La hora del vampiro II: el regreso

I sat down to watch the 1987 "A Return to Salem's Lot" after having just revisited the 1979 "Salem's Lot". And with the movie sporting a cover similar to the original 1979 movie, I assumed that there was a chance that this sequel might actually be an okay movie.

Truth be told, 2021 was actually the first time for me to sit down and watch "A Return to Salem's Lot". And it will also be my last time. Wow. Just wow. "A Return to Salem's Lot" was bad, really, really bad. I mean it wasn't even on the same page as the 1979 predecessor. Nay, "A Return to Salem's Lot" was just something that felt like a spoof.

It was painful and gut wrenching to sit through "A Return to Salem's Lot" and watch the ridiculous storyline unfold on the screen. God only knows what went through the minds of Larry Cohen and James Dixon when they were writing the script for this atrocity of a movie.

The special effects in the movie were poor, and actually even worse off than the special effects in the predecessor that was made 8 years before. So that is a bad testiment to how bad "A Return to Salem's Lot" really is.

Then there was the acting, or what was supposed to resemble acting. There was a shared concensus of putting on poor acting performances among the actors and actresses, or so one would think by looking at the performances put on throughout the course of the movie.

I found "A Return to Salem's Lot" to so bad that it felt like a slap to the face with a cold, dead fish. Don't waste your time on this 1987 sequel, because it is horrible.

My rating of director Larry Cohen's "A Return to Salem's Lot" lands on a mere three out of ten stars.

A good story can survive all but the worst treatment. Unfortunately, this really is the worst treatment.

The acting is terrible. The editing is worse--choppy and inept. It's the kind of editing that's so bad you have a number of those "What? How'd he get over there?" moments. It's hard to believe that Larry Cohen had ever directed anything before this, it's so amateurish. I would have guessed this to be a first film, if I didn't know better. It looks as if the director just didn't get the shots needed to cover the action and left the editor scrambling to stitch together a movie.

Similarly, lines of dialogue come out of nowhere, completely unmotivated, almost nonsensical.

The sad thing is, there are good ideas buried in this mess: vampires trying to run a sustainable community by feeding on cows' blood, their attempts to recruit a journalist to record the details of their lives for future generations, the protagonist's perpetually-17-years-old childhood sweetheart seducing him into the Devil's bargain. They're good elements for a story.

But the details don't hang together. None of it quite makes sense. And the one or two good special effects are overwhelmed by all the lousy ones.

If, like the inhabitants of Salem's Lot, you plan to live forever, you might want to take a look at this movie. But for the living: Believe me, you don't have enough time to waste two of your precious remaining hours on this one.

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.

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!

The original "Salem's Lot" is being copied now by at least three franchises on Netflix. The locations are different and the monsters have better special effects, but none of the capture the way the original baked mounting dread into a nightly miniseries. Think I'm wrong? Ask any GIF generator for "boy scratching at window."

This movie is a long way from Salem's Lot. It was filmed in leafy, picturesque Vermont instead of California. Michael Moriarty, who was suffering from end stage alcoholism when it was made, lurches and jeers through the movie looking more amused that afraid. Ricky Addison Reed, who plays his son, is dresses in the same outfit Richard Gere wore in "American Gigolo", which heightens the "ick" factor when one of the child vampires wants to "marry" him. Dozens of actors from 1950s television westerns make up the cast of vampire villagers

It's a terrible horror movie. It's an okay unintentional comedy for a nostalgic night of back 80s hair and fashion, and a good reason to remember not to become a drunk.