filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

medelste Return To Salem's Lot fits into a select category of films I like to label ONE A.M. HBO Specials. These were the films HBO showed to death between 11pm and 6am during the mid-to-late 80s, when there weren't 500 other movie channels to choose from. HBO never showed Casablanca or other TCM-type classics, so their stable was somewhat limited. Some were cheap teen-sex comedies (Summer Job, Bikini Car Wash Company), while others were cheapie underground horror flicks (Clownhouse, Student Bodies, Night of the Creeps). RTSL falls into the latter category. If you watch this film the way it was likely intended to be seen (as a campy drive-in special, worth viewing at 2am simply because it beats watching Sha-Na-Na), then it can be quite entertaining in its way. Many of these 1am cheesefests also featured unknown up-and-coming stars (Clownhouse had Sam Rockwell, RTSL has Tara Reid), as well as established actors at the tail-ends of their careers (Andrew Duggan is downright wonderful in RTSL).Granted, not every horror film is The Shining. But movies like RTSL definitely have their place.

Ian White I don't bother writing reviews like this but I finally caught 'Return To Salem's Lot' on satellite TV last night and it hacked me off so much I figured I'd add my voice to the hordes of other victims who are screaming 'Keep away!' On any level, this movie is an insult to your intelligence. True, there are a lot of similarly insulting movies out there (and maybe some of those are even worse than this one) but what really aggravates me about Larry Cohen's diabolically sub-amateurish effort is that no-one, not Cohen, his actors or his production team, at any point seems to give a flying crap about the audience: the script is beyond childish, the performances give wood a bad rap, the visual effects... don't get me started... and why the hell does the King Vampire spend a couple of sequences made up looking like a joke-shop Yoda after he ate all the pizza?... and it's a total insult to Tobe Hooper's '79 classic which still has the power to enthral me and give me chills more than thirty years after I first saw it.I get that other reviewers have said this film shouldn't be taken as a sequel to 'Salem's Lot' but, in that case, don't even go there with the title and certainly don't use the original's very classy Barlow graphic (and title typesetting) in the advertising! It's deception, pure and simple, and this overly long and moronically conceived and executed piece of stupidity isn't even inspired enough to keep the deception running as far as the opening title sequence. (On that note, the music might be the best part of this whole effort, and only because it sounds like a ten year old's attempt to rip off some of John Carpenter's 'Halloween' and 'The Fog' themes) If there's anything I can say in 'Return's' favour (and believe me, I'm not proud of this) it's that I did end up watching it all the way through because I couldn't believe that there wouldn't be one small moment that might switch it around from being a complete train wreck.Also, Larry Cohen did write the script for 'Phone Booth', which I've always thought was a very tight, economical and effective piece of work... so part of me watched 'Return' and refused to believe that he wouldn't acquit himself in some way, shape or form.There are so many potentially brilliant film makers out there who would sell their souls to get even a small percentage of the budget that it took to make this (so-called) film... and many of those film makers will never get that chance, never get even the small theatrical exposure that this travesty received. And I'm not a particular fan of Stephen King... true, I thought the novel 'Salem's Lot' was excellent, and I enjoyed 'Misery' (but I love the Bill Goldman screen adaptation so much more than the book)... but how anyone could take such a rich vein (no pun intended) of source material and spew out something this badly written, badly acted, turgid and not even so-bad-it's-good... well, this is beyond a spectacular fail.To paraphrase Richard Jeni's routine about watching 'Jaws 3', even if I didn't have a brain, even if I was just a spinal cord with a bucket of popcorn watching this from the sofa, even my spinal cord would be insulted.Avoid at all costs, and don't be swayed by a few of the other reviewers claims that there's some sharp satire going on here and that a potentially cool twist on the vampire genre was let down by choppy editing and a low budget. Nothing could let this film down because Larry Cohen and his crew didn't have anything good to start with... except the legacy of a superior title, the memory of which they've staked through the heart. And that metaphor is as close to anything truly vampiric as 'Return To Salem's Lot' gets.

Enforcer686 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.

Paul Andrews A Return to Salem's Lot starts as anthropologist Joe Webber (Michael Moriarty) is left with his son Jeremy (Ricky Addison Reed) after his ex-wife takes off with her latest husband. Joe decides to take Jeremy to the small Maine town of Jurusalem's Lot where his aunt has left him a house, once there Joe & Jeremy discover that Jurusalem's Lot is inhabited by Vampires & Judge Axel (Andrew Duggan) leads them. Judge Axel explains that his Vampire society try to live in peace feeding of Cattle & that he wants Joe to write their history in a bible so the outside world can understand them. Jeremy is lured by other Vampires & quickly wants to become one while Joe is forced to stay & do as he is told but soon realises that he has to fight back & destroy the Vampire menace once & for all...Executive produced, co-written & directed by Larry Cohen this was intended as a direct to video sequel to the successful made for telly Stephen King adaptation Salem's Lot (1979) but did actually get a limited theatrical run apparently, A Return to Salem's Lot is only a sequel in name really & it's rather off-beat & odd at times full of ideas but little in the way of a cohesive story to hang them on. Like a lot of Cohen's films he likes to throw topical ideas around & satirise contemporary society, in A Return to Salem's Lot he manages to satirise & spoof subjects such as parenting, growing up, finance, democracy, drugs, racism, ritualism & the ethics of survival which is all well & good but it does get a little tiresome while waiting for some sort of story to kick in. The character's are larger than life & memorable, from Joe the anthropologist to an elderly Nazi killer to the righteous Judge Axel to the kid Jeremy who Cohen has deliberately turned into a bit of a thug as he smokes, swears & drives underage in an obvious anti Hollywood cute kid stance. However the film does go on for too long & while the basic premise of Vampires living a normal decent existence in their own town not wanting to take over the world or anything is a neat spin on traditional concepts it doesn't make for the most exciting films & there are parts which just don't make sense like the writing of the bible or how a town full of Vampires can stay unchanged for three hundred years.Besides some good ideas in the script on a conceptual level there's some good visuals as well, the Vampires feeding off Cattle, the Vampire wedding between two immortal Vampire children (to be honest this seemed inappropriate in the current climate & the underage relationship between Jeremy & Amanda just seemed wrong) & an amusing scene when Judge Axel & his wife both go to sleep in coffins placed next to each other like a double bed & he says 'good day dear' rather than than good night. However the special effects are tatty, there's a real lack of gore here besides a few badly edited unconvincing melting Vampires, a ripped out heart & some blood sucking there's no real gore here. The make-up on the angry Vampire at the end is also very poor & what was that monster Vampire thing that appeared in a few scenes but get completely forgotten about? The Vampire attacks are very poor, they are badly staged & edited & feel unfinished. The locations are nice & the film has a good atmosphere to it.Shot back to back with It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987) with the same basic crew A Return to Salem's Lot seems to suffer from a rushed production & maybe that's why the effects & editing are so bad at times. The IMDb says A Return to Salem's Lot had a budget of about $12,000,000 but it looks a lot lower budgeted than that to my eyes, filmed mainly in Vermont. The acting varies, Moriarty is always watchable, the kid who plays his son is awful, Jill Gatsby is director Cohen's daughter & he kills her off here while this was Tara Reid's acting debut.A Return to Salem's Lot is an oddball horror film social satire spoof sequel in name only, it's a unique film but overall it is lacking in a few crucial areas like story & actual horror.