Review: Salem’s Lot 4K UHD

Salem’s Lot (1979)

Imagine a time (those of us over 50 will have no problem), when there was ‘Event television’, with only 3 channels to choose from in the UK, we had to wait a full 2 years before Salem’s Lot was shown on BBC 1 on Monday (pt 2 was on Wednesday) September 7^th 1981. It was mind blowing for the UK audience, and even now I can remember watching it with my parents, absolutely terrified. The next day in school there were thousands of traumatised children who had been allowed by unknowing parents, to watch ‘Hutch’ (lead actor, David Soul who plays Ben Mears and was famous from being one half of extremely popular family TV cop show, Starsky and Hutch), take on, with the help of the local doctor and a kid who’s monster obsessed, a vampire invasion in small town Salem’s Lot, and I think we were all relieved it was in America.

By then Stephen King was already a household name over here, but not even reading the novel could prepare a UK audience for floating children, scratching a bedroom window pane, or the Nosferatu-like visage of the master vampire, Barlow.

Directed by Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Poltergeist), it tells the tale of author Ben Mears (David Soul) who returns to his childhood town of Salem’s Lot to write about the Marsten House, an old mansion up on the hill overlooking the town. It’s only briefly mentioned in the series, but the reason he’s returned is because he’s had a terrifying experience in that house, one that has remained with him and he’s gone back to perhaps face up to, and then eradicate the awful memory and the horror of what happened there.

The town itself is your run of the mill small town, with intertwined families, who live, work and have affairs, but things start to go wrong when a new antique store is about to open, run by the mysterious Richard Straker (James Mason) and his unseen partner Mr. Barlow (Reggie Nalder), and they have moved into the Marsten House. People start to die, and this leads Ben to join forces with Mark Petrie (Lance Kerwin) and they begin to believe that a vampire is feeding on the town. How can they be stopped and will anyone believe them?

I can imagine some younger viewers of the 2 part Salem’s Lot might be puzzled at its classic status, there’s no real prosthetics except green glow in the dark eye contacts and some white/purple face make up, there’s an absence of blood, and some child deaths that would never get less than a 15 certificate now (one victim, neatly wrapped in a bin bag is left on a table/altar for Barlow to…eat? Another rises from his coffin as the undead, (just writing it gives me the shivers). There are no women falling over, no one drops their weapon after hitting the bad guy once (and not killing him before running away), there’s no gore. But what you do have is a great story of disillusionment, with no real resolution, starring the biggest heart throb of 1979, who proves he can act during a morgue scene, where he looks genuinely terrified.  

This new UHD release from Arrow is gorgeous, thankfully they’ve kept it in its original 4:3 format. You can either play it as a miniseries in two parts as per the original broadcast or as extended movie, with the theatrical version being on disc 2.

The colours are bright and clear and the many darker scenes show more detail thanks to the higher contrast…watch out for the infamous ‘floating boy at the window’ scene, as for the first time I noticed how they did it! A layer of grain keeps everything suitably spooky throughout.

In the hundreds of horror films I’ve watched and loved, only two of them have genuinely scared me to the point of not wanting to watch them again, one is – of course, The Exorcist, the other… Salem’s Lot. The infamous floating Vampire child scratching the window is one that I still find genuinely scary.

Brilliant extras too, the interview with Stephen King biographer Douglas Winter is really enlightening and the talk by author and critic Grady Hendrix was also fantastic, giving a really clear vision of what King was going through that prompted him to write Salems Lot, at the same time Anne Rice was writing Interview with a Vampire.

4K ULTRA HD LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS:

• Brand new 4K restorations of both the original two-part miniseries and the shorter theatrical cut distributed internationally
• 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentations in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) of both versions of the film
• Original lossless mono audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• 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 1 – ORIGINAL TV 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 2 – THEATRICAL VERSION & EXTRAS:

• 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

Salem’s Lot is released on 30th March 2026 and is available to pre-order now.

Review by Tina from discs kindly supplied by Arrow Films via Fetch Publicity.