Salem't Lot (1979 miniseries and 2024 movie) A Tale of Two Towns

Continuing with the seventies theme and tying it up with the release of the remake, let's talk about Salem's Lot. 
The novel came out in 1975, did very well, and was promptly turned into a 1979 two-part miniseries directed by a horror legend in the making, who gave the world both Leatherface and Poltergeist.
King's books tend to be elaborate enough to require mini-series as a format. Despite generally sticking to the novel's plot, this production still had to condense 439 pages into 180 minutes, and some necessary cuts and combinations were made. And then, there were other, less necessary choices, like making the Barlow the vampire a speechless demonic creature à la bargain basement Nosferatu. 
Why? Did the audience have enough of sophisticated, polished, smooth-talking counts by the seventies? Or was it because the director did best with silent, "monstrous-looking" monsters?
Anyway, the mini-series was a pretty solid adaptation. Led by David Soul (of the "Don't Give Up On Us, Baby" fame) and his wildly distracting, truly terrible seventies hair (and he isn't the only one, the seventies had a serious style problem, people!), the lovely Bonnie Bedelia, and a very good James Mason as Barlow's familiar, Straker, the adaptation holds up decently forty-five years later, despite or because some endearingly aged cheesiness and genuine quality.)

I have not seen the 2004 miniseries, so let's skip that and go right to the 2024 movie adaptation.
This one was made for the modern age, through and through, which is to say for the skimming, split-screen, generation.
The movie was written and directed by Gary Dauberman, who came to attention within the Conjuring universe, before moving on to the recent IT movies adaptation. 
The latter was very good, so presumably the man knows how to adapt King, but whatever production snafus he must have encountered had led him to create this reader's digest-abbreviated version that comes in at about 110 minutes and doesn't even begin to do its source material justice. 
Choppily cut down to basics, this is a barebones adaptation that give the viewers the gist of the story with none of the depth and layers that make it interesting. Basically, it's a very straightforward "vampire comes to small town - chaos reigns" story, a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am Salem's Lot.
Attractive but insubstantial, it looks good, and baby Bill Pullman named Lewis Pullman (go, nepotism!) is a charismatic lead (with much better hair!), but that's about it. Nothing more than a generic vampire action flick. Which is really a shame.

The funny thing about watching the two movies back-to-back and comparing them is how wrong modern day gets the seventies. They go for the basics but prettify it, taking the stylistically ugliest decade and making it quaintly nice. It's basically more of the same historical revisions that occur in other areas, changing the past to suit modern tastes. But here at least the movies stick around to serve as reminders.

Anyway, there you have it. Salem's Lot is essentially Americana Dracula. Where it's short on concept originality, it makes up with elaborate plotting and local color. And maybe one day it will get the adaptation it deserves.