A Return To Salem's Lot (1987)

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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Q (1982)

AKA Q: The Winged Serpent.

Writer/director Larry Cohen has given fans a lot of great little movies over the years. Films with no delusions of grandeur that often just manage to punch above their weight thanks, usually, to Cohen's ability to knock out fun scripts that are peppered with cool dialogue.

Q is one of his best, a film all about a giant bird winged serpent that terrorises the good people of New York. Yet it's not really all about the giant, winged beastie because Q is equally a character study, focusing on a small time crook named Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty). Jimmy bemoans his lot in life but it's really all his own fault, as is shown by how unappreciative he is of the love of a good woman (Joan, played by the wonderful Candy Clark). When he's involved in a robbery that doesn't go according to plan, Jimmy has to scarper and he stumbles upon the nest of the titular serpent. When the police (David Carradine and Richard Roundtree, amongst others) get a hold of him and take him in for questioning, Jimmy starts to think that his luck may have finally changed. He hears talk of some flying creature that's been killing people and he knows that he has information that could save the day. At a price.

The main character of this movie is not a nice guy. No, Jimmy Quinn is an ungrateful, cocky, cowardly, crude, pathetic excuse for a human being. Thankfully, the script and Michael Moriarty's performance also make him into someone that you want to keep watching, even if it's only to see if he'll get his comeuppance. The support from Clark, Carradine, Roundtree, James Dixon, Malachy McCourt, Larry Pine, John Capodice, Tony Page and a few others also keeps this movie being watchable and very entertaining from start to finish.

Q himself isn't fully shown very often, for obvious reasons. Thankfully, there's enough aerial photography and trickery with shadows to ensure that viewers never feel shortchanged. Even for the many moments when the beast isn't directly involved, it always seems to be hovering over everything. Which is most appropriate, of course. To be fair, when it does finally come to the "money shots" then it's not all that bad either.

As already mentioned, Cohen crafted another winner with this one - that great character study mixed in with part monster movie and part serial killer film (the beast may have been summoned by someone flaying people alive) - but he really lucked out when he snagged Michael Moriarty for the lead role. The man gives, perhaps, a career-best performance.

I easily recommend this film to lovers of smart b-movie fare. Grab a beverage, put up your feet and spend some time up in the clouds with Quetzalcoatl.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Q-The-Winged-Serpent-DVD/dp/B0009JJY40/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352672133&sr=8-1