In the novel, there’s real playfulness to Barlow toying with Callahan, as the vampire teases his victim “good-naturedly in his rich, powerful voice.” Callahan has enough faith to initially drive Barlow into a corner with his cross. But instead of just hissing like a trapped rat, Barlow acts strategically, grabbing Mark and warning the priest to stay back under threat of killing the boy. Barlow proceeds to bargain with Callahan for Mark, asking, “Should I reprieve the boy, save him for another night?”
Even when Barlow prepares to kill Callahan, after letting the boy run away, King accentuates the regal nature of the villain. “Barlow seemed to grow taller. His hair, swept back from his brow in the European manner, seemed to float around his skull,” King writes. “He was wearing a dark suit and a wine-colored tie, impeccably knotted, and to Callahan he seemed part and parcel of the darkness that surrounded him. His eyes glared out of their sockets like sly and sullen embers.”
Instead of tossing out a one-liner about failing faith, the novel’s Barlow delivers a diatribe pitting his dark religion against the devotion that Callahan no longer has. “Come, false priest. Learn of a true religion. Take my communion,” Barlow calls before corrupting Callahan by way of drinking his tainted blood.
A Darker Threat
Although it rarely gets mentioned as much as the 1979 movie, the 2004 TNT adaptation does at least get Barlow right. Directed by Mikael Salomon, the 2004 Salem’s Lot stars Rob Lowe as Mears, James Cromwell as Callahan, and, crucially, Rutger Hauer as Barlow. Hauer’s Barlow has class and manners, even when going on the attack. Hauer plays Barlow as someone whose unbelievably long life precludes any respect for the fading ‘Salem’s Lot, whose demise is a barely noticeable blip in history, not the death of a national dream that its citizens expect.
That 2004 adaptation understands the power of King’s book, as represented by the conflict between Callahan and Barlow. Barlow isn’t just a beast that Callahan wards away with whatever faith available to him. He’s a a deeper evil in human form, and that humanity allows him to speak to the very desires of the town. As the institutions that once made Salem’s Lot a vibrant place fade away, institutions like the church that Callahan claims to represent, Barlow offers something older, richer, and permanent. The 2004 film has many other problems, but the actor giving Barlow gravitas is not one of them.
Unfortunately, that gravitas is lost in the unappealing monster of Dauberman’s bigger and presumably more expensive movie, which continues a trend of failing to find Salem’s Lot‘s most resonant theme. Like the residents of the Lot itself, the appeal of this novel remains lost and forgotten in shadow.
