back and they get captured. And I generally liked the movie or the books version better, but I did enjoy the movie's Scooby Doo esque vibes. When Susan was walking under the stairs.
• 53:46
  Speaker A: Yes, that was a great.
• 53:46
  Speaker B: Looking for Mark. And then he was like walking on the landing above her.
• 53:49
  Speaker A: It's a great shot. This movie has some great moments. It truly has some great moments and some great shots. It doesn't hold that energy throughout the whole thing, but it does have some great moments. And that shot in particular was one that stuck out to me too, of her walking under as he creeps across on the staircase above her, which was really cool. So they get captured, as you said. Same thing happens in the movie. They both get captured. We don't see what happens to Susan. She just kind of disappears until later. But. But Ben or Mark gets tied to a chair, but we know that he's an escape. Or is that from the book?
• 54:26
  Speaker B: He does get tied up and because.
• 54:28
  Speaker A: He does magic or whatever wiggles out of his bonds. Is it because he does magic?
• 54:31
  Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, well, it's because he studied like Houdini.
• 54:35
  Speaker A: Right? That's what I mean. Yeah. Like, yeah, he does like escape artist stuff. Yeah. And then so he's able to get out. And then as he running out, Dr. Morton and. Or Norton and. And Mark or not Mark, Ben show up. It's. I don't know why I cannot keep their name straight. Ben and Dr. Norton show up and they're coming and they realize they see Susan's car outside. So they're coming in to come save, try to find her and save her. And so they, they go inside then to try to skit the vampire. They tell Mark to run away, but he sticks around. But they go inside and Mark is very clearly hesitant about going in. He clearly is not liking the vibe. And then even once he gets inside, he's kind of like, hesitant to go anywhere. Yes. And he's just kind of, like, panicking and sitting there. And so Dr. Norton starts, like, exploring to see if he can find Susan or whatever. And he goes up to the second floor and he opens a door, and instead he finds Straker. And Straker walks over and picks him up. And I was like, is Straker super strong? Like.
• 55:40
  Speaker B: Yes, that is established in the book. He has, like, supernatural strength.
• 55:44
  Speaker A: Oh, interesting. Yeah. Cause he literally just picks him up very easily, carries him down the hallway, and then impales him onto a wall of animal horns. Because, as you mentioned, one of the details in the movie is that it's like there's taxidermy stuff everywhere.
• 56:00
  Speaker B: Like, everywhere in this house.
• 56:01
  Speaker A: All over the place. Which is one, very creepy. Two lets you have feathers and stuff floating around in the air, which is cool and creepy. And eyes all the time and eyes everywhere. And then three, we get a whole wall full of animal horns that Dr. Norton can be impaled upon. And I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 56:18
  Speaker B: It does not. But the Doctor character does get impaled.
• 56:23
  Speaker A: Oh.
• 56:23
  Speaker B: So the cutoff cellar stairs, which you have a note about later.
• 56:27
  Speaker A: I have a note about later.
• 56:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, Those are from the book. But it's the Doctor who falls off of them. And when he does, he falls onto a booby trap of knives arranged pointy end up.
• 56:38
  Speaker A: Oh, booby trap. Okay, fantastic. So similar. He does get impaled.
• 56:42
  Speaker B: He does get him bailed.
• 56:44
  Speaker A: I thought that was a fun scene in the movie. The big. Yeah, the wall of animal horns. The note I had later, which I'll just mention now. Well, we'll get to it. We'll get to it later. We'll get to it. Because it's not really relevant yet. So they get down into the basement. So Ben. Now Dr. Norton's dead, but Ben and Mark shows back up. Sorry. Yeah, Mark shows back up. And Ben and Mark go down in the basement to find Barlow to kill him. They jump down into the basement and they find a little door.
• 57:12
  Speaker B: Yeah. There's like a sub cellar.
• 57:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. And they find his coffin. And then there's a bunch of other like, of the townsfolk as vampires. They look like dead bodies, but they're kind of moving a little bit. But they're like, all right, we gotta get it out. So they drag the coffin out of that room, and then they open it up and they kill him. Ben just stabs him in the chest with a stake. And it takes a while. He has to. He's Stabbing him for a while.
• 57:37
  Speaker B: And then he says he starts hammering it.
• 57:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's really like, hammer. He grabs a hammer and starts hammering it into his chest. And I wanted to know if they were able to successfully kill Kurt Barlow, the vampire. It's a great vampire name.
• 57:50
  Speaker B: Yeah. Ben does ultimately stake and kill Barlow.
• 57:54
  Speaker A: Yeah. And then they burn the house down.
• 57:56
  Speaker B: Yes. And he does eventually burn down the house and by extension, the town.
• 58:00
  Speaker A: Because Ben or Mark is like, oh, the wind's blowing towards town. He's like, let it burn. Yeah. Yeah.
• 58:06
  Speaker B: But that actually, in the book happens when they return to Salem's Lot after those two years have passed.
• 58:12
  Speaker A: Okay, well, that was my next question. That kind of leads into it, because that. We don't see them return to Salem's Lot in the movie. In the movie, we then get back to Guatemala, where they are hiding, and. Down in Guatemala and. Or Mexico. Or. I think it's Guatemala.
• 58:27
  Speaker B: Guatemala in the movie. In Mexico, in the book.
• 58:30
  Speaker A: And they. They get down there, and we're back at the beginning of the film where they're like, they found us again. They go back to their little house they're staying in. And when they get there, they discover Susan. Or they discover Susan laying in the bed waiting for Mark. Mark comes in, and she's like, hey, be with me. We can be together forever. She's laying there very seductively in her satin white dress, and he's gonna go kiss her, but then he stabs her and kills her. And because we didn't know what had happened to her when she had just disappeared earlier, when they assumed she died in the fire, I think is like. Cause he's, like, crying about it. But then, oh, no, she got out and survived. And I wanted to know if they go on the run down to Guatemala, and then eventually, if vampire Susan finds them and Mark has to kill her.
• 59:19
  Speaker B: Okay, so they do go on the run. But it's implied in the book that it's more of, like, a PTSD or, like, a trauma response. Like, they're trying to put as much physical distance between themselves and Salem's Lot as possible because the vampires don't chase them. In the book, they don't even leave Salem's Lot. It's not really explained why they don't leave, but I think the idea is that once Barlow is dead, they become, like, directionless and don't really know what to do other than make more vampires out of anyone who happens upon them. And also, to be fair, I have to imagine it would be hard to travel if Sunlight can kill you, but also, you have to be explicitly invited inside any kind of structure that you could hide in.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker A: That's fair. Yeah.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker B: And Ben does kill vampire Susan, but it happens much earlier in the book before the big showdown with Barlow and King. Very explicitly spells out for the reader that the scene is just like when Arthur has to kill Lucy in Dracula. He mentions all of that by name. Like, Ben is, like, holding the stake, and he's like, this is just like when Arthur had to kill Lucy and Dracula. There were some real moments in this book where I was like, please, Steven.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker A: It was early in his career.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker B: It was. Yeah. This was his second book. Yeah.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker A: Yeah. That's fair. He's still figuring it out. That's funny, though. All right, those are all my questions for. Was that in the book? But I do have some questions that we're gonna get into in Long Lost in Adaptation.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker B: Just show me the way to get out of here and I'll be on my way.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker A: Yes, yes. And I want to get unlocked as soon as possible. I don't know if this happens in the book because I was confused and I. I don't know. The movie never really explains what happens here. But Mark Ryerson, the gravedigger guy, when we meet him early on, he has a pet dog that he. That hangs out with him in the cemetery. And then as he's leaving one night, that when he's going to pick up the. The box or whatever, we hear the dog yelp. And then we see that.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker B: It.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker A: I think it seems like. And then we see it later, and I think it confirms that it seemingly got, like, a fence, fell on it or something and, like, crushed. Killed it. And I wanted to know. I couldn't. I was like, so what happened there? Like, did the defense just randomly fall on this dog? Or is, like, was Straker supposed to have been involved? Like, what happened? Why? Who did somebody kill the dog? What happened there?
