Review Detail
9.6 5 10
Overall rating
9.6
Audio/Video Quality
10.0
Audio Editing
10.0
Visual Editing
10.0
Narrative
9.0
Enjoyment
9.0
Salem's Lot left quite an impression on me when I saw it as a young teenager when I was staying with my Nan. David Soul, the majestic James Mason... and then there was Mr Barlow... blimey, how he scared me! Of course, with the passing of time, and the fact that I haven't seen the film or TV version for many many years, it would be wrong of me to expect the film to have the same impact as it did. However, as a keen admirer of musiced's work, I was more than excited to check his version out.
Overall, this edit does a very successful balancing act of maintaining the key character beats whilst pushing forward the narrative at a quicker rate. Not that the intention here is to make a fast moving Salem's Lot, but more one that focuses on the main characters and seeing the story develop naturally from that viewpoint - or at least that's how it came across to me. It certainly improves the pacing for me, even if the depth of the characters here is still not that deep to be honest. David Soul comes out best of all for me. I've always liked him as an actor, and I truly like him as writer, Ben Mears. I love the way the story ends with Ben and Mark on the run from the vampires, and it actually makes me wish there had been a weekly TV Series carrying on their weekly fight against evil.
On the technical side, Musiced deserves huge praise for some excellent picture reframing here, to the point where you would never know it wasn't filmed in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. I never noticed any poor visual or audio edits, and all in all I had a blast watching this again in what is a very skillful fanedited version. It still manages to be a creepy adaptation of an excellent novel, and it's nice to see less obvious movies like this getting the fanedit treatment.
Overall, this edit does a very successful balancing act of maintaining the key character beats whilst pushing forward the narrative at a quicker rate. Not that the intention here is to make a fast moving Salem's Lot, but more one that focuses on the main characters and seeing the story develop naturally from that viewpoint - or at least that's how it came across to me. It certainly improves the pacing for me, even if the depth of the characters here is still not that deep to be honest. David Soul comes out best of all for me. I've always liked him as an actor, and I truly like him as writer, Ben Mears. I love the way the story ends with Ben and Mark on the run from the vampires, and it actually makes me wish there had been a weekly TV Series carrying on their weekly fight against evil.
On the technical side, Musiced deserves huge praise for some excellent picture reframing here, to the point where you would never know it wasn't filmed in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. I never noticed any poor visual or audio edits, and all in all I had a blast watching this again in what is a very skillful fanedited version. It still manages to be a creepy adaptation of an excellent novel, and it's nice to see less obvious movies like this getting the fanedit treatment.
L