It does not keep strictly to the book though. King had made the bold step of departing from the typical vampire and made him an intelligent man of mystery with a real aura of fear. This movie, however, takes the more trusted approach of making him as inhuman as possible, so out goes the dialogue and in comes some very good make-up. Barlow is the most frightening vampire I have seen so far on the screen, and while he is wordless, his hatred spills forth by way of almost cat-like gestures, complete with eerily glinting eyes. And of course the highly sinister James Mason is his mouth-piece, orchestrating and manipulating all along the way.
Performances are pretty solid, especially considering the genre and time of filming.
There is the feeling that they all are enjoying living in King's quirky world. Mason, as mentioned before, is excellent as the odd antiques dealer living in the old Marsden house, waiting for his partner to arrive. Where the cut version made him one-dimensional and just plain evil, this version delivers just enough to suggest that at least in the beginning he may not have been so bad after all. Mason's presence is in many ways what the whole picture hinges upon, since he holds back just enough to suggest that there is an awful lot more going on behind the scenes than we are aware of. Soul, complete with Hutch-like blonde locks, is actually rather good too.