Joe Weber, an
anthropologist working in South America, is summoned back to the United States by his ex-wife, Sally, who informs him that their dysfunctional adolescent son, Jeremy, will be committed to a psychiatric institution if Joe does not intervene. Joe takes custody of Jeremy, and decides to return to his hometown of
Salem's Lot, Maine, where he owns an abandoned, rundown farmhouse passed down to him by his deceased Aunt Clara. Unbeknownst to Joe, Salem's Lot is in fact a
vampire colony. One night, a group of teenagers are stopped by police officers who subsequently—along with other various townspeople—begin feeding on them. Sherry, one of the teenagers, manages to hide out in a church before fleeing to the outskirts of town, stumbling into Joe and Jeremy's home. Joe brings Sherry to meet with Judge Axel, the town mayor, to report the incident. Inside, Joe, Sherry, and Jeremy are welcomed to a dinner attended by various high society, among them Amanda Fenton, the young granddaughter of the town doctor. At the urging of her grandmother, Amanda takes Jeremy on a tour of the town while the adults congregate. When Sherry notices one of her attackers at the gathering, she becomes hysterical, and is escorted to another room to be killed and fed upon. To Joe's shock, Judge Axel reveals himself and the townspeople to be vampires. Axel attempts to appeal to Joe's objective anthropological methodology, hoping he can give their community mainstream exposure, and eventually write a
religious text for their people. Axel gives Joe a tour of the town, during which he explains the dangers of drinking human blood in the late 20th-century, amongst them various contractible viruses such as
hepatitis and
AIDS. To remedy this, Axel has arranged for the locals to primarily feast on the blood of live cows at their local dairy. During the tour, Joe is met by his Aunt Clara, whom he believed to be dead—she, too, is a vampire. During the feeding on the cows for blood, Mrs. Axel states " I must confesses I prefer human blood" and "Axel says I have a drinking problem". Bewildered by what he has learned, Joe nevertheless decides to remain in Salem's Lot and renovate his familial home. At a nighttime school meeting, Jeremy and Joe learn that the townspeople have bred "drones", people who can safely be exposed to sunlight in order to oversee daily operations of the community, maintaining a façade of normalcy. The school principal also explains the vampires' origins, and how they traveled to the United States concurrent to the
pilgrims. Joe soon rekindles a romance with Cathy (also a vampire), a woman whom he had an affair with as a teenager. Meanwhile, Jeremy tells Joe that he plans to
become a vampire and live eternally in the community. When Jeremy becomes sensitive to sunlight and grows ill, Joe realizes he has already begun his transformation. When Joe attempts to flee with Jeremy, he is attacked along a river by two of the local drones, one of whom he bludgeons to death with a rock, before being knocked unconscious himself. Joe awakens from the attack in the Axels' home, where Aunt Clara, Cathy, and others reveal that Cathy is pregnant with Joe's child. They also inform him Jeremy is about to be "reborn". Shortly after, Joe is met by Van Meer, an eccentric
Nazi hunter who has been surveilling the town. Joe and Van Meer bond together, hoping to save Jeremy from the vampires' influence. After staging a siege against the townspeople with Van Meer and burning down their homes, Joe and Jeremy are confronted by Axel, who reveals himself in his true, grotesque vampiric form. A fight ensues in a barn, culminating in Axel being impaled with an
American flag. Van Meer, stealing a schoolbus, saves Joe and Jeremy. The trio drives away from Salem's Lot as the sun rises, and the remaining vampires burn in the sunlight. ==Cast==