• 1:01:48
  Speaker B: Okay, so a dog does die in the book. I think it belongs to the milkman and not the cemetery groundskeeper, but it doesn't matter. So the dog dying is the first, like, bad thing that happens in the book. It's the first ill omen of what's to come.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker B: And someone finds it impaled on the cemetery fence. And I am glad that we didn't have to see that.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker B: I also think that what happens in the movie is not clear. Like you said, it looks like the fence just fell on the dog, but it also looks like that wouldn't have killed. No.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker A: Because it's a pretty small fence.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker B: Like maybe the dog would be a little injured.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker A: Injured maybe, but it would be like dead.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker B: But it doesn't look like it would be dead. So then later on in the book, the main vampire hunting crew surmises that Straker was the one who killed the dog because it's some kind of specific dog that according to folklore is supposed to be able to frighten vampires.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker A: That is what I assumed kind of was going on in the movie was the idea that maybe Straker did this because the dog could get like causing issues or I don't know, like the dog. Yeah, that kind of idea that. Yeah, like in the same thing. Like where in, in books where like oh, chickens start showing up dead because like I think it's Harry Potter or whatever.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker A: Where like the chickens start getting killed and showing up dead because chickens can kill the basilisk or whatever. That kind of idea. I assumed that was. But the movie never really.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker B: Yeah, we don't really ever expand on it.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I was. Wasn't sure. And that makes sense. Though. Another similar question is when they go pick up the box, there's this repeated point about them needing to padlock something and I'm not sure what. They, they, they take the box down to the basement, but then they get freaked out and they decide to leave and then they just throw these chains and these padlocks into the basement. And I was never sure what they were supposed to have done with them, but the movie makes a point of like, oh, they didn't do the padlock thing. And I was like, were they supposed to like padlock shut the basement? Or like what does that from the book? Or is expanded on? Like what?
• 1:03:56
  Speaker B: Okay, so this is kind of something from the book, but in the book they actually do padlock everything that they're supposed to padlock and then they have to go back down in to leave the keys like I mentioned earlier, but they actually do padlock anything. So I every. I everything. So I think what the movie was trying to do was create like a red herring of like, oh, maybe Straker is trying to keep the vampire contained, but they didn't lock the doors so he got out.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker A: Is that what I think that.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker B: I think that's what the movie's trying to do.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker A: It makes no sense. Cuz it's very clear the whole time that Straker is working with the vampire.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker B: And I thought so too. But I'm pretty sure that's what the movie's trying to do in that moment. Is like a red herring.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because that made no sense to me. Because I was like. Well, he clearly. Because, like, when they don't lock it up and it's like the movie seems to be making an idea like this, that this is, like, matter somehow. I'm like, but.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker B: But it really. It doesn't. Because Barlow clearly at no point was anyone trying to contain Barlow.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. So, like, what did. And even if they were, why would the padlock blocks matter? Like, he doesn't strike me as the. Like, that would do anything.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker A: I guess if they were made of silver, maybe. I don't know.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker B: I'm telling you because I had this note later on, but I'll just mention it now. Then after Barlow comes back and sees the crate exploded, there's a moment where he looks around and he looks worried and concerned, and I'm convinced that the movie was trying to do a. Like, oh, maybe he's a good guy, actually. Which really didn't work for me.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker A: No. And it didn't work for. It just doesn't work. I don't think it's. It's so obvious the whole time. I don't know. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I. Like, I think you might be right. But I. Because I noticed that too, like, where he seems like, oh, no. But it's like, but. But clearly.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker B: Why would you care? Why would you care?
• 1:05:51
  Speaker A: Like, you're working with the van. Like, why. I don't know that. Yeah, I thought that whole thing didn't work at all. Didn't make any sense. And when they kept making a big note out of the padlock thing, I was like, what is. Who cares?
• 1:06:01
  Speaker B: I'm glad to hear that that also didn't work for you, because I was worried that. It just didn't work for me because I had already read the book and, like, knew.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker A: No, this didn't make any sense.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker A: And then my last question here. And I have to revise this based on. I'm gonna ask it anyways, but upon rereading or reading the. The Wikipedia summary at the beginning, I don't think this actually makes any sense, but I was wondering if you got the vibe in the book that perhaps Ben was one of the kids who was victimized by Hubie. Whatever Marston, who was, like, implied to have been, like, a.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker B: A.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker A: Either a serial killer or a pedophile. Because they say, like, kids went missing. They say pedophile, but also serial killer.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker B: Probably, like, both.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker A: Both. And I was wondering if maybe there's this inclination that we're supposed to. Or this idea that we're supposed to surmise that perhaps Ben was a kid who was victimized by this Hubie Marston guy just because of the way he. He seems like a pretty. Like. He's pretty, like, on board with, like, fighting the vampires and doing all this stuff, but then when they finally get to the house, he. He, like, doesn't want to go inside.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, he, like, freezes up.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker A: And he, like, freezes up. And then also, like, we're. We're talking this whole time about, like, you know, he's been talking about how, like, he came here because of the house to write a book about it. So he clearly has some sort of, like, connection to it. And he's, like, talking about how it's, like, an evil house who attracts evil men. And I'm like. And I was like, maybe he's supposed to be. Had been, like, one of the victims of this kid. And so that. That's, like, an interesting added wrinkle. And I wanted to know if you got that or if you got that from the movie, that vibe from the movie, and if any of that is backed up by the book at all.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker B: Okay, So I didn't get that vibe from either, although maybe I would have from the movie if I hadn't been so focused on the comparison aspect. I do like that theory for the movie. I think it works really well for all of the reasons that you just mentioned. It wouldn't work in the book because Hugh B. Marston was already dead when Ben was a kid, and the house was already abandoned and falling apart during his childhood. So that wouldn't work in the book. But I like it for the movie, I will say.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker A: And that was what I was saying. I don't even know if it works in the movie, because when I read the summary from Wikipedia, it specifically mentions that I'm trying to find.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker B: That he saw his ghost.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker A: Yes, there it was. Okay, that. Mears tells Burke that he feels the Marston house is somehow inherently evil, recalling that its owner, Hubie Marston, implied to have been a child molester, died of suicide there. Mears further recalls a traumatic childhood incident in which he broke into the house on a dare and saw Hubie's ghost, which would imply that Hubie had been dead while Ben was a kid.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker B: So I think the movie adds an owner, like, in between there, though.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker A: Sure, but. But my point was that I still don't think my reading makes sense, because that sentence implies that Hubie would have been dead right by the Time Ben was a kid.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker B: So I, I pretty sure I remember in the movie it being. Because in the book it's that the house was only ever owned by Hubie Marston. But in the movie, I think they say that Hubie Marston was the one who built it.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker B: And then some other guy owned it. Because they also say that Mark's aunt was the housekeeper there.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker B: And then it, like, fell into disrepair.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker B: So he could have been molested by the other guy.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker A: Right. My, that wasn't my what I said though. My. So I was just confused what you were getting at because I was saying that he was a victim of Hubie Marston specifically, which wouldn't make sense. Sense. But it could be if it was this other homeowner. But there was. I don't know if there was ever any inclination that that guy was a creeper.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker B: I don't remember. I would have to scene where they talk about that again.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I don't know. I, I, I'm not sure if it makes sense. I, I think it could work potentially, but I, I don't know if it actually all adds up.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker B: I, I also think that you could interpret Ben's trepidation to enter the house and, like, be in the house as, like, his traumatic experience of seeing the ghost of Hubie Marston. Because he talks about that a lot in the book. Yeah, the book makes much more out of that than the movie does.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker A: I think that's very likely. It's probably what it actually is going for, but I think it could have been an interesting angle. Of what?
