A Return to Salem's Lot (1987)

Undescribable Perfection

Better Late Then Never

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I only found out this movie even existed yesterday when I ran into it on the shelves of my local library, which has a quite good DVD section where one can borrow DVD's for free. Thank goodness for that, free, I mean, because I'd really be embarrassed to admit I paid actual money to watch this abomination of a movie. It is bad, really really bad. So bad in fact, I'm thinking of writing to the production company and requesting they pay me for watching it!

This film is notorious among a couple of my friends after we rented it years ago and had many laughs. Still, it's a shame, because the original Salem's Lot was so strong and the framework story for this one could have put it in the same category----if it had been handled well, but it wasn't.The dad (Michael Morarity) was a bit of a hard headed putz that couldn't see his hand in front of his face. His uninteresting, overly foul-mouthed brat son wasn't very endearing either, yet we are supposed to believe he can wrestle with an ancient Master Vampire and actually offer resistance!! A 120-lb kid should not offer ANY physical resistance whatsoever to a creature with superhuman strength!! Aggravating to put it mildly. The overall impression is that vampires are just weaklings waiting to be killed by your local dog catcher, ice cream man, schoolteacher, anybody in fact.....far from the case of the deadly Mr. Butler in the original, who was not someone you would try to fight when he was awake!!The cheeseball "Nazi Hunter" was the source of the most laughs, but not for the reasons intended. To this day, I can still do a spot-on impression of some of his dumbest lines lol....I was initially excited to watch this movie for the first time and dug the cool small town atmosphere and obvious potential for creepiness, but it wasn't realized. I still enjoyed it somewhat (I enjoy many "bad" movies), but I hope one day someone will come along and do this the right way. That will probably never happen until it is sparked by a highly successful remake of the original first.EDIT: I revised my rating from 3 to 5 after thinking about how I feel about watching this, rather than what a movie critic that has to answer to his bosses would say. Truth be told, it would merit a 2 or 3 in those terms, but my ratings here are heavily biased by how much I am entertained by the film, good or bad.

I knew it was going to be bad but i had no idea. I tried to keep an open mind and view it without comparing it to Salem's Lot but it was still sh't.The main character kept making some stupid stupid decisions that just didn't make sense. He had such a hard on to write a history/bible for this community of vampires that he just about lets them vampirize his son? I know its implied that he has experience with different cultures but who stumbles across a town of vampires and then lets their teenage son talk him out of leaving?I'm trying to think of something nice to say about it and all i can come up with is that there was a pretty decent pair of vampire bewbs (not Tara Reid) that were shown on two occasions and the Nazi hunter guy was partially interesting.In conclusion, i believe that if RTSL was a dinosaur it would be a lameasaurus Rex.3/10

I actually feel embarrassed for Michael Moriarty. He has never had the really good roles he deserves. And he did not deserve this. It is obvious that the studio wanted to exploit the popular "Salem's Lot" without "shoveling" out the cash to do a decent job. This film cannot even in good conscience be called a sequel. There was nothing left of the town at the end of the last film, and suddenly all new characters are coming home to a place that isn't even supposed to exist. I really felt as if my intelligence was being insulted, by this truly poor representation of the subject. If you are renting the film OK, you just wasted a couple of bucks, no big deal. But if you bought it, you've just been bitten big time. This movie deserves an early grave.