Popular reviews

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  Review by Ian West ★★★★ 10

  Larry Cohen once again hands us something familiar but with his nyc dark humor, snappy dialogue, and always unique allegories… morphing what could have been a run of the mill vampire jam into a swell satire on small town USA and consumerism.

  This weirdo ‘sequel’ to Tobe Hooper’s 1979 monolithic (to me) miniseries is best watched on its own and detached from its legacy. This is its own thing… Cohen’s take on King features anthropologist Michael Moriarty and foul mouthed son heading to the small town of Salem’s Lot—a colony of blood feeders complete with renfield drones, vamp weddings, interesting gore, holy water flesh melting, dead cow blood drinking, punks turned into lunch, and the legend Sam Fuller as a nazi killer vampire hunter.…

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★ 2

  larry cohen makes one of those sequels in name only that italians loved to make all the time and follows up hooper's eerie, slowburn 70s new england vampire movie with a sillier, almost adventure 80s movie version of the material that includes sam fuller as a former nazi hunter turned vampire hunter and climaxes on a gory community theater action standoff. fun!

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  Review by Will Sloan ★★★★ 3

  Fuck it. I've had a hard month. Shocktober starts a day early this year.

  Larry Cohen movies have an alchemy all their own. They're almost always clever, entertaining, and unpretentious, as well as poorly edited/clumsily shot in a way that makes them feel friendly and approachable. They also always have once-in-a-lifetime casts giving great, eccentric performances. This one stars the dynamic vampire-fighting duo of Michael Moriarty and Sam Fuller - a buddy combo that only Cohen would think up.

  I like the bizarre light-comic tone, which helps give this a certain proto-Twin Peaks dreamlike ambience. I haven't seen the original Salem's Lot but I assume this has as much relation to its source material as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls has to its. I don't know exactly what social commentary Cohen was trying to bring to this, but I'm sure there is some.

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  Review by nathaxnne [hiatus: blast injury] ★★★★ 6

  A Return To Salem's Lot has some of the goofiest-looking vampire effects ever committed to film. It also has Tara Reid as a tween vampire and Samuel Fuller as a Nazi Hunter whose life skills adapt easily to vampire hunting. Michael Moriarty is rather subdued here, despite opening the film making a human sacrifice mondo doc, spending most of his time as a fretting father whose troubled adolescent son is summering with him whilst ditching an 80's white/grey yuppie palette for more conservative New England Vampire threads. That kid can totally out-curse Moriarty if not Samuel Fuller, which may be expected? Not in any real sense a sequel to the Hooper/King Salem's Lot TV Movie, more a processing of Larry…

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  Review by Ian West ★★★★ 2

  I love this movie—easily one of my favorite Cohen jams, and it’s def on my list of undervalued sequels, hope it gets a blu one day!

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  Review by Jesse ★★★½ 1

  Having next to nothing to do with Stephen King’s masterpiece or the Tobe Hooper miniseries, director Larry Cohen crafts something weird and strange that stands apart as a great piece of WTF cinema.

  But you should’ve known that since it’s a Larry Cohen film, it’s going to be off it’s rocker a bit. The return to Jerusalem’s Lot may as well be a film out of the Children of the Corn series. But once Samuel Fuller enter the film, your eyes will be glued to the screen. The legendary director, who had a prolific career as an actor, understood the assignment and hams up every scene he is in. Trust me, you need to watch this film for his performance alone. And it made me wonder, geez what was Thanksgiving like with Samuel Fuller??

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  Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★½ 5

  Stephen’s King’dom Marathon: Film #18

  ”It’s no worse than a boy having his tonsils taken out”

  Here there be vampires…
  and really bad acting,
  and awful editing,
  and awkward fighting,
  and incredibly silly creature effects…

  Welcome to the wonderful world of hilariously bad filmmaking.

  I love knowing Ed Wood’s legacy was still alive and kicking in the mid-80s, and truth be told I’ll take hilariously bad filmmaking over boring any day, and I laughed way too hard watching this to ever consider myself bored.

  BONUS POINTS for Sam Fuller who adds a nice bit of vim and vinegar to the last act.

  ”You’ll never make a bloodsucker outta me, you bastard!”

  
  Cinematic Playlist – Stephen King Ranked

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  Review by Tears_in_Rain ★★★★ 4

  This is such a different beast from the Tobe Hooper miniseries that it defies any attempt at comparison. I had a teacher once, in like seventh grade, that considered Salem's Lot to be the scariest film he'd ever seen, and I know it traumatized its share of kids back in the day. This, however, is more spoopy than spooky. It's a very silly vampire adventure with some very silly vampire makeup effects and a story that's fun but hard to take too seriously. This is the kind of thing I would have loved as a kid, and which I find soothingly nostalgic now. It reminds me of things like Monster Squad and the sillier Corey Haim and Frog Bros moments…

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  Review by Joe ★★★★½ 1

  Packed to the gills with thick, rich, type O-negative goodness in the finest Larry Cohen tradition, starting with Michael Moriarty as an anthropologist enlisted to make the definitive documentation of the life, ways, and habits of the little-known tribe of the American Vampire. Cohen's penchant for touching on every nook and cranny of his genre premises is a perfect match for a vampire story, since of all the horror antagonists they are by far the most versatile, both thematically, and when it comes time to try to kill them, physically. I don't know what the climactic image - of Andrew Duggan's patriarchal vampire being impaled by a handy American flag - means, but it is extremely satisfying nevertheless.

  And then…

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  Review by Slig001 ★★★

  Larry Cohen's follow up to the classic miniseries based on a story by Stephen King. I have to admit; it's been a long time since I saw Salem's Lot, but clearly this is another vampire story set in the same town, as opposed to a proper sequel. We start off with some kind of voodoo sacrifice ritual before moving into the main plot, which sees an estranged father and son return to Salem's Lot in order to fix up a house. The film is quite slowly paced, right up until about the last ten minutes when it really lets its hair down. The title location is great; small town vibes with some contemporary Gothic thrown in. The film is very…

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  Review by Patrick Pryor ★★★★ 2

  Stephen King gets the full blown Larry Cohen treatment complete with smartmouthed New Yorkers, inventive gore, and a wicked unpredictable sense of humor. Throw in Sam Fuller playing a "Nazi killer, not Nazi hunter," and some great vampireville after dark world-building, and A Return to Salem's Lot offers a lot of cow's blood for thirsty horror fans. I especially loved the dynamic between Michael Moriarty and his son, which felt surprisingly real and honest for a 10-years-later sequel about a town of sinister bloodsuckers. Father and son curse at each other and argue, hate on cops, haggle for a lemon car, and even have a frank discussion about getting laid! They truly work as a team and (mostly) respect each…

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  Review by Keith Grubb ★★★ 10

  The big letterboxd watchlist clear out #13

  Anthropologist Joe Weber (Michael Moriarty) is summoned home from his work in the jungles of South America by his ex-wife (Ronee Blakely...in it for around 60 seconds) to look after his son Jeremy (Ricky Addison Reed), who they are about to commit to a psychiatric institution unless Joe steps up to the plate. Jeremy, it will become clear, is not mentally ill, he is in fact a little cunt. The pair return to Joe's hometown of Salem's Lot, after having inherited his Aunt Clara's (June Havoc) dilapidated farmhouse. A peaceful break in the country is just what foil mouthed little Jeremy needs, if only Salem's Lot wasn't a 300 year old vampire colony!!…