• 1:10:37
  Speaker B: I agree. I agree. I think it's an interesting angle.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker A: All right. Those are all my questions for Lost in Adaptation. It's time to find out what Katie thought was better in the book. You like to read?
• 1:10:50
  Speaker B: Oh, yes, I love to read.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker A: What do you like to read?
• 1:10:57
  Speaker B: Everything. So my first thing is kind of a random small detail, but when the movie first starts and Ben is, like, standing, looking at, up at the house and at Stryker, he starts, like, sweating profusely, which I think you could call the movie. Nailed it. Because that does happen in the book. Look that, like when somebody is around the vampire or like, things associated with the vampire, they experience, like, fear and, like, the physical symptoms of fear, but they, like, don't know why they're afraid. But in the movie, I thought it just looked like he was hot because it was like they were outside and it was really sunny. So I didn't really think that worked as well as maybe the movie wanted it to.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker B: We meet Weasel Craig in this movie very briefly. And I didn't really like how the movie did Weasel Craig. I thought it did him a little bit dirty. He is the town drunk. But I thought he was a really, like, sympathetic character in the book. And in the movie, it was like he was doing a bit.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker A: Yeah. He definitely is just there kind of as comic relief briefly, and then dis. I don't even know if he died. I don't know what he happens to him. He just kind of, like, disappears from the movie.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker A: Something probably. I don't remember.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker B: I also thought that the movie character assassinated Mark. And the first scene that we meet him in, in the book, he's, like, very calmly and coolly using logic and reasoning to outsmart and dethrone the school bully. And that's the essence of the kind of character he is. He's intelligent and he's savvy enough to be a vampire hunter. I believed that for the entire book. I was like, this kid's got it.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker B: He has whatever it is to be a vampire hunter. In the movie. Not so much.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker A: No. I would say in the movie. Like, he obviously has some knowledge and stuff, but he seems like kind of a. Like, he's kind of weak sauce and like. Yeah. He doesn't strike you as somebody that's, like. He doesn't even seem particularly, like, intelligent. Like, we don't see him being super clever or anything. He just has this interest in these things and is misunderstood by his dad. But we don't really see him. Yeah. Doing anything impressive or interesting until the end when he's like, I'm a vampire hunter. It's like, all right, I guess.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker B: But by the end of the book, he was like, I'm a vampire hunter. And I was like, yes, you are. Yes, you are. Mark, one of the delivery guys who delivers the big box sees the clothes that thinks he sees the clothes, but definitely he saw the clothes that belonged to Ralphie Glick in the cellar while they're putting the box down there. And then he tries to tell Larry Crockett.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker A: Why Larry Crockett?
• 1:13:47
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker A: I'm gonna go inform the local real estate agent that I saw the.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker B: Larry Crockett's. The one that sold them the house.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker B: I mean, I agree that it still doesn't make any sense. Well, he also hired them to do the job. I don't know.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker A: Oh, in the. Okay, so it wasn't Cully or whatever in the book that hires them.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker B: Yeah. It's Larry Crockett. That hire.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker A: I could see him, like, when they get back, being like, I think I like, hey.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker B: Hey, boss. Yeah, I saw this weird thing, but then Larry Crockett then blackmails him and pays him off to not say anything. Because Larry Crockett has his own interests tied up in this thing. He's been paid off by Straker and Barlow. A lot of money. Yeah. None of that is in the movie. This whole thing happens because Larry Crockett was a greedy.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker A: Oh, okay, okay.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker B: Danny Glick's funeral. In the movie, we see Mrs. Glick fainting, which is definitely not as dramatic and upsetting as what happens in the book, which is Mr. Glick, like, losing his goddamn mind and, like, trying to tear the coffin open and begging Dany to wake up.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker B: Awful scene. Hated reading it. The Susan goes to Boston for a job interview thing was weird. I didn't know what the point of having her leave was because they were. Maybe because they were always gonna back. So I didn't understand, like, why does she have to briefly leave? And why would Ben be upset? It's not like he permanently moved to Salem's Lot. He could just go to Boston with her if he wanted to. Like, it doesn't. It didn't seem like a problem to me. And I felt like the movie wanted me to think it was a problem.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker A: It does. And I also couldn't figure out why, like, what it wanted us to think about that. Yeah, because. Because I. I agree. I felt like that part was very strange because. Because he's being like, a dick about it. She's like, oh, man.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker B: He's being weird about it.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker A: And I think the idea is, like. Well, he's like. He's. To show him being possessive of her or whatever. But to what end? Yes.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker B: Why?
