Tuesday, January 03, 2017

Movie review - "Return to Salem's Lot" (1987) **

Larry Cohen made this back to back with It's Alive 3 for the straight-to-video market and I feel it was a mistake. This feels too lazy, too sloppily made. I actually got angry at it - Cohen pretty much disregards Steven King's excellent source material entirely and comes up with his own story. That would be okay if his own story was interesting but it's not really. There are, as always in Cohen films, some bright ideas - Michael Moriarty is an anthropologist who the vampires want to write their story, Sam Fuller as a Nazi hunters - but they aren't really developed. I kept getting confused why Moriarty was acting the way he did and the kid who plays his son was annoying.

Scenes seem rushed and done in a grab-bag fashion.There's no atmosphere or sense of horror, mystery or dread. It is fun to see a cast including Evelyn Keyes, June Havoc and Fuller, as well as a young Tara Reid, an Katja Crosby is very pretty, but I would have preferred some suspense or decent comedy/satire. Michael Moriarty really got on my nerves.

I'm really bagging this one, aren't I? I can't help it. I just think Cohen had a fantastic vampire film in him somewhere but this isn't it.

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