From our interview with Salem's Lot director Gary Dauberman. SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains light spoilers for the new Salem’s Lot adaptation, Stephen King ’s novel, and the Dark Tower series. If you haven’t watched/read one or all of them and don’t wish to know anything about them, proceed at your own risk!

Salem’s Lot is one of Stephen King’s best books, and though Tobe Hooper’s 1979 TV miniseries adaptation is an uneven creature of the night, it features one scene—of a young vampire trying to gain entry into a friend’s home via a second-floor bedroom window—that’s the stuff of nightmares.

Stephen King's novel Salem's Lot is about a classical vampire in a small American town. So why do the adaptations make the vampire Barlow into just a beast?

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).

The way in which many filmmakers have circumvented this obstacle in the past is by not adapting the books as features but instead as miniseries, and Salem’s Lot is a prime example. The novel (which is the second King had published) is not one of the writer’s longest tomes,

The latest adaptation on Salem's Lot is good-looking and scary, but only takes its updated vampire tale so far.

Despite Stephen King’s prodigious output of fiction and the 50-odd movie adaptations of his work, he remains a tough nut to translate. The argument could be made that the only filmmakers to capture the delicious dread lying under the skin of the creepier King story have been Brian De Palma (“Carrie”) and Stanley Kubrick (“The Shining”),

Exclusive: Salem’s Lot stars Lewis Pullman, Alfre Woodward, and Makenzie Leigh explain how they honored author Stephen King in the new adaptation despite storyline changes

Dauberman assembled a killer cast for Salem’s Lot, including Pilou Asbæk, Bill Camp, Alfre Woodard, and Lewis Pullman (soon to be seen in Marvel’s Thunderbolts*), but the hard work of slimming down one of King’s lengthier books was still a challenge.