A Return to Salem's Lot (1987)

The ratio has to be adjusted as it came out in the 1980The movie is about a guy who is a writer where he and his forgotten son, go back to his childhood home town, and finds more have changed than the old family home. For the children living in the town when he returns, lets say that the marriage laws have changed a bit. The town folk make an offer he can not refuse to write about them.He meets his childhood sweet heart her 17 and him 14 at that time, and she did not change. But then again she did not get any taller either, but it was a good trade off for looks and height. When they first meet it was a bit creepy. When he was dictating the story I was expected to see dragon talk, but instead it was a audio cassette recorder. So, I reset my mind to remember it was the 1980's.I was surprised with the language for the time. The kid swore more than the adults. I see what Maine's fixer uppers look like. It was nice to see the Perv'y old men get theirs in the movie, but I now tend to say clear of groups of kids because of the movie. The monster masks were pretty flexible for the time. The acting was a bit flimsy as were the one liners. Not Michael Moriarty's best acting. Tara Reids role was OK but then again she was a kid. She had better roles in Van Wilder and American Pie. It was later in life that she had those fantastic eyes, that may have been contacts but who knows. It says her trademark was the deep raspy voice, but I go with the Eyes. As a sequel it was a bad movie. It seemed there had been more thought to the music than the script, and was no credit to the great writing of Stephen King. However when I was watching it I found it was good background sound while doing paper work in the office. I think you would feel better giving the money that the movie cost, giving it to the tax man instead of watching the movie.

A Return to Salem's Lot starts as anthropologist Joe Webber (Michael Moriarty) is left with his son Jeremy (Ricky Addison Reed) after his ex-wife takes off with her latest husband. Joe decides to take Jeremy to the small Maine town of Jurusalem's Lot where his aunt has left him a house, once there Joe & Jeremy discover that Jurusalem's Lot is inhabited by Vampires & Judge Axel (Andrew Duggan) leads them. Judge Axel explains that his Vampire society try to live in peace feeding of Cattle & that he wants Joe to write their history in a bible so the outside world can understand them. Jeremy is lured by other Vampires & quickly wants to become one while Joe is forced to stay & do as he is told but soon realises that he has to fight back & destroy the Vampire menace once & for all...Executive produced, co-written & directed by Larry Cohen this was intended as a direct to video sequel to the successful made for telly Stephen King adaptation Salem's Lot (1979) but did actually get a limited theatrical run apparently, A Return to Salem's Lot is only a sequel in name really & it's rather off-beat & odd at times full of ideas but little in the way of a cohesive story to hang them on. Like a lot of Cohen's films he likes to throw topical ideas around & satirise contemporary society, in A Return to Salem's Lot he manages to satirise & spoof subjects such as parenting, growing up, finance, democracy, drugs, racism, ritualism & the ethics of survival which is all well & good but it does get a little tiresome while waiting for some sort of story to kick in. The character's are larger than life & memorable, from Joe the anthropologist to an elderly Nazi killer to the righteous Judge Axel to the kid Jeremy who Cohen has deliberately turned into a bit of a thug as he smokes, swears & drives underage in an obvious anti Hollywood cute kid stance. However the film does go on for too long & while the basic premise of Vampires living a normal decent existence in their own town not wanting to take over the world or anything is a neat spin on traditional concepts it doesn't make for the most exciting films & there are parts which just don't make sense like the writing of the bible or how a town full of Vampires can stay unchanged for three hundred years.Besides some good ideas in the script on a conceptual level there's some good visuals as well, the Vampires feeding off Cattle, the Vampire wedding between two immortal Vampire children (to be honest this seemed inappropriate in the current climate & the underage relationship between Jeremy & Amanda just seemed wrong) & an amusing scene when Judge Axel & his wife both go to sleep in coffins placed next to each other like a double bed & he says 'good day dear' rather than than good night. However the special effects are tatty, there's a real lack of gore here besides a few badly edited unconvincing melting Vampires, a ripped out heart & some blood sucking there's no real gore here. The make-up on the angry Vampire at the end is also very poor & what was that monster Vampire thing that appeared in a few scenes but get completely forgotten about? The Vampire attacks are very poor, they are badly staged & edited & feel unfinished. The locations are nice & the film has a good atmosphere to it.Shot back to back with It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987) with the same basic crew A Return to Salem's Lot seems to suffer from a rushed production & maybe that's why the effects & editing are so bad at times. The IMDb says A Return to Salem's Lot had a budget of about $12,000,000 but it looks a lot lower budgeted than that to my eyes, filmed mainly in Vermont. The acting varies, Moriarty is always watchable, the kid who plays his son is awful, Jill Gatsby is director Cohen's daughter & he kills her off here while this was Tara Reid's acting debut.A Return to Salem's Lot is an oddball horror film social satire spoof sequel in name only, it's a unique film but overall it is lacking in a few crucial areas like story & actual horror.

Oh jeez.I sat down one night and watched this on the Friday fright-mare and what a cheesy movie from the freaky 80s.The acting is just fake that you wonder what on earth they were doing in the 80s wasting money on cheap looking scenes. I personally sat down and watched the last 45 minutes of this terrible wasted space. I can't remember what I was doing that I missed the beginning but I was doing something. In the town people with the right intelligence would lock trespassers up but we don't see that here. Michael Moriarity must have gotten laughed at when he played in this. I can't believe he put up with this. People should know better. The vampires in this movie are unrealistic that you just want to turn away from this bad script of a horror night. Never watch anything like this unless you know it is good. I will never watch this ever again due to I will never get back the time they took from me. Start making better remakes people you just have to put your brain to it.

I collect vampire flicks. I taped this movie off SciFi several years ago. The edited version is choppy at best. I was able to track down a tape (non-widescreen) to view it unedited. The movie made so much more sense than the edited version. I hope they market this on DVD to see it as close to cinema quality as possible. I liked the movie because of the relationship between Moriarity his son and girlfriend (now a vampire too). The music was quite good too. I did find it a little disconcerting that people like Andrew Dugan, June Havoc and Evelyn Keyes were wasting their talents here. The crusty Nazi hunter was amusing too and with all his crude remarks and cuss-words adding a certain charm. I recommend the uncut version.