• 1:15:51
  Speaker A: Because the movie doesn't do anything interesting with the characterization of Mark being. Or. Sorry, of Ben being, like, possessive or having some sort of mean. I don't know. There's nothing. The movie never goes anywhere with that. No.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker B: No. It never pays it off of him.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker A: Like, being kind of, like, weird about her going to take this job. Because it is, like, this very kind of like. Like, again, like, dickish possessive. Like, he feels entitled to her company and, like, her. He's, like, being kind of an asshole about. He's. She's like, oh, I got this. And he's like, oh, well, Wendy, like, he's just being a jerk about it.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker A: And I couldn't figure out, like, what the point of that was, because, again, we never really get any interesting Character revelations about Mark or about Ben and why he's being a dick or like. Like, it never informs any of his actions later. Like, we. We don't. You know, we don't find. You know, we don't get to the end and it's like, oh, like, his. His weird possessive nature was his downfall. And I don't know, there's nothing. Like, it never does anything. So it's just weird that he's just being a dick doer about this job thing in Boston. That never matters and never means anything.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker B: Well, and the weird thing, too, is that I feel like they could have done something with it if, like, him being weird and possessive about it was like, she doesn't go because of that, or she comes back because of that, and then she ends up getting turned into a vampire. But the movie doesn't do anything.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker A: I don't think so. Right. Like, she does. She just comes back.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker B: I mean, she comes. She comes back because he gets beat up, but not because he, like, calls her and is like, I need you to come back right now.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, yeah. She just finds she hears about him, like, getting jumped by Ned and is, like. Comes back. Yeah. It doesn't. Yeah. It's very strange. Yeah. Also. It is truly. I had this note just. This is a general note about the relationship between. Oh, my God, Ben and Susan, which is. Holy shit. It is wild. Truly absurd how much Ben is out kicking his coverage. I know he's Hutch or whatever, but, man, it is crazy how ugly men.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker B: In the 70s were not.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker A: Men in the 70s were plenty of handsome men in the 70s, 70s. It's crazy how ugly leading men were allowed to be in the 70s, like, and. And considered to be, like, the handsome man that, like, all of the women wanted.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker B: This guy was. Uggo. I'm sorry. He was not for me.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker A: He's. He just looks like a guy. His hair's awful. But that's just the seventies more than anything. Terrible because he actually looks better at the end when. When it's two years later and his hair is longer and he has, like, a little bit of a beard. He looks better there. That. I'm just saying he looks more like. Because his hair isn't, like, the worst haircut ever imaginable.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker B: I. And you know what? As I was reading the book, I. I didn't really have any big opinions on their relationship. I was pretty neutral about it for most of the book. I was like, this is fine. In the movie, I couldn't buy in at all.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker A: I thought it was Fine. I. I thought they had, okay chemistry, despite him being very boring and unattractive. But, like. Like, I. But I thought they still had, okay. Like, energy together. Like, when they had conversations, I thought, like, okay, their. Their repartee is like, I get, like, why they're, like, why she's into him, but, like, just when they're talking. But, like, again, I thought he was mostly pretty boring.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker A: And not attractive.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker B: I just thought. It seemed like she was way more into him.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker B: 100% he was into her. And I was like, but why are we. But why?
• 1:19:25
  Speaker A: Well, to be fair, it's because he's an author that she likes, I think is the idea. Like, he's this famous. Like, he shows up in this small town, and she's like, oh, my God, I've read your books.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker B: Like, right.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker A: It's this author that she really likes shows up and she gets to date him. So, like, that's the idea.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker B: Right, right, right. But again, circling back to that author insert character thing.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker A: Yes, 100%. Yeah, absolutely. But, yeah, it's so funny because he is the actor who plays him. I believe it was either Hutch or Star. He was one of the two to either Starsky or Hutch from Starsky and hutch in the 70s, the TV show. And I just like, man. So he was like a sex symbol in the 70s. This guy.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker B: This guy was this guy. This guy right here.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker A: All right, man.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker A: All right.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker B: This is kind of a general note. I wrote this down during the scene where the Dave or the gravedigger opens up Dany's coffin. But this is like, a general note, which is that I had the same problem with this movie that I think I have had with every single Kang adaptation that we've done, which is that the things I conjure in my head are so much scarier than what the movie can achieve.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker A: That's almost always the case. I know with horror, it's really hard because your brain knows what scares you more than anybody else could possibly. And so there's just almost no way for a horror, like a book, a movie based on a horror, horror book to be as scary as you imagined while reading. It's just almost. I think it might be impossible. Maybe. I don't know, maybe not. But unless you have a bad imagination, I guess for people with bad imagination, they would be like, man, this movie is way scarier.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker B: Bad imagination. This movie is way scarier than the book. I have a good imagination. The book was way scarier than the movie. Also, speaking of the movie, when we got to the end, I felt like we were really fast tracking it because I was like, boy, everybody really gets on. They really get on board with the vampire theory super fast.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker A: To be fair.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker B: In the movie.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker A: In the movie, it's like it becomes pretty obvious pretty quick. We just start seeing like corpses walking around, right. Attacking people. And like, it does. It comes to a head very quickly. So it's like, okay, I buy that, like all these people are just like on board. But it does, it does in particular, like I think at the dot, somebody there, it's like, wow. It's just kind of like aren't. Right. That was quick. That was easy.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker B: Well, yeah, the doctor character, like, even before they see Marjorie Glick rise from the dead, he's like, yeah, I guess it could be vampires.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker A: After being like, I don't believe in any of this nonsense. The whole. Yeah. For most of the movie.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker B: Yeah. I was super mad watching the movie that Mr. Burke, the English teacher, didn't get to be there. Van Helsing, what a croc I saw.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker A: Is that what he does in the.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, cuz he does have a heart attack in the book, but he's. He has a minor heart attack. So then they're like, they go and visit him in the hospital and he has busied himself with vampire research, which.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker A: He does in the movie. We see him reading about.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker B: See him reading about vampires, but he, he has requested every possibly related book from the library and had them brought all to him. So he sits and researches and then they go back to him and they say, what can we do about this? And he says, here's what I learned. But in the movie he has a heart attack and then he just vanishes from the story. We never see him again.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker A: Then we just assume, for all we.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker B: Know, he, like, he wakes up like, what's his name? At the beginning of the Walking dead.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker A: Oh yeah. 28 days later, the walking Dead. It's just like an empty ghost.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker A: He's like, wait, what?
• 1:22:52
  Speaker B: It's like wandering, like, where is everybody?
• 1:22:55
  Speaker A: Yeah. Or the fire blew in and burned the hospital down and killed him while he was.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker B: That's fair. I appreciated the movie's attempt at showing the whole town turn into vampire, but it just didn't have the same delicious slow rollout that the book did.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker A: I thought it did an okay job.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker B: It does an okay job.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because the movies. The best part of the movie for me is like, honestly. So we watched, we split this into two parts and watched it like, basically where the split was when it aired.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker B: Like, halfway through where we theorized the split was roughly.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker A: We might have missed it by like a minute or two. But it's somewhere right around where the split was, right at the hour and a half mark, because it was two one and a half hours episodes, basically. And I assume it aired, like, back to back nights. That's usually how that kind of thing happened. And so we watched it in those two parts. And I enjoyed the first part a lot more than the second part because I thought a lot of the slow burn setting up the town and the introducing the characters and figuring out all the weird little intricacies of all their relationships, that was way more interesting to me. And when we finally get to the vampire showing up and killing people, it was like, eh. When we get to the very, very end, apart from how cool the house is, like, a lot of the ending was just like, whatever. It's like, kind of generic and fine. Whereas a lot of the stuff before that I thought was way more interesting and compelling generally. So I would agree. You know, I don't know.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker B: I mean, the book is even more of a slow burn.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, I'm gonna make sure.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker B: I mean, it's 650 pages. And the final kind of, like, battle where everything comes to a head is like the last 100. 150 pages. Maybe. Everything else is just slow burn.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker B: In the book, as the vampire hunting crew is preparing to kill Barlow, they go to the grocery store and buy every single head of garlic available. And I really wanted that to be in the movie. And I'm so, so disappointed that it.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker A: Wasn'T armfuls of garlic.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker B: And, like, the girl at the checkout just, like, looks at them like.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker A: Like, okay, that's a classic comedy beat in this kind of movie is them, you know, her scanning 800 heads of garlic as. That'll be $475.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker B: There's also a lot more, like, excitement leading up to the final fight in the book. Like, Barlo spends some time outsmarting and evading them before they finally find him. They don't just, like, go to the house and he's there, there.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker B: Another thing that bugged me in the movie was there was no attempt at being sneaky at all. In these last scenes, everybody just, like, rolls up with break, screeching, doors slamming.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker A: They get in the house, they're just.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker B: Like, volume conversations around, shouting for each other. And I was like, you guys are not even trying.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's like, all right.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker B: I hated that Ben just shot Striker in this. In the book. Mark kills him How? With like a lead pipe?
