A big step in the evolution of the vampire, away from the gothic manor of Count Dracula and into the present day, came from Stephen King’s 1975 novel Salem’s Lot and the 1979 miniseries from the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Vampires in suburbia have been done before, but not with this much thought and detail. Salem’s Lot became known as one of the scariest films ever made for television, with an image of a small boy floating outside a window that seared into the viewers memory. Also, King moves away from the sexiness of vampire mythology by making the main creature a Nosferatu type, with blue-green skin, bald head, sharp ears and elongated claws and teeth that suggest a rat-like existence. The patient way this monster becomes a plague upon the town is a style King would return to with Needful Things (in the 700s) and Mike Flanagan would borrow for Midnight Mass (coming soon).
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