Long before “True Blood” or “Twilight” brought vampires to small-town America, horror writer Stephen King imagined the creatures invading his backyard in rural Maine (technically, a fictional place called Jerusalem’s Lot). Until then, blood-sucking bat-men were something only Europeans had to worry about, as Dracula and his castle-dwelling kin preyed on hapless villagers half a world away. Then came “’Salem’s Lot,” King’s second novel in which the man who’d made witches a modern-day concern with “Carrie” asked American readers: What if an outbreak of vampirism struck your community? A tepid new (technically, two years delayed) feature version returns to that question a half-century later, offering flashes of style and a more satisfying finale in an otherwise weak take on its dated source material.
Whereas King seemed to be kicking another stuffy old genre into the present, writer-director Gary Dauberman’s retro-minded adaptation goes in the opposite direction, embracing the pageboy haircuts, polyester-blend duds and don’t-trust-anyone paranoia of that era. The film takes place in 1975, the same year “’Salem’s Lot” was published. You can guestimate the period from the movie titles posted on the local drive-in theater marquee — “The Drowning Pool” and “Night Moves” — and the classic Gordon Lightfoot ditty, whose lyrics now serve as a nocturnal warning: “Sundown, you better take care/If I find you been creeping ’round my back.
