A sequel to the classic Stephen King vampire tale, made into a memorable TV movie by Tobe Hooper (and remade a few decades later), I had avoided A Return To Salem’s Lot for many years, having heard it was a real stinker. It isn’t. As imperfect as it is, and it seriously lacks actual scares, director Larry Cohen (who also co-wrote the script with James Dixon) used a tale of vampirism to explore some very interesting ideas.
Michael Moriarty plays Joe Weber, an anthropologist always willing to go that one step further to document tribal behaviour without interfering. Unexpectedly having his teenage son returned to his care, Joe heads back to Salem’s Lot, a small town he grew up in. Salem’s Lot is full of vampires though, which is bad news. The good news is that the vampires want Joe to tell their story to the world. The bad news is that Joe doesn’t want to tell their story, but he may be forced to do so if he wants to stop his son being offered eternal life as a teenager.
Although it is never subtle at any point, things are really hammered home here when the lead character ends up planning his fight back alongside an elderly Nazi hunter (played by Samuel Fuller). The script is pointedly showing how evil needs complicit helpers to thrive, whether they are people “just following orders” or human vampire helpers who work during the daylight hours while their masters sleep safely.
Cohen directs in a rather perfunctory manner, seemingly assuming that it would also just end up on TV, but that still cannot completely outweigh the quality of the ideas at the heart of the script.
Moriarty is a decent lead, as ever, and it’s a delight to see Fuller join in for most of the second half of the film. Ricky Addison Reed is just fine as the moody teen son, Andrew Duggan is a decent patriarch of the vampire community, although he never feels as menacing as he should, and there’s a small role for a very young Tara Reid, if you keep your eyes peeled.
Perhaps even more deserving of your time now than when it was first released, A Return To Salem’s Lot is one of the more interesting vampire movies I have seen from the crowded subgenre. It is weakest when trying to deliver standard horror moments, but you will get more from it if you don’t go seeking genre thrills. It’s striving more to be a study of the insidious and seductive nature of darkness, and the people who will do anything to assist those that they view as being able to help them maintain a comfortable life.
6/10
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