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!

Generations are still traumatized by King’s book and its 1979 TV adaptation. Now, a new movie is here to traumatize you, should you dare press play.

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).

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?

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.