Every Version Of Stephen King's Salem's Lot, Ranked

"Carrie" is the novel that marked the arrival of Stephen King, but "'Salem's Lot" was the follow-up that proved he had real staying power. After his tale of a telekinetic high school girl became a bestseller and a hit movie, King decided to take a stab at vampires. A kind of mash-up of Grace Metalious' 1956 novel "Peyton Place" and Bram Stoker's immortal "Dracula" (with a little of Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House" thrown in for good measure), King's novel asked a simple but effective question: what would happen if old world vampires set up shop in a small modern American town?

These days, that idea seems cliched and well-worn, but when King published "'Salem's Lot" in 1975, it was still a pretty fresh concept (vampire stories were mostly set in Europe at the time, and Anne Rice's groundbreaking New Orleans-set "Interview with the Vampire" wouldn't be published until a year later). It remains one of King's most popular books, and it's been adapted to the screen three times* — twice as a TV miniseries and once as a feature film. So how do those adaptations stack up? Let's rank them and see!

*For the sake of completion, I should probably note that the TV shows "Castle Rock" and "Chapelwaite" are both "'Salem's Lot"-adjacent, but not direct adaptations of the novel, so they don't factor in here. There's also a 1987 sequel movie called "A Return to Salem's Lot," but, while fun, it has virtually nothing to do with King's book so we're just going to ignore it.

After the 2017 feature adaptation of Stephen King's killer clown opus "It" became a massive box office success, producers tripped over themselves rushing to greenlight more King movies and reboots with the hopes of cashing-in. One of those reboots was a new take on "'Salem's Lot," with "It" co-writer Gary Dauberman on board to pen the script and direct. This would serve as the first big screen adaptation of King's vampire novel, as both previous takes (which we'll get to in a moment) were TV miniseries.

Unfortunately, the big screen release was not to be. After planning to open the film in theaters in 2022, Warner Bros. pulled the flick from its release date and kept shuffling it around. Eventually, King himself got involved, taking to social media multiple times to claim he had seen the film, liked it, and thought it deserved a release. Finally, WB dropped the film directly to streaming on HBO Max in 2024.

As it turns out, those delays were kinda justified. Dauberman's "'Salem's Lot" is a bit of a bust (as I said in my review, it "lacks bite," because I am very clever). It streamlines all the details that make King's book so memorable and feels oddly rushed and surprisingly dull. I'm not saying the movie should've never been released, I just wish it was a heck of a lot better.

The general consensus among King fans is that the 2004 TNT miniseries adaptation of "'Salem's Lot" isn't very good, but I've always enjoyed it. While the script changes some big details from King's novel and condenses several characters, it's also the only adaptation to stay true to the book in regards to Kurt Barlow, the head vampire who comes to town and starts sucking blood. In both the first miniseries adaptation and the 2024 film, Barlow is turned into a Nosferatu-like monster who never utters a line of dialogue. In King's novel and this adaptation, however, Barlow is a more sophisticated, educated vampire, and he's played with just right amount of classic menace here by Rutger Hauer.

This adaptation, which stars Rob Lowe in his second big Stephen King miniseries, also gets points for the casting of the great Andre Braugher, who plays school teacher turned vampire expert Matt Burke. Donald Sutherland also gets to ham it up as Barlow's extra evil human familiar Straker. At the very least, this is better than the 2024 feature film.

Stephen King's novel is so sprawling that it seems like a miniseries is the best way to go about adapting it. Part of what makes "'Salem's Lot" pop is that King does such a good job establishing what everyday life is like in a small Maine town that slowly becomes infested with vampires. The 2024 film jettisons much of this town-building, which keeps its version of 'Salem's Lot from ever feeling like a real place.

The 1979 miniseries thankfully avoids this problem, unfolding over 183 minutes to let the story breathe. Directed by legendary horror filmmaker Tobe Hooper, the '79 adaptation takes more than a few liberties with the source material: it combines characters, and as mentioned above, it turns head vampire Barlow into a Nosferatu-like ghoul. But Hooper really knows how to turn King's prose into memorable, moody, gothic images designed to give you nightmares (everyone remembers the creeptastic scene where a vampire boy floats outside of a bedroom window, and for good reason).

Sure, this is a TV movie from the '70s, so it's bound to feel a bit dated by today's standards. But the 1979 "'Salem's Lot" miniseries is still the best adaptation of King's book, and it doesn't seem like that's going to change anytime soon.