Salem's Lot - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Salem's Lot



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
Nearly 10 years after reviewing the Blu-ray from Warner Brothers, it looks like we get a crack at a superb treatment for the classic mini series in the form of Arrow’s 4K UHD limited edition set. A little mini series that played out over 2 nights back in 1979, Salem’s Lot holds the distinction of coming from one of Stephen King’s best novels, and it translated amazingly well to TV (unlike It, which suffered a bit in its translation from paper to the silver screen). It also doesn’t hurt anything that we had the venerable Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Lifeforce, Poltergeist) behind the camera, and late greats such as James Mason in front of the camera. Despite some of the sloppy and cheesy vampire tropes of the 1970s that tend to feel rote and stale when compared to modern vampire lore, Salem’s Lot is a great little show that digs deep into psychological horror in a way that really doesn’t rely on the overuse of blood, gore and brutal deaths. It’s almost akin to a Vincent Price horror radio show from the 1950s, just modernized for the late 70s sensibilities.

Our viewing opens up with Ben Mears (David Soul), a horror novelist, returning to him home town of Salem’s Lot in order to write a novel based upon the real life “haunted” mansion on the outskirts of town. A grisly murdered ensued some years prior, and a very young Ben had seen things in that house that no sane human would describe as “real”. Years later he’s decided that its time to investigate the mansion, and maybe use the inspiration for his new book. But soon after moving back to town, strange events start to unfold. Children start vanishing, and random people start to die after getting sick with mysterious ailments. And the only variable that has changed in Salem’s Lot is the appearance of Ben himself.

But despite the very obvious signs of malaise and upset happening in the town, darker forces are at work behind the scenes. Ben’s poking around leads him to the new owner of the Marsten mansion. A man who bought out the original owners years ago and lives there now. And guess what? Those deaths and disappearances are soon connected to vampires cropping up all over town. Vampires that seem to show no rhyme or reason for their appearance, but all seem to lead back to the Marsten house and Mr. Straker (James Mason), who now owns the ramshackle old house.

What makes Salem’s Lot so incredibly creepy and intense is the carefully crafted “slow burn” buildup that happens over the course of 3 hours. The series starts out a bit slow, but steadily and predictably ramps up the intensity in a steady upward pattern, bypassing the peaks and valleys that very well might have killed a 3+ hour mini series by a bored or frustrated audience. Most mini series benefit from a good 5-6+ hours of runtime to let things play outs, but Salem’s Lot runs as one continuous piece, showing no time lapses or shifts in environment to pad it out. Instead it works best as a gigantic movie, and watched in one single go.

Salem’s Lot was one of those classic movies (or mini series really) that Warner Bro’s sat on for years and years, until they finally tossed it on Blu-ray back in 2016, and promptly forgot about it since. And a lot of us horror fanatics were truly puzzled by the reasoning behind the scenes. It was met with critical success back in 1979, and sold moderately well over the DVD years. But for some reason Warner has really sat on the title and refused to give us even the theatrical version on Blu-ray ever. Luckily this Arrow release puts both films on disc, with separate BD-100’s for the 3 hours mini series, and the near 2 hour trimmed down cut that was shown in limited release theaters back in the day.




Rating:

Rated PG, Parental Guidance Recommended




4K Video: Video:

And now for the good stuff. According to the information from Arrow, both versions of the film were restored by Arrow in their original 1.37:1 framed aspect ratios in both HDR10 and Dolby Vision. The OCN was scanned at 4K for the mini series, and a 35mm interpositive was used for the theatrical cut (which explains why it looks ever so slightly inferior to the mini series disc) via Warner Bro’s MPI studios, then color graded as Silver Salt and QC’d by Pixelogic.

The old Blu-ray certainly looked great 10 years ago, but this new 4K UHD remaster blows the doors off of that disc without even breaking a sweat. Colors are warm and brown (as is the case with most 1970s films) and fine details show marked improvement over the aging Blu-ray. The mini series (as stated a few sentences above) shows more improvement than the theatrical disc due to the sources used for the restoration, but fine details abound on both discs. There’s some minor color instability going on, but the Dolby Vision upgrades create richer blacks, and better separation of primary shades in the dimly lit world of Salem’s Lot. Grain is handled well, though I noticed some occasional softness rearing its head up now and again.









Audio:

While its usually pretty common for Arrow to use LPCM for the mono or stereo tracks, I found it kind of puzzling why they would choose to use DTS-HD MA mono for the mini series, while putting a full LPCM Mono track on the 2nd disc with the theatrical version. Maybe it was because of the space savings on the 3 hour version, and the sub 2 hour theatrical cut allowed for the larger bitrate of the uncompressed LPCM. Who knows, all I know is that both tracks sound sonically identical to the other except maybe in a placebo type of way. Dialog is strong and clean, scoring choices make for an exciting adventure, but there are a few minor quirks that drag the score down. There’s some minor sharpness on the higher end, and the low end doesn’t have much going on (duh, mono track). But overall it’s a perfectly fine mono mix no matter which encoding format was used.












Extras:

Physical Extras
• Reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options
• Collectors' perfect-bound booklet containing new writing on the film by critics Sean Abley, Sorcha Ni Fhlainn, and Richard Kadrey, plus select archival material including interviews with director Tobe Hooper, and stars Lance Kerwin and Julie Cobb
• Salem's Lot town sign sticker
• Double-sided foldout poster featuring two original artwork options

Disc One: Mini Series Version
• Two viewing modes: Play as miniseries in two parts as per the original broadcast or as extended movie
• Brand new audio commentary by film critics Bill Ackerman and Amanda Reyes
• Archive audio commentary by director Tobe Hooper
• Alternate TV footage: commercial bumpers and original broadcast version of the antlers death
• Original shooting script gallery

Disc Two: Theatrical Version
• Brand new audio commentary by film critic Chris Alexander
• King of the Vampires, a new interview with Stephen King biographer Douglas Winter
• Second Coming, a new appreciation by author and critic Grady Hendrix
• New England Nosferatu, a new interview with filmmaker Mick Garris
• Fear Lives Here, a new featurette looking at the locations of Salem's Lot today
• We Can All Be Heroes, a new featurette with film critic Heather Wixson, co-author of In Search of Darkness
• A Gold Standard for Small Screen Screams, a new featurette with film critics Joe Lipsett and Trace Thurman, co-hosts of the podcast Horror Queers
• Trailer
• Image gallery

Final Score: ​

Salem’s Lot is a solid low key horror show from the late 70s, and works way better than it really should considering the era (the 70s wasn’t the greatest era for vampire flicks). Arrow’s 4K UHD set is chock full of extras, a great remaster, AND we get to choose from the original mini series or the theatrical showing (which has its own charm). All the way around, this is a fun romp and great vampire film that is given a top notch physical release. Definitely recommended.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: David Soul, James Mason, Lance Kerwin
Directed by: Tobe Hooper
Written by: Stephen King (Novel), Paul Monash (Screenplay)
Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA Mono, English LPCM Mono
Subtitles: English SDH
Studio: Arrow
Rated: PG
Runtime: 183 minutes / 111 minutes (Theatrical Cut)
Blu-ray Release Date: March 24th, 2026

Recommendation: Fun Watch