It isn't described in medical journals. But Rob Lowe assures us not only that there's such an ailment as "Vampire Elbow," but also that it can be quite painful. Rob was afflicted with the condition, which has also been referred to as "Staking Elbow," while dusting vampires in the TNT original miniseries Salem's Lot.
"It was my right wrist," he says. "I could barely shake. Any time I shook somebody's hand, it was excruciating. And I couldn't figure out what I had done. Then, as I was watching the dailies in post-production, I realized it's from staking people!"
Truth be told, no real vampires were staked during filming. The only real stabbing victims were heavy bags of sand -- over and over. "And I think it just wore me out," Rob says. "But I play injured."
Especially when it comes to re-creating one of his favorite horror novels. Rob, after all, is a diehard Stephen King fan. "I love his work," the actor says. "I love playing his characters. I've been in adaptations of two of my three favorite Stephen King books: The Stand (in 1993) and now Salem's Lot. They've already done The Shining twice, so I'll have to be satisfied with two out of three."
Of course, this is the second go-round for Salem's Lot too. The original, starring David Soul, dates back to 1979. So maybe Rob is being a bit hasty in ruling out his chances at doing all three.
The former West Wing costar plays Ben Mears, a writer with a haunted past who returns to his hometown, Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, and uncovers the horror that has taken over the community. The 1979 version was memorably creepy and still has quite a few devoted fans, including Rob. "It was the very first thing I ever taped off my Betamax deck," he notes. "It has a special place in my heart."
So if the first one was so good, why do a remake?
"It needed to be remade," Rob insists. "They made it years ago when the technology was horrendous. When you go back and look, (the villain) is a guy in a mask. You couldn't push the envelope in terms of special effects. We had the ability to do it better.
"And thematically we're going about it in a different way. The truth is you couldn't deal with the horror and its intensity in 1979. Some of the themes that Stephen deals with in the book are pretty provocative and they didn't deal with any of that in the early version because TV wouldn't let them. They had to sanitize a lot of what Stephen had. So this is really a true adaptation of the book."
Rob's idea of a great scary movie, it's worth noting, is one that plays games on viewers' minds, as opposed merely to reviling them with gore. "Like Signs, with Mel Gibson, which is a fantastic movie. And The Blair Witch Project, where you didn't see any gore or any violence. It was all about what was going on in the shadows. Those were the movies that we wanted to make this a companion piece to, not Jason or Freddy.
"There's nothing worse than bad horror. Nothing. And for my money, there's nothing better than great horror. Hopefully, we pulled it off."
In fact, Rob actually got the "right" kind of scare while filming.
"I did a scene with Andre Braugher," he recalls. "Very simple, in an apartment, wasn't in a root cellar, couldn't have been more innocuous. It's him and me walking down a hallway to a door and we don't know what's behind it. It was really early in the schedule and we're creeping in and I'm looking into his eyes, he's looking into mine. And it scared the hell out of me for no apparent reason.
"Which is the key to this movie. It scares you for reasons that you can't quite really understand."
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