IPSWICH — It’s been a long time since Ann Orcutt watched a scary movie. As a kid, she saw “The Blob,” the 1958 horror classic about an amorphous alien terrorizing a small town.
“I thought every time I opened a door, the Blob would be there,” she said with a laugh.
But she hasn’t been spooked by anything in decades. Three years ago she was unfazed when she closed up AnnTiques, her sprawling vintage emporium, for several months. She’d leased the place to a film crew for the making of “‘Salem’s Lot,” the new movie based on Stephen King’s 1975 vampire novel of the same name. The film begins streaming on Max on Thursday.
After multiple delays, due to the pandemic and other scheduling conflicts, “‘Salem’s Lot” has finally arrived. Orcutt’s store has been back in business for more than two years. There have been no signs of any lingering supernatural beings.
“If they’re around,” Orcutt said, “I haven’t seen them.”
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Directed by Gary Dauberman, who cowrote the 2017 film version of King’s novel “It,” “‘Salem’s Lot” was shot on location in Ipswich and several towns in Worcester County, including Princeton, Sterling, and Clinton. Though King’s story is set in Jerusalem’s Lot, a fictional town in Maine, the new movie features plenty of recognizable Massachusetts locations.
The new “‘Salem’s Lot” follows two made-for-TV miniseries also based on the book, one that starred Rob Lowe in 2004 and the original, directed by horror master Tobe Hooper, which aired in 1979. In the story, a writer named Ben Mears (played this time by Lewis Pullman) returns to his hometown in the mid-1970s and finds himself caught up in a mysterious rash of vampire attacks.
Orcutt’s shop serves as the fictional antique store Barlow & Straker, owned by a newcomer and his unseen partner. The film crew redesigned other spaces in her multiroom building to resemble a camera store and a barber shop.
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The big brick building just off downtown Ipswich once housed a Chevrolet dealership, said Orcutt, a native of the town, on a recent afternoon in the shop.
“My dad bought a car here,” she recalled. “A two-door, two-tone Bel Air.”
When she signed her first lease on the property around 10 years ago, she had to get three car lifts removed.
“My husband thought I was loony tunes for wanting this place,” said Orcutt, who likes to call herself a “historian of items.”
But it clearly struck a chord for the location scouts who were representing the “‘Salem’s Lot” team. After coming to an agreement, they packed and moved everything — home furnishings, glassware, jewelry, toys — into a storage facility for a shoot that lasted about two weeks.
“It took six or eight weeks to get everything ready,” said Orcutt’s husband, Bob Orcutt, “and then there was the decomposing at the end.”
Across the street from AnnTiques, the 1820 Hall-Haskell House, which serves as the Ipswich Visitor Center, became the centerpiece of a secretive late-night scene in which newly minted vampires appear on the roof.
“We were here the night that happened,” said Bob. “They were very protective of anybody with a camera getting near.”
A few doors down from AnnTiques, Angela Zaremba had just moved her jewelry business into a former sea captain’s home when the film crew asked about using the space. They transformed her boutique, Luxa, into the Excellent Cafe, where Mears and his new lady friend, Susan Norton (Makenzie Leigh), meet.
“That Gary Dauberman guy was obsessed with our windows,” Zaremba said, referring to her storefront’s bright curb appeal.
Her shop was displaced for a little over two weeks, during which time she and her staff became “chummy” with the crew, she said. They had an ulterior motive: “We just wanted to get back in as quickly as possible.”
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The film team worked out of New England Studios, the 10-year-old production facility in Devens. Carpenters built the temporary facade of an imposing old house in Sterling, and the crew filmed one scene near the spiral staircase inside the Princeton Public Library, a historic hilltop building dedicated in 1884.
“They took up the whole center of town,” said Jane Weisman, who chairs the library’s board of trustees. “It was quite a hubbub.”
The library scene required moving shelves full of books out of the way.
“They were very good about putting everything back in place,” Weisman reported, joking, “they didn’t know their alphabet very well.”
Phil Connors, the town of Princeton’s building maintenance supervisor, had just moved into a new home when he and his wife hosted the crew for an external shoot. They’d chosen the new home, which is set back a good distance from the road, for its relative privacy, he explained.
“So the first thing I do, I lease the property to a film company and have a party with 500 people, and I have no idea who the hell they are,” he said with a laugh.
The crew had initially approached Connors about an older property his family owned.
“They were looking for houses built in the 1800s for interior shots,” he said. “But what they wanted to do was too bloody and nasty to do in a private home, so that whole thing was dropped.”
Back in Ipswich, the Orcutts’ pet dachshund, Jasmine, barked. The cast and crew became attached to her, they said. Alfre Woodard, who plays a doctor in the film, has dachshunds of her own.
“She had anxiety about leaving her dogs at home, and she was glad to have her around,” said Bob, who has had a long career as a large-animal veterinarian.
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The disruption was lengthy, Ann said, and the money the Orcutts were paid for the use of their storefront probably didn’t make up for the sales they might have made if they’d been open during those months.
Still, “I wouldn’t trade more money for the experience,” she said. “It was something I’ll never get to do or see again.”
To confirm, there have been no apparitions of any kind since the film crew moved out, she said.
“But I did ask them if they were going to do an exorcism when they left.”
James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com.