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Hopefully this will be completed in time for the spooky season, but I am taking a break from Curse of Nosferatu in favor of fine tuning 1979's Salem's Lot.
Stephen King's book was huge in 1975 and WB acquired the rights to make it into a feature. Loads of directors wanted to do it, but no one had a script that turned the 400 page novel into something faithful for the screen. It was then moved over to WB's television department where it was felt it would better be presented as a miniseries. After a screening of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, director Tobe Hooper was brought on board to make the miniseries happen.
With a running time of 183 minutes, 1979's Salem's Lot still holds up relatively well today. While the fashion has aged, the scares have not!
I appreciate the miniseries and I enjoyed the story enough to check out Rob Lowe's 2004 miniseries remake. The remake has its strong suits and isn't nearly as bad as it is made out to be, but it can't hold a stake to the original.
My goal is to shave the movie down to a more manageable run time in order to get to the scares a little quicker. Also, I am adjusting the movie to be in widescreen!
The one major plot point that I felt needed to go was the Boom Boom Bonnie/Larry Crockett affair which also meant Cully had to go. My reasoning is that not only did it not have any effect on the overall story, but Crockett's dead body is found and Ben is a suspect even though the Constable could've asked Weasel who would have easily pointed to Cully probably being a much more prominent suspect. Once Larry's body is found, we never hear anything of the affair again and we see them escape the town before all hell breaks loose, so what was the point (in the context of the movie other than to show another shadier side of the town)? Removing this plot did not affect the story and is never mentioned after Larry is found.
Weasel as well may be on the chopping block because in his few scenes, he really doesn't add anything. I'd rather focus more on Ben as he is the outsider and our audience surrogate to the town as it starts to collapse.
So far, I have done a preliminary cut and managed to shave off 23 minutes giving it a running time of 160 minutes. There is still more work to be done and a lot of fine tuning.
Goals:
-Reframe the movie to 16:9 widescreen
-Bring running time to 150 minutes or less
-Remove all fade/hard cut to black commercial breaks
-Remove Crockett/Bonnie affair
-Cut Cully completely
-Move some scenes around, including cutting the opening in Mexico, but reusing the footage to add to the end
-Tighten things up such as the removal of the several excessive scenes of Straker leaving the house and driving into town
More items to follow and a detailed cut list as well!
Stephen King's book was huge in 1975 and WB acquired the rights to make it into a feature. Loads of directors wanted to do it, but no one had a script that turned the 400 page novel into something faithful for the screen. It was then moved over to WB's television department where it was felt it would better be presented as a miniseries. After a screening of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, director Tobe Hooper was brought on board to make the miniseries happen.
With a running time of 183 minutes, 1979's Salem's Lot still holds up relatively well today. While the fashion has aged, the scares have not!
I appreciate the miniseries and I enjoyed the story enough to check out Rob Lowe's 2004 miniseries remake. The remake has its strong suits and isn't nearly as bad as it is made out to be, but it can't hold a stake to the original.
My goal is to shave the movie down to a more manageable run time in order to get to the scares a little quicker. Also, I am adjusting the movie to be in widescreen!
The one major plot point that I felt needed to go was the Boom Boom Bonnie/Larry Crockett affair which also meant Cully had to go. My reasoning is that not only did it not have any effect on the overall story, but Crockett's dead body is found and Ben is a suspect even though the Constable could've asked Weasel who would have easily pointed to Cully probably being a much more prominent suspect. Once Larry's body is found, we never hear anything of the affair again and we see them escape the town before all hell breaks loose, so what was the point (in the context of the movie other than to show another shadier side of the town)? Removing this plot did not affect the story and is never mentioned after Larry is found.
Weasel as well may be on the chopping block because in his few scenes, he really doesn't add anything. I'd rather focus more on Ben as he is the outsider and our audience surrogate to the town as it starts to collapse.
So far, I have done a preliminary cut and managed to shave off 23 minutes giving it a running time of 160 minutes. There is still more work to be done and a lot of fine tuning.
Goals:
-Reframe the movie to 16:9 widescreen
-Bring running time to 150 minutes or less
-Remove all fade/hard cut to black commercial breaks
-Remove Crockett/Bonnie affair
-Cut Cully completely
-Move some scenes around, including cutting the opening in Mexico, but reusing the footage to add to the end
-Tighten things up such as the removal of the several excessive scenes of Straker leaving the house and driving into town
More items to follow and a detailed cut list as well!