Salem's Lot star Lewis Pullman would have been "terrified" to have Stephen King on set
The film's cast talk to RadioTimes.com about being "scared" on set and stepping into the world of the horror icon.
Stephen King is unquestionably one of the most prolific and successful horror writers of all time. He has more than left his mark on cinema, with filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick, Brian De Palma and Rob Reiner all having turned his novels into classic movies.
After 50 years, The King of Horror is still an ever-present figure in Hollywood and he now serves as executive producer on the upcoming film adaptation of his second novel, Salem’s Lot.
The movie follows author Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman), who comes back to his childhood home in search of some inspiration for his next book. Instead, he discovers that people in his home town are mysteriously turning into blood-sucking vampires.
Despite serving as executive producer, Stephen King didn’t get the opportunity to visit the set, much to the relief of lead star Pullman.
“Gary [Dauberman, director] would deliver us little bits of news about Stephen and run things by him. It was great because he was like this mysterious presence that wasn’t there,” said Pullman. “I think if he had actually been on set then I would have been terrified.”
Pullman might have managed to escape the “terrifying” presence of King but that didn’t stop him from being “scared” on set as he was fully immersed in the dangerous world they had created.
It was most apparent when Pullman’s character was running out of a church onto the empty streets of Jerusalem's Lot to escape the vampires, and everything suddenly felt very real for the actor.
“With a shot like that on a Steadicam, it has to be a 360-degree set, meaning anywhere you point the camera you can use that footage,” he explained. “With the cameras in my periphery, there were no reminders that this is a film set and that was pretty trippy. At that moment, I was actually f**king scared.”
His co-star Mackenzie Leigh, who plays Ben's love interest Susan Norton, added: “There were also a couple of potholes and if you stepped in one, you were going to roll your ankle and be out for the film. So there were genuine stakes and fear involved.”
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Salem’s Lot terrified audiences in the late ‘70s with a TV miniseries starring James Mason and David Soul. However, this upcoming version will be the first made-for-cinema adaptation of the classic novel.
Almost 50 years since it was published, the book still has a timeless quality that feels poignant to this generation of moviegoers. And star Spencer Treat Clark remarked that this was because King used vampires as a metaphor to reflect the decay of small-town America.
“I see the town as the main character in this movie. You meet all these people and the town is alive, the milkman and postman are coming and everybody knows each other and are up in each other’s business,” he said. “Then, you just watch this town getting taken over and subsumed by this ‘virus’ and it’s this tragic story of getting taken over.”
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Another of the film's stars, Alfre Woodard, mirrored this sentiment and remarked that Salem’s Lot is still relevant because it mirrors the political and social landscapes of the last decade across the world.
“We are being challenged by something that creeps and infects the population. It’s brought on in the personality of people that are seductive, who find a way into people’s minds and hearts and they get their talons in,” she said.
She added: “It’s happened in the world before and all the signs are there but as most of us don’t revisit history, we don’t recognise when things are happening. With the last incarnations of Salem’s Lot, we weren’t in times that were so clearly mirroring the need for community to act or not act, to flee, to fight, or just be seduced, and we see the fallout of that.”
Salem's Lot is showing in UK cinemas from Friday 11th October, and the first two films are available on Prime Video and Paramount Plus.
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