Given the question: Build a movie plot around this: who are initially the main suspects? Straker and Ben
The answer is:
A brief prologue shows a man and a boy in a Mexican town. They are collecting holy water inside a Catholic church, and one bottle seems to glow with a strange supernatural light, a signal that "they've found us again." This event is shown out of chronological order, taking place after the main events of the film.The man is Ben Mears (David Soul), a writer who grew up in the small New England town of Salem's Lot, Maine. Ben has returned to Salem's Lot to explore the traumatic roots of his childhood. He intends to write a novel about an ominous house that overlooked the town of Salem's Lot, visible from all areas of the village and shrouded in a history of death, murder, and mental decay. The main resident of the house was Hubie Marsten, a bootlegger who was suspected in the mysterious disappearances of several local young boys. As a child, Ben was haunted by the idea of what could have occurred in the house; as a young boy, he went into the abandoned house on a dare, and imagined that he saw Hubie Marsten's corpse, which opened its eyes and looked at him.Ben hopes to rent the house itself and stay there, but he finds that another newcomer to Salem's Lot has beat him to the punch; a stark looking man named Straker (James Mason) has already rented the abandoned house as a home for himself and his "business partner", a certain Kurt Barlow (Reggie Nalder).The beginning section of the film deals with Ben's return to Salem's Lot and the people he meets. Finding the Marsten house unavailable, he rents a room in a boarding house run by Eva Miller. Ben reconnects with an old teacher of his from high school, Jason Burke, who remembers Ben fondly and is glad to see him. The rest of the town seems suspicious of Ben, not only because he is from the city, but also that his wife has recently died in a motorcycle accident where Ben was driving. By chance, Ben meets Susan Norton (Bonnie Bedilia), a young schoolteacher, and begins a romance with her. Susan has an estranged boyfriend, Ned Tebbets, and she tells Ben that Ned will...