![]() ![]() ![]() If life is going to feel like life, you need some undead without any shilly-shallying. A world in which even nightmares are cheerful starts to look a little drab, a little washed-out, a little one-dimensional. Who T-shirt so you can show them off at the latest sci-fi convention. But still, we can't help feeling that you lose something when your vampires stop being creepy, when all the dark, ugly things are pulled into the light and given a new coat of paint and a Dr. They're seductive-as Jimmy Cody discovers when one bites him and he disgustedly reports, "I liked it." (11.354) They are evil, and they are everywhere, and they will take you.ĭon't get us wrong: we love us some Buffy and Twilight. They're virtually unkillable-as Reggie Sawyer discovers when he shoots a vampire with a shotgun and doesn't even slow it down. They're not superheroes you can rely on to sparkle and save you. Yeah, Stephen King's vampires aren't supervillains you can take out by casually tossing a stake through them. They're sparkly romantic elves who fight for right, superheroes rather than supervillains.Īnd then there's 'Salem's Lot. In Twilight, the other massive vampire phenom, the vampires aren't even evil. Buffy stakes five or ten an episode and barely works up a sweat. On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the vampires are little more than super-villains, strong and fast with wicked martial arts skills, but not that scary otherwise. They're all sex and death and sexy death, turning everything innocent and good to eternal evil with fangs and buckets of blood.īut vampires in recent years have gotten sadly defanged. Vampires are one of the all-time great creepy horror villains. What is 'Salem's Lot About and Why Should I Care? Scared yet? Fear not: Shmoop is here to give you some Vampire 101. It's been adapted as a TV miniseries twice, in 1979 and in 2004, and as a BBC radio play in 1995. Other folks have liked it, as well: it was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1976 and for a Locus Award for All-Time Best Fantasy Novel in 1987. King has said that 'Salem's Lot is one of his favorites, and he's expanded on it several times. It's almost like we're in Night of the Living Dead land here, where the monsters eat you and you eat other folks and soon everybody's a monster and you can't tell the cheerful townsfolk from the children of the night. The monsters eat you because you were a monster to begin with. Seriously: vampires in 'Salem's Lot are everyone, which means everyone is a vampire. ![]() So he hits on the scary idea that pretty much anybody around you could be a vampire. They're from Europe, and their hair is slicked back.īut even though King loves the oldies and goodies, he still wants to be up to date. The monsters here are vampires, and King's vampires have all the characteristics you'd expect from vampires: they don't like garlic, they hate crosses, and they need permission to enter a house. His monsters don't just eat one person, or two, or three. 'Salem's Lot is a landmark on King's path to take up his crown as the king of the monstrous, and he does it in high style. King was popular and going places, but you couldn't yet bury a fleet of overweight whales under copies of the novels he'd sold. His first, Carrie (1974), did well, but still, it was early days. Okay, when King published 'Salem's Lot back in 1975, he wasn't quite as well known for monsters eating you as he was to become. When a Stephen King monster eats you, you stay eaten. And the great state of Maine's very own Stephen King is the most popular creator of stories about monsters eating you in all of explored space. But this isn't just any book about monsters eating you: it's a book by Stephen King about monsters eating you. 'Salem's Lotis about monsters eating you. ![]()
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