• 1:26:09
  Speaker A: Geez.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, I thought the movie was boring.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker A: I thought it was kind of interesting. I liked the. The thing I liked about the movie when he kills him there is because we just saw straker pick up Dr. Norton like a monster and slam him into a wall full of antlers and kill him. And so in that moment when he starts coming down the stairs at them and Ben starts shooting him, I was legitimately unsure of if the bullets were going to kill him, because we don't. I was like, up until the moment, up until, like the whole movie, I assumed he was just a guy. And they say that in the movie several times. Like, well, how do. What about Straker? He's like, well, he's just a guy. We can just kill him with a gun or whatever. But then when we see him pick up Dr. Norton, like, he's like, he's got superhuman strength. I was like, oh, maybe he isn't gonna just be able to be kill. And so I thought that was kind of. It made for that moment where Ben shoots him to be more compelling than it would have otherwise been because I was legitimately unsure of whether or not it was going to work. And then when it does, you're like, oh, okay. So that was like, again, it was very tense for me because you just don't know. But I think your point stands that I think it could have still been done more interestingly, potentially in the movie.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker B: Barlow sounded like a weed whacker when he was dying.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker B: That sound was. I don't know. The death scene is kind of close, but I just want to read what's in the book because it was really gnarly. He dies on page 628. The skin yellowed, coarsened, blistered like old sheets of canvas. The eyes faded, filmed white, fell in. The hair went white and fell like a drift of feathers. Others, the body inside the dark suit shriveled and retreated. The mouth widened gapingly as the lips drew back and drew back, meeting the nose and disappearing in an oral ring of jutting teeth. The fingernails went black and peeled off, and then there were only bones, still dressed with rings clicking and clenching like castanets. Dust puffed through the fibers of the linen shirt. The bald and wrinkled head became a skull. The pants, with nothing to fill them out, fell away to broomsticks, clad in black silk. For a moment, a hideously animated scarecrow writhed beneath him, and Ben lunged out of the coffin with a strangled cry of horror. But it was impossible to tear the gaze away from Barlow's last metamorphosis. It hypnotized the fleshless skull, whipped from side to side on the satin pillow. The nude jawbone opened, opened in a soundless scream that had no vocal cords to power it. The skeletal fingers danced and clicked on the dark air like marionettes.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's super gnarly. You know what it reminds me of is, and it's funny because this is 70, like 8, 77.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker B: 79 is when it was published. This is earlier than that.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker A: 78 maybe because the movie was.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, the movie was 79.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's interesting because as I was reading that there was some very specific. Or as you were reading that some very specific imagery popped into my head and I was like. Cause we do see a little bit of what they're going for there in the movie or in the movie.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker B: Yeah, the movie does it a little bit.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker A: We get like a little like pup mannequin head that is like all shriveled and weird looking, but we just see it. And I bet. Well, and then I was like, oh. Cause what jumps into my mind there of what like, oh, this is the effect they probably wanted to do, but maybe we're limited by television, which is the effect from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Or, or, or they do it again at the end of the Last Crusade. Indiana Jones and Last Crusade, which is when the. Everybody melts.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker A: And like all their skin, like. And then you see like the skull or whatever. And like that's what I imagined. But then I was like, well, raiders wasn't until 81, so that actually came out after this. And I don't know, I don't think Raiders was probably not the first movie to do that effect, but it may have been, I don't actually know because it's just like a sped up like time lapse of like a melting wax dummy head essentially. And like, I wonder if they wanted to do something like that. But you couldn't get away with doing that on television.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker A: Maybe just too gruesome. Whereas they could in Raiders because as a movie because, you know, they could get away with it. But. But it also would have been before Raiders. So I don't know, like again, I don't know if that. I bet that effect had been done before, but just maybe. No. Anyways, that's what it should have looked like in the movie is when maybe even less Raiders, but specifically at the end of the. Of Last Crusade when the Nazi drinks out of the wrong cup and melts and turns into bones and explodes. Because that's almost, like, exactly what I envisioned as you were reading that.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker B: My last note here, for better in the book. And I do not even remotely have every single detail in here that I thought was better in the book. But the last thing that I want to mention is that after they kill Barlow, like, the next day, when all of the vampires are sleeping again again, Ben goes back to get the body of the doctor to, like, bury him, like, give him a proper burial, and he finds Barlow's teeth still sitting in the coffin and, like, picks them up, and they're still, like, moving and trying to bite him.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker A: I'm just imagining the, like, little.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker B: Little chattering, and then he. He, like, scatters them.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker A: All right, it's time now to find out what Katie thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker B: Okay? So the first thing I wrote down was if they aged Susan up, I'll be so relieved. It seems like they at least dropped the exchange about her age. I also liked making her an art teacher. That's neither here nor there. But in the book, he meets Susan, and she is, like, fresh out of college, so she's not, like, underage or anything. She's, like, 20, 23, you know? But then they're talking about that, and she tells him that she's fresh out of college. And Ben says, he's already older than her, by the way. He's, like, in his 30s maybe. I think he finds out she's fresh out of college, and he says, says, oh, that makes you about seven years older than I thought you were. And I was like, no, no, Stephen, no. Yeah, don't do it.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think she's supposed to be, like, 30 in the book.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. Or in the movie, she talks. Because she talks about how she, like, went and had a career as, like, working for a marketing agency and then got let go and had to come back home.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker A: Also, the actress who plays her is, like, 30.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker A: So. Yeah.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker B: So that's better in the movie. I did like that the movie, I felt, like, created a little bit more suspicion of Ben from the town. Not that they're not, like, suspicious of him in the book, but I thought the movie leaned into that a little bit more, which was interesting. The movie mentions that Weasel and Eva are. Were married and divorced, but they still, like, lived together. And they do have an interesting relationship in the book, but I thought that specifically was an interesting take. On it. I liked seeing Susan actually interact with Floyd Ned, because I don't think we ever see her do that in the book.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:33:59
  Speaker B: I liked the box moving around in the back of the delivery truck. That's not something that's mentioned in the book. I did think it kind of looked like it was just sliding because it wasn't tied down, but. But it created some interesting tension.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, no, it definitely. Because they're driving forward and it starts sliding towards the front, which doesn't make any sense physically. So it has to like it. It. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's definitely. It's not just because it's not tied down.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker B: I'm just saying I liked the little moment of Ben, like, specifically worrying about that. Like, if the Marston house attracts evil men and I'm also drawn to it, does that then mean that I'm evil? I don't think that comes up in the book. I don't remember him talking about it, but I thought that was, like, an interesting extension from some of his musings about the nature of evil and the house. I thought using the school play to tell us about the previous fire that happened in Salem's Lot was a good idea because there is a history of a big fire having happened there before.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker A: I missed that.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker B: I didn't. It's a blink and you miss it. It was definitely for people who read.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker A: The book, because I mostly. It was mostly I remembered that, like, being about the Revolutionary War and, like.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker B: Soldiers going off to war or something, but then they. I think it's.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker A: Is it.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker B: When he's writing, when he's rehearsing, he's talking about the. The Great Fire of 51 or whatever it is. I thought combining the doctor character with Susan's dad was a good call. It's a different character in the book, like, two separate characters. But I was like, that's fine. Yeah, that's a good call.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker A: Makes sense.
