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Salem’s Lot, Still One of King’s Best

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Vampires have existed in fiction for well over a hundred years now, stretching back to John Palidori’s The Vampyre, published in 1819. In all that time, they’ve morphed into tragic heroes, romantic lovers, and even managed to…sparkle?

No. Real vampires are supposed to be scary. They stalk you in the dead of night, their bite draining you of blood and transforming you into one of them, doomed to wander in search of people to feed on yourself. That means stories like Nosferatu, Dracula, and Stephen King’s masterpiece, Salem’s Lot.

Image courtesy of Amazon.com

Only King’s second novel, Salem’s Lot is his take on the story of Dracula and vampires, introducing them to the new world through the small town of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine. The story is focused on Ben Mears, who returns to Jerusalem’s Lot years after leaving as a child to write a book about the abandoned mansion call the Marsten House. Arriving at the same time is an Austrian immigrant by the name of Kurt Barlow. Not long after, people start disappearing, then reappearing in the dark depths of the night, thirsting for the blood of their family, friends, and community members. It falls on Ben, Susan Norton, a college grad, Father Callahan, and a young boy by the name of Mark Petrie to discover the source of the evil and battle it.

Salem’s Lot isn’t just my favorite. The year after it was released, in 1976, it was nominated for the World Fantasy Best Novel award. Stephen King even said himself in an interview with Playboy in 1983 that it was his favorite. (In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2014, though, his answer changed to Lisey’s Story.) It also regularly breaches the top five in lists of King’s best works, and has over 80,000 five star reviews on the book review site Goodreads.com.

This is more than just a horror novel about vampires. It’s a time capsule of classic Americana, at least before the vampires overrun the town, and an example of a book which is nearly perfect on all the cylinders of plot, characterization, and description. It’s an example of some of the best that writing can be and a book that anyone with any interest at all in horror or vampires should read.

If you disagree, I hope little Danny Glick comes tapping on your window in the dark of night. He’ll be able to convince you far better than I.

Featured image courtesy of halfmanhalfmovie.com

 

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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