A Return to Salem's Lot

But not as bad as others might have you believe either. Michael Moriarity returns from South America to get his mal-adjusted son and brings him to a house he inherited in Maine in the cozy little town of Salem's Lot. This film has no bearing on the original source, nor is it a similair film in any way. Larry Cohen directs and creates his vision. He shows us a town where vampirism is an accepted and seemingly normal lifestyle. The story has plenty of flaws, and sure does ask you to do a lot of suspending belief, but it has at its core a pretty interesting story of a father and a son bonding amidst their own weaknesses and a horde of vampires. Moriarity is good and some of the character actors are in fine form, especially Samuel Fuller barking out one-liners and Andrew Duggan(his last film) as the head vampire with New England grace and charm. Some exceptionally weak areas are special effects. The evil vampire face is absurd-looking, like a mask from a shop! All in all, I enjoyed this very flawed film for its heart.

There's an interesting story buried under the awful execution. Many interesting ideas and threads that warrant further exploration. It's a true shame this is what the result was.

In Larry Cohen's A Return to Salem's Lot, star Michael Moriarty plays the same kind of insufferable wise-cracking jerk as he did in Cohen's Q: The Winged Serpent; not only is the film's 'hero' thoroughly unlikeable, but so is his foul-mouthed rebellious teenage son Jeremy, played by Ricky Addison Reed. With these two on screen for the majority of the film, I found this 'sequel in name only' extremely irritating; my annoyance was compounded by a terrible script and the general tone of the film, which does away with the spine-chilling terror of Tobe Hooper's excellent mini-series of '79, and replaces it with scare-free drama and misplaced humour.

Moriarty plays anthropologist Joe Weber, a man so devoid of morals that, in the film's opening scene, he is happy to film the ritualistic murder of a native without trying to intervene. Joe is called back to civilisation to help deal with his wayward son, as if he would be of any use to the boy. The pair travel to Salem's Lot, where Joe has inherited a ramshackle property, but discover that the town is inhabited by vampires, led by Judge Axel (Andrew Duggan). Unlike the creatures of pure evil in Hooper's original, these bloodsuckers try to keep a low profile by feeding on cows, only occasionally taking human victims, and are keen to strike a bargain with Joe: they will spare his son if he writes a 'vampire bible' chronicling their kind. However, when Jeremy tells his father that he wants to integrate into the vampire society, Joe teams up with elderly Nazi-hunter/vampire slayer Dr. Van Meer (Samuel Fuller) to try and destroy the undead.

Forget blood-curdling scares; forget atmosphere; forget the intense horror of Mr. Barlow or the nightmare-inducing sight of Danny Glick floating outside a bedroom window: Cohen's film has nothing of the sort, instead offering viewers such awful, fright-free scenes as a bunch of giggling children attacking a pair of drunken bums, Joe having sex with a vampire blonde (he knows she's dead, but she's hot, so what the heck!), Jeremy having his first kiss with a vampire schoolgirl (the debut of Tara Reid), and Joe painting his porch (amongst other D. I. Y. Jobs). Thankfully, once Joe teams up with Van Meer, the film becomes a bit more lively and entertaining, as the pair go from house to house armed with stakes to pierce the hearts of the vampires. It's cheesy, trashy, and an insult to Hooper's classic, but at least it's more fun than watching kids in a schoolhouse learning about their vampire history.

For the cheap and cheerful special make-up effects and gore, and not one but two opportunities to see Katja Crosby topless, I rate A Return to Salem's Lot 3/10.

I actually feel embarrassed for Michael Moriarty. He has never had the really good roles he deserves. And he did not deserve this. It is obvious that the studio wanted to exploit the popular "Salem's Lot" without "shoveling" out the cash to do a decent job. This film cannot even in good conscience be called a sequel. There was nothing left of the town at the end of the last film, and suddenly all new characters are coming home to a place that isn't even supposed to exist. I really felt as if my intelligence was being insulted, by this truly poor representation of the subject. If you are renting the film OK, you just wasted a couple of bucks, no big deal. But if you bought it, you've just been bitten big time. This movie deserves an early grave.

If you are a fan of the horror and cult genre, especially of original screenplays and imaginative plots, you can't but have tremendous respect for Larry Cohen. The creative mastermind had an extremely busy career, during which he wrote more than eighty scenarios and also directed a good twenty films between the early 70s and the late 80s. Moreover, and what I personally appreciate most about Cohen, there is a huge diversity in his films. From pioneer blaxploitation cult like "Black Caesar", over micro-budgeted horror classic "It's Alive", towards the absurdly playful "Q - Winged Serpent" or "The Stuff"; - each of these is unique and 100% original. As a matter of course, not all of Cohen's scripts and/or films can be equally flawless. Notably the ones where he experimented with comedy and homage, like "Full Moon High" and this "A Return to Salem's Lot", are rather large disappointments.

In fact, "A Return to Salem's Lot" is more than a disappointment. It's a huge misfire. I honestly can't fathom what Cohen tried to accomplish with this redundant, in-name-only sequel to Tobe Hooper's successful TV mini-series based on the Stephen King novel. Here, an estranged father and son land in the little Maine town of Jerusalem's Lot and it's apparently already inhabited by vampires since the time of the Pilgrims. This wouldn't be a Larry Cohen flick if it didn't contain at least a handful of worthwhile elements. There are some nifty plot elements (for instance, the vampires use humanoid "slaves" to run the town during daylight), the gore is fairly outrageous and it's great fun to see the controversial director Samuel Fuller ("White Dog") as a bonkers vampire hunter. Still, throughout most of the running time, "A Return to Salem's Lot" is dull and utterly pointless. Michael Moriarty is once more incredibly irritating. Sometimes I really dig him, sometimes I can't stand him. In this film, it's the latter.

PS: I also hate misleading film posters. The poster for this film leads you to believe that Reggie Nalder's notorious character from the original, Kurt Barlow, also still appears in the sequel, which obviously isn't true. And yet, in spite of all this, you are still a favorite of mine, Larry Cohen!