• 1:35:40
  Speaker B: Eliminate some of these extraneous characters. I liked that we saw Mark actually, like, painting his models and, like, doing things with them, because the book talks about how he's into that stuff, but we don't really see him doing it. I also thought that the movie actually did a better job of seeding the idea of Mark being an amateur escape artist, because the book doesn't actually talk about that until we're like, in the moment when he needs to escape and he's like, oh, it's a good thing I've been reading about Houdini.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, it made sense.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker B: To. I liked the book's version of. Of the final battle. Fine. There was a lot that I liked about it more. But I didn't mind moving the final battle to the Marston house.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker A: Oh, is it not.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker B: It does not take place in the house in the book. But I thought that made sense thematically. And I'm sure that the movie wanted to make use of their big set piece that they spent so much money on.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker A: Absolutely.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker B: Yeah. Of course. So totally get that. And I liked the shot of the other vampires slowly crawling towards Martha while Ben is staking Barlow. I thought that was one of the scariest things in the movie.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker A: I had the same note, that shot where he's sitting there in front. It's the little, like, door to the room where the coffin was and all the bodies of the townsfolk were. And as Ben is killing Barlow.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker B: Yeah. We cut back to Mark, and they're, like, in the background slowly getting closer.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker A: And you can barely see him in the darkness.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, you can see their eyes. Yeah.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker A: It's super creative. It's very, very effective.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker B: I have one other thing that I want to mention that I forgot to put in here, but I remembered it. I want to talk about Ruthie Crockett. She's not in the movie. This is Larry Crockett's daughter. She's not in the movie, but she's in the book. And she's a teenage girl. She goes, like, to the local high school. Okay. And there are multiple grown men in this book who are like, that. Ruthie Crockett, she's such a slut. She wears her. She wears her thin sweater, and she's such a temptress and a slut prancing down the street. And I was reading this book, and I was getting more and more angry. And I understand, like. I understand the idea of, like, what we're demonstrating and, like, the horrible thoughts that the people in this town have. Like, I get it. I get it. But I was reading it, and I was getting progressively more angry, and I was like, you fuckers. Leave Ruthie Crockett alone. Own. She's just a kid who thinks she's an adult. That is a perfectly normal thing for a teenager to think. Yeah, leave her alone.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker A: Yeah. All right, let's go ahead and find out what the movie nailed. As I expected, practically perfect in every way.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker B: Ben and Susan do meet because she's reading his book, and he's, like, walking along, and he's like, ho, ho. Someone reading my book. I'll go have a chat with them. We talked About Ben's story about going to the Marston house and seeing the ghost of Hubie Marston hanging from the rafters. Stryker's casual. That's a shame. To hearing about Ralphie going missing when. Remember that when Parkins Gillespie is like, oh, we seemed to have have misplaced one of our kids. When he's trying to, like, question him. And Straker goes, that's a shame.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker A: Yes, I do recall that.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker B: Speaking of Parkins Gillespie, he does call the FBI to get information on Ben and straker and Barlow. Mr. Burke does invite Mike the Gravedigger back to his house for the night because he seems like he's really sick. He also then calls Ben and has him bring over a cross. And the window is open and Mike seem. Mike seems like he's dead and he has, like, marks on his neck have disappeared.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, he did, because he had bite marks.
• 1:39:49
  Speaker B: Yeah, he had bite marks on his neck. But then they, like, disappear after he dies, quote, unquote. Mike does then come back to Mr. Burke's house and Mr. Burke drives him off and Mike says, you'll sleep like the dead TT at which point Mr. Burke has a heart attack. Mrs. Glick does think that she's been dreaming of Dany, but actually he's been visiting her as a vampire. Dead bodies do start disappearing from the morgue. Ben and the doctor do go to the Morgue and see Mrs. Glick's body. And then she wakes up. And I just want to read real quick because the language in the book was so creepy.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. This is another moment that was undercut by the TV nature of this, where we get the shot of her hand, like, shooting out, but it like shoots at the camera and then it just like hangs there for too long. And then we fade to commercial break. Yeah, it's like, ugh.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker B: She gave a high whistling cry and twisted in his grip. Ben saw Jimmy's nails pull away a flap of her skin at the shoulder and nothing welled out. The cut was like a lipless piece mouth. And then, incredibly, she threw him across the room. Jimmy crashed into the corner, knocking Mari Green's portable TV off its stand. She was on him in a flash, moving in a hunched, scrabbling run that was nearly spider like. That was the part that got me. The way that they describe her moving. I was like, ugh, yuck.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker A: No, I. I said when I said that happens. I realized that what I was actually thinking of wasn't that scene, but was the scene later where I think it at the Marston house where Ben just throws Mark across the room into a table or something. I don't even remember what he was doing or why, but he just shoves them into a table. It was like, what? Okay.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker B: Eva does a quote unquote dream of weasel kissing her neck, which is how she turns into a vampire. Straker captures Susan and Mark ties up Susan, or ties up Mark, takes Susan to Barley Parkins. Gillespie is a coward and flees town. Instead of. Yeah. Helping them kill the vampire, he's like, nope, I'm out.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker A: He. They straight up. What's that TV show from the. That dumb TV show where. Oh, my gosh. What is that, the Beverly Hillbillies?
• 1:42:11
  Speaker B: Yeah. Like, we were watching it and I was like, I'm glad they took their mop with them. They have, like, the mop and broom tied to the top of the car.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker A: It also cracks me up that the last thing, as he's getting in the car to leave, he picks up a fan, like a table fan off the ground and sands it through the windows. I don't know.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker B: They just take everything.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker A: Everything. And they just, in the most haphazard way possible.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker B: Quite a lot of stuff that I would leave behind.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker B: They do fill up bottles of holy water to take with them when they're going to kill Barlow. I do wish that the movie would have shown them bathing in it. They, like, go into the church and they fill up the bottles. And then Ben, like, you know what? Might as well suck it. And they just, like, douse themselves. Themselves in holy water. And they do have to bust into a little, like, sub seller in order to actually find the coffin. Yeah. And he is in there with some of his new vampires.
• 1:43:17
  Speaker A: All right, we're gonna get to a handful of odds and ends before the final verdict.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker B: There's not a full description of Ben in the book, which was I, who's not included in Guess who.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:43:37
  Speaker B: Although it is mentioned a couple times that he has dark hair. But I cannot stress enough how little this actor looks like what I imagined.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker A: I can imagine. Because he's not particularly memorable or interesting.
