Produced byLarry Cohen
Paul Kurta Edited byArmond Leibowitz Initial releaseMay 1987 (USA) Film seriesSalem's Lot Film Series Story byStephen King, Larry Cohen
Written byLarry Cohen
James Dixon StarringMichael Moriarty
Andrew Duggan
Samuel Fuller
Evelyn Keyes
June Havoc CastTara Reid, Michael Moriarty, Samuel Fuller, Andrew Duggan, Ricky Addison Reed SimilarDirected by Larry Cohen, Story by Stephen King, Vampire movies
A Return to Salem's Lot is a 1987 American horror film co-written and directed by Larry Cohen and starring Michael Moriarty, Andrew Duggan and Samuel Fuller. It is a sequel to the classic 1979 miniseries Salem's Lot.
Michael Moriarty plays an amoral anthropologist who has been lumbered with his dysfunctional adolescent son (Ricky Addison Reed) and who returns to Salem's Lot, the town of his birth, to find that it has been taken over by the undead. A few living people are kept around to provide blood for the vampires and to operate the gas station and shops in the daytime. Knowing of the anthropologist's refusal to moralise about other people's lifestyles (in the opening scene he is seen refusing to interfere in a human sacrifice and concerned only for the quality of the film he is shooting), the vampires employ him to write their story. As the vampires' evil nature becomes clear, the anthropologist is joined by a Nazi hunter (played by Samuel Fuller) who helps him save his son, and at the climax the master vampire is impaled on the American flag instead of the traditional stake. As the trio escapes Salem's Lot, the vampires are left in the sun to burn along with their homes.
Cast
Michael Moriarty as Joe Weber
Ricky Addison Reed as Jeremy Weber
Samuel Fuller as Van Meer
Andrew Duggan as Judge Axel
Evelyn Keyes as Mrs. Axel
June Havoc as Aunt Clara
Jill Gatsby as Sherry
Ronee Blakley as Sally
Tara Reid as Amanda
Release
The film was given a limited release theatrically in the United States by Warner Bros. in 1987. It was released on VHS by Warner Home Video the following year. The film was released to burn-on -demand DVD by the Warner Archive Collection in 2010.
Reception
Critical reception has been mixed to negative. DVD Talk commented that the film was "Too interesting to miss, but regrettably not very scary".