Every horror diehard has that one memorable moment that made them a fan of the genre. One chilling scene that jumped off the screen, crawled under the skin, and never left. For Patrick Wilson, a bona fide “Scream King” thanks to his involvement in The Conjuring and Insidious films, that moment arrived early. And, perhaps not surprisingly, it came courtesy of Stephen King and one of his classic little horror-filled towns.
The culprit responsible for this particular convert was the original 1979 TV adaptation of Salem’s Lot that turned a small Maine town into the stuff of nightmares. Adapted from King’s 1975 novel, the story follows writer Ben Mears as he returns to his hometown of Jerusalem’s Lot in Maine to work on a new book. Instead of inspiration and reconnection with old friends, Mears finds the town slowly turning into a vampire colony. It’s one of King’s early, enduringly creepy novels and helped cement his reputation for taking everyday places and faces and making them truly terrifying.
Check out Patrick Wilson gracing Dread Central’s September digital cover story
Directed by none other than Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), the adaptation translated that creeping dread into a two-part event that, for many viewers, was far scarier than anything else on TV at the time. Case in point is Patrick Wilson himself. A frequent flyer in the horror sphere, Wilson’s first foray into the dark occurred over 20 years ago when he landed the role as Viscount Raoul de Chagny in Joel Schumacher’s The Phantom of the Opera. More recently, Wilson has returned one last time to his recurring revisionist history role of Ed Warren in The Conjuring: Last Rites and the possessed daddy in Insidious: The Red Door. But Wilson didn’t start out quite so fearless.
In an interview with Letterboxd about his horror influences, he confessed that Salem’s Lot traumatized him as a child. While discussing his first viewing of the film, Wilson explained, saying, “I was six and should not have seen it. Kids scratching on the window terrified me so much…That movie scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. It’s so scary to me.” Wilson also admitted that he had intentionally avoided the movie for years, but upon revisiting it in his teenage years, he found a new appreciation and an endearing quality in the material, as well as new insight regarding the impact that childhood terror had on him.
It is the simplicity and authenticity of the scares in Salem’s Lot that eternally keep the film in the conversation of creepiest King adaptations. The very scene that scared Wilson, in particular. As the floating frame of young Ralphie Glick (Ron Scribner) scratches at the window, encased in fog, the eerie quiet highlights the haunted, dead eyes and unnerving smile of a former friend, now transformed into something…else. That economy of scare and slow-building dread is exactly the kind of thing that lodges in a kid’s memory, and hey, maybe even inspires an entire career.
If you’re curious to see the original that rattled a young Wilson, the Tobe Hooper 1979 miniseries is available to rent or buy on Prime Video, Apple TV, and YouTube.
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