• 1:43:51
  Speaker B: Anything. Yeah, the opening credits in this. So 70s. Very 70s. Another thought that I had as I was reading the book was that if I were making this now, I would cast mark strong as Mr. Straker.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker A: I could see that.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker B: I could see that because I feel like that's exactly what was described in the book. He's described as, like, a giant bald man.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mentioned earlier that Larry Crockett was played by somebody very well known. It's a very Young Fred Wilson Willard, which I thought was very funny because it barely looks like him. You know, Fred Willard from. He's been in all kinds of stuff over the years, but he is. Yeah, he plays Larry Crockett in this and he is. I doesn't even look like him. I mean, it does. You can tell. Definitely tell it's him, but it's. I'm used to old Fred Willard and this is not old Fred Willard. On a similar note, like I said earlier, everybody in this movie is somebody that I knew from something. I just didn't know their names other than Fred Willard. Bonnie Bedelia, the actress who plays Susan is freaking Holly Gennaro McClain from Die Hard and her mom in the movie. Because I knew I recognized her mom somewhere. And she's been in a ton of stuff. That actress. I can't remember her name now, but she was specifically. I think what I was thinking of is that she plays Patience in one episode or two episodes of Firefly TV show Firefly. Patience is like the cowboy lady that hires them for a job at one point. And I knew I recognized her. But, yeah, Bonnie Bedelia. I was like, holy shit, that is Holly McLean or Holly Gennaro. I'll respect her. Or the fact that she divorced John McClane. Call her Holly Gennaro but use her maiden name.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker B: Don't they get back together?
• 1:45:31
  Speaker A: They do, yeah. But then they break up again in the second one. I'm pretty sure at the beginning of.
• 1:45:35
  Speaker B: The second one they break. I don't really care to.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker A: They definitely break up again at some point. I don't. Mainly because Bonnie Bedelia wasn't in any of the other movies. So I'm pretty sure that was the reason is we didn't. She wasn't coming back. So they just break him up again. I think it's been a long time since I've seen the later ones, but I really. There's this. The moment where. What Ben. I won't say, Mark. Where Ben goes to. I think it's the first time he shows up to the Marston house once he's back in town and he sees Straker. And Straker, like sneaks up behind him in the middle of the night. Incredibly dynamic camera move where the camera is like behind Ben looking up at the Marston house. And as when Straker walks up, we get like this really quick dolly pan spin move. And it like dollies and spins around, revealing Straker. And it was super cool. And I was like, man, I really love the dynamism of the camera moves so far. And this because this was only like 15 minutes into the movie. And then because there was also a really cool moment where you talked about where he sees somebody reading his book. The way the camera like dollies and slowly POV shot like pushes around the tree revealing her. It almost feels stalkery and weird. I don't know if that was intentional maybe. Yeah, but it was really cool. And so there's some really cool camera moments. Camera moves that like in the beginning of this, that kind of stopped. There was some really great cinematography. Later there's like. Like we talked about in the house. There's some really compellingly framed stuff that is just like really. The composition is really striking. But there wasn't as much of like the really cool camera moves that I was hoping we were gonna see because that was the thing I knew about Texas Chainsaw Massacre is that there's quite a bit of like really cool camera moves and stuff. And this one, like I said, has some. But I felt like it. What may have happened is that a lot of that may have been front loaded because it was a TV budget. And like all of a sudden, like, oh, we had all these great plans for all these things we were gonna do. But that all takes a lot. Doing those big camera moves like that. You got to set up the dolly, you got to practice them a bunch of times. You got to have everybody like, you know, there's just. It just takes a lot more work to do that kind of stuff. And so I wondered if maybe they had all these plans for a lot more like dynamic camera movements and stuff. And then as production went along, they ran more and more out of time and it just kind of got stripped back to more and more basic stuff. I don't know. That's just a guess because I was really surprised. Like that one shot where the. That spinning panning dolly camera reveal of straight Draker. It's like the only shot like that in the movie. There's a couple other kind of. But that's like the one big one. And it just seems strange to me to only do something like that once. I don't know. Yeah, it was very interesting.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker B: Maybe they were trying to pull people in so that they would come back for part two.
• 1:48:26
  Speaker A: Maybe. Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:48:28
  Speaker B: Didn't care.
• 1:48:29
  Speaker A: I think it's like I said, knowing how productions work, My guess is, yeah, they started running out of time and money and just had to strip it back and shoot it as quickly as they could.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker A: And so the first thing to Go. Are big, intricate camera moves.
• 1:48:43
  Speaker B: This is a random little thing that I just noticed while we were watching the movie. And I thought it was funny. The scene where Ben and Mr. Burke are, like, having dinner together in the diner. Ben has, like, a full plate of food that he's eating. And I don't know if the implication is that Mr. Burke has already finished his food, but he appears to just have a piece of lettuce and two tomato slices.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker A: I did not notice that. I did not see that.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker B: Like, it looks like it's accoutrement for his sandwich. And he ate his sandwich. He ate his sandwich already. But it doesn't look. It didn't look like there was ever a sandwich there. It just looked like he had a piece of lettuce and two tomato slices.
• 1:49:24
  Speaker A: Could be. Could be another guy. We talked about that. I recognized the sheriff or the constable or whatever Perkins or whatever his name was. I was like, I know this guy from something, and it's something I haven't even seen. But I just recognize him because I've seen photos of him. So much. Much from this is that he plays Baron Harkonnen in David Lynch's Dune, which I thought was very funny.
• 1:49:44
  Speaker B: I know we've talked a lot about men in the 70s in this episode, but I do want to further mention 70s men's fashion is so fascinating to me because I kind of hate it a lot. But it's also so unique and distinct, which is something that is not often the case with modern men's fashion. Once you hit mid century, it all starts to look really similar decade to decade. Decade. But men's fashion in the 70s is, like, very distinct. Also, I want to know why Danny Glick's coffin was chrome.
• 1:50:20
  Speaker A: That was interesting.
• 1:50:21
  Speaker B: That looks like a spaceship.
• 1:50:23
  Speaker A: It's not uncommon that. That finish for. Or at least it didn't used to be. I don't think. Because I've seen other, like, movies and stuff where the cop. Their coffins are like. Yeah. Like shiny silver, polished metal. Which is interesting.
• 1:50:35
  Speaker B: Yeah. We mentioned earlier Mark's dad and how he's not that good of a dad.
• 1:50:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:50:45
  Speaker B: And I did. I did write down, oh, my God, leave your kid alone. Just let him paint his monster figurines.
• 1:50:51
  Speaker A: Yeah. He's just.
• 1:50:53
  Speaker B: He's just constantly on his case about it. He doesn't understand his son's interests, and he's making it everyone's problem. Another little thing I wanted to mention that was in the book we talked about in the prequel when Stephen King was coming up with the idea for this. And he asked his wife what she thought would happen if Dracula came to modern America.
• 1:51:17
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker B: And his wife was like, he'd probably go to New York and be hit by a cab. And there's a reference to that in the book when Barlow's talking, like, chatting with one of the townsfolk before killing them. And he's talking about how he wanted to come to a small town instead of a city. And he says, if I went to a city, I should be run over by a hansom crossing the street.
• 1:51:41
  Speaker A: I missed that.
• 1:51:42
  Speaker B: No, that wasn't in the movie. It's in the book. Yeah, it's in the book. There was a reference to that.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker A: That's fine. My last note was that I thought it was really funny. And you mentioned this earlier, that when they go down into the basement, they have to, like, the stairs are removed and cut off. And in the movie, Mark falls and then Ben jumps to down and Mark hurts his leg. But it was very funny to me because this is a very classic trope in video games. There's this mechanic that is built into a lot of especially modern video games where when you know you're approaching a big boss battle, when you get to a point in the stage or the level where you get to like a small, like, ledge or cliff and you have to jump down off it into like a big open space of something.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker B: Into the belly of the beast, usually.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker A: It'S like some sort of, like, big open space and you're like, okay, I'm about to fight some monster, some big boss. And it was very funny to me that they had to jump down off a ledge into the basement to fight the final boss. I was like, oh, my gosh. It's like, it's a video. It's literally a video game level. Because, yeah, it's such a. It's a common, such a common, like, trope and like, running joke in modern video games that anytime you jump off a ledge like that, you know you're about to fight the boss or whatever. I was like, wow, look at that. There you go. Before we wrap up, we wanted to remind you, you can do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Goodreads, Blue sky, any of those places interact. We'd love to hear what you have to say about Salem's Lot. You can also help us out by heading over to Apple, Podcasts, Spotify, Anywhere you listen to our show, drop us a five star rating, write us a nice little review. We would appreciate that. And if you really Want to support us, you can over to patreon.com thisfilmislit support us there. Get access to bonus content, all kinds of fun stuff. And at the $15 a month bubble, you get access to patron requests where if you have something you would really like for us to talk, talk about, give us that 15 bucks a month and we'll throw it as early in our list as we our schedule as we can. Still going to be out of ways, but we'll get it in there as soon as we can. And this one, in fact, was a patron request.
• 1:53:39
  Speaker B: This was a request from Shelby.
• 1:53:42
  Speaker A: The year of the vampire.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker B: Shelby, it says the 2025 is the year of the vampire. I mean it is.
• 1:53:49
  Speaker A: It is. We've now seen Sinners twice. We just watched this. We just.
• 1:53:51
  Speaker B: We did Trackula Nosferatu. Absolutely.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker A: Vampires on vampires. On vampires. All right, it's time for the final verdict.
• 1:54:04
  Speaker B: Sentence fast. Verdict after. That's stupid. It took me a hot minute to work my way through this book. In all fairness to me, it is 653 pages long. I think it was actually longer than Dread Dracula.
• 1:54:21
  Speaker A: Really?
• 1:54:22
  Speaker B: I would have to go back and check, but I think it might have been. Despite that, I really enjoyed it. It honestly might be my favorite Stephen King work that we've covered thus far. Yeah, I thought it was decently scary. I enjoyed the themes and most of the Dracula references. And despite doing some complaining about the number of characters, I ended up really liking taking the sum of all those parts, the movie I did not feel the same way about. I can appreciate the limitations of the time period and the budget, but I didn't think it was scary at all. To me, it felt more hokey than anything. And despite being adapted as a two part miniseries, it felt so rushed and bare bones compared to the yawning expanse of the night novel. I really think that Salem's Lot is one of those properties that's ripe for adaptation as a limited series.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker A: I got good news. It already was. Just not really. Midnight Mass is.
• 1:55:30
  Speaker B: Oh, right, you mentioned that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:55:33
  Speaker A: For people who don't know, Midnight Mass, limited series on Netflix inspired by. It's not an adaptation of this, but it is very, very clearly inspired by this. It's about what if vampirism breaks out in a small northeastern town.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:55:48
  Speaker A: And it's like eight episodes and it's really, really good. Highly recommend it.
• 1:55:52
  Speaker B: So it shouldn't come as a surprise that I am giving this one to the book. It's not perfect and it did give me some Grief. But at the end of the day, the book gave me much more of a horror experience. And isn't that what you want from a horror prop?
• 1:56:11
  Speaker A: I would say so, yeah. I agree. I thought the movie was just meh. It was fine. I wanted to like it more than I did.
• 1:56:16
  Speaker B: I did, too. But I thought it was pretty meh.
• 1:56:18
  Speaker A: I, I think it had its moments for sure, and I think it even had its scary and spooky and creepy moments, but it wasn't any. It. A lot of the, like, what were supposed to be scary moments, I completely agree, were just kind of cheesy and not scary, which, again, I think is definitely a part of that, is just viewing it through as a modern audience member.
• 1:56:37
  Speaker B: I don't think it would have felt that way. I get that.
• 1:56:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. But some of the stuff still does work. So, you know, it. It's. It's a mixed bag, but I, I agree. It was. It was just okay. It wasn't. Wasn't all that great. Katie, what's next?
• 1:56:50
  Speaker B: Up next, we are jumping headlong into our 2025 Summer Series, and we are going to be talking of the. About the Maze Runner.
• 1:57:03
  Speaker A: Maze Runner. Some of our patrons predicted this.
• 1:57:06
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:57:06
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:57:08
  Speaker B: Kind of feeling like we're scraping the bottom of the barrel series.
• 1:57:11
  Speaker A: The summer series. We're going to have to. We may have to revisit summer and it may not be. Yeah. Because we are definitely getting down there in terms of, like, things people are going to be excited about in terms of summer's, like, YA series or whatever.
• 1:57:25
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I, you know, I think it's. Would. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm excited about this. I'm interested.
• 1:57:33
  Speaker A: I'm interested.
• 1:57:34
  Speaker B: I know nothing about this series. Presumably there's a maze.
• 1:57:38
  Speaker A: That's the extent of my knowledge, is that there probably is a maze.
• 1:57:42
  Speaker B: There's probably a maze. And that's all I know.
• 1:57:44
  Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. Same. I know I'm interested to see what it's. But. Yeah, I, I also have no idea what it's about. Anything about it. I don't know. I have an anecdote I want to share about the movie when we get into the episodes. A recent thing that happened to me that was very funny. We'll get to it. But remind me, if I, if for some reason I never tell an anecdote, it'd be like, hey, did you ever tell your anecdote about.
• 1:58:10
  Speaker B: About the Maze Runner movie?
• 1:58:12
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:58:13
  Speaker B: All right.
• 1:58:13
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:58:14
  Speaker B: Help me remember.
• 1:58:16
  Speaker A: I'm sure I will remember. I'm trying to figure out when I want to share it because it's just very, very, very funny to me.
• 1:58:20
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:58:21
  Speaker A: I'll probably share it in the first.
• 1:58:22
  Speaker B: Episode like main episode, so come back for that.
• 1:58:25
  Speaker A: But come back first for the prequel episode because in one week's time we'll be previewing the Maze Runner and seeing what all of you had to say about Salem's Lot and maybe we'll be learning something. I don't know, maybe there's something.
• 1:58:38
  Speaker B: It'll probably be less than one week's time though because.
• 1:58:41
  Speaker A: Oh right, this episode came out. We're late in four days time or whatever. Yeah, as you're listening to this, come back and for the prequel episode and then in a week and a half's time come back for the first episode of the 2025 summer series Maze Runner. Until that time, guys, gals, nightmare pals.
• 1:58:58
  Speaker B: And everybody else keep reading books, keep.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker A: Watching movies and keep being awesome. Sam.