At the very beginning of this movie, we see anthropologist Joe Weber (Michael Moriarty) observing some kind of sacrificial rite among a generic "jungle tribe". While the "natives" cavort, and Weber's assistant films, the chief of the tribe cuts out the heart of the victim. Weber does not flinch, but his assistant is appalled -- even more so when Weber casually informs him that the victim was chosen because "...he knocked up the chief's favorite wife."
This scene neatly presents the problem with "Return to Salem's Lot" (and I don't mean the fact that the jungle is obviously a sound stage and the natives are nothing of the sort)--unfulfilled potential. Weber is presented as a man who cares about nothing but his work, a man who thinks compassion is a weakness. I think -- and don't quote me here -- that the story was supposed to be about his acquisition of human feeling, first by being presented with custody of his foulmouthed teenage son, then by being presented with the opportunity to write a "Bible" for a community of vampires and realizing that to do so, he will have to relinquish the soul of his son and turn a blind eye to utter evil darkness.
It fails on pretty much every level. Briefly: Weber returns to civilization because his ex-wife cables him that his son is sick. When he arrives, his ex-wife (Ronee Blakely, who can't act her way out of a paper sack) and her pompous husband tell him that his son is not sick but unmanageable, and they are handing off custody then and there. His son, Jeremy (Ricky Addison Reed, in what was apparently his only screen appearance) is a foulmouthed little jerk who would test the patience of any dedicated parent; unaccountably, father and son seem to reach détente very quickly.
Together, they travel to Salem's Lot to live in a house left to Joe by his Aunt Clara. Once installed in the house, they discover that the inhabitants of Salem's lot are all vampires, who live by raising cattle and feeding off their blood, and whose patriarch, Judge Axel (Andrew Duggan) has arranged for Joe to come to the community. How? Because of course Aunt Clara is not dead; she is undead, and always has been. It is never explained, satisfactorily, just HOW Judge Axel got Joe to come to Salem's Lot; during the conversation between father and son in the car, Joe says Clara has been dead for a long while so he did not just inherit the house. Plus you have to wonder how a man whose work seems to be contingent on his ability to travel at a moment's notice is able to just pack it in and move to Maine without so much as a phone call to his editor, but you never can tell with anthropologists I guess.
Anyway, Judge Axel wants Joe to write the history of the community and the vampires, and sweetens the pot by producing Joe's teenage crush, Sherry (Jill Gatsby), who has a mighty nice rack for a dead person and who seduces Joe pretty much within a few minutes of their meeting and instantly falls pregnant. With his girlfriend knocked up and his son slowly being sucked (haha) into the vampire's orbit, Joe considers doing Axel's bidding -- until a Nazi hunter named Van Meer (broadly played by Samuel Fuller) shows up looking for a war criminal he thinks is hiding in the town. Van Meer and Joe team up to rescue Jeremy from the vampire patriarch and set fire to the town, after which they escape in a bus. The end.
There are a few genuinely creepy moments. A car full of teenagers blunders into Salem's lot on a night when Judge Axel has given permission for the townspeople to feed on humans; one girl breaks free from the carnage and runs into a church for sanctuary. The next time we see her, she is in Judge Axel's living room and Joe is there; when she breaks down, sobbing, and is led gently away by Aunt Clara (June Havoc) and Mrs. Axel (Evelyn Keyes, a long, long way from Tara) you realize that she is going to be eaten, and for just a moment, the movie is frightening. But most of the time, it's one missed opportunity after another.
Michael Moriarty phones in his performance. His son is hammy enough to be served for Easter dinner. The other performances, with the exception of Andrew Duggan's Judge Axel, range from workmanlike to just plain laughable (Joe's girlfriend is so vacant of emotion that you wonder if becoming a vampire removes one's ability to emote all together.) The editing is jerky, the effects are amateurish, and the whole thing is so bizarrely bad that you might have to watch it two or three times like I did because you don't believe it the first time. The premise of the story could have been the basis for a very good movie. Unfortunately, that's not what happened here.
This scene neatly presents the problem with "Return to Salem's Lot" (and I don't mean the fact that the jungle is obviously a sound stage and the natives are nothing of the sort)--unfulfilled potential. Weber is presented as a man who cares about nothing but his work, a man who thinks compassion is a weakness. I think -- and don't quote me here -- that the story was supposed to be about his acquisition of human feeling, first by being presented with custody of his foulmouthed teenage son, then by being presented with the opportunity to write a "Bible" for a community of vampires and realizing that to do so, he will have to relinquish the soul of his son and turn a blind eye to utter evil darkness.
It fails on pretty much every level. Briefly: Weber returns to civilization because his ex-wife cables him that his son is sick. When he arrives, his ex-wife (Ronee Blakely, who can't act her way out of a paper sack) and her pompous husband tell him that his son is not sick but unmanageable, and they are handing off custody then and there. His son, Jeremy (Ricky Addison Reed, in what was apparently his only screen appearance) is a foulmouthed little jerk who would test the patience of any dedicated parent; unaccountably, father and son seem to reach détente very quickly.
Together, they travel to Salem's Lot to live in a house left to Joe by his Aunt Clara. Once installed in the house, they discover that the inhabitants of Salem's lot are all vampires, who live by raising cattle and feeding off their blood, and whose patriarch, Judge Axel (Andrew Duggan) has arranged for Joe to come to the community. How? Because of course Aunt Clara is not dead; she is undead, and always has been. It is never explained, satisfactorily, just HOW Judge Axel got Joe to come to Salem's Lot; during the conversation between father and son in the car, Joe says Clara has been dead for a long while so he did not just inherit the house. Plus you have to wonder how a man whose work seems to be contingent on his ability to travel at a moment's notice is able to just pack it in and move to Maine without so much as a phone call to his editor, but you never can tell with anthropologists I guess.
Anyway, Judge Axel wants Joe to write the history of the community and the vampires, and sweetens the pot by producing Joe's teenage crush, Sherry (Jill Gatsby), who has a mighty nice rack for a dead person and who seduces Joe pretty much within a few minutes of their meeting and instantly falls pregnant. With his girlfriend knocked up and his son slowly being sucked (haha) into the vampire's orbit, Joe considers doing Axel's bidding -- until a Nazi hunter named Van Meer (broadly played by Samuel Fuller) shows up looking for a war criminal he thinks is hiding in the town. Van Meer and Joe team up to rescue Jeremy from the vampire patriarch and set fire to the town, after which they escape in a bus. The end.
There are a few genuinely creepy moments. A car full of teenagers blunders into Salem's lot on a night when Judge Axel has given permission for the townspeople to feed on humans; one girl breaks free from the carnage and runs into a church for sanctuary. The next time we see her, she is in Judge Axel's living room and Joe is there; when she breaks down, sobbing, and is led gently away by Aunt Clara (June Havoc) and Mrs. Axel (Evelyn Keyes, a long, long way from Tara) you realize that she is going to be eaten, and for just a moment, the movie is frightening. But most of the time, it's one missed opportunity after another.
Michael Moriarty phones in his performance. His son is hammy enough to be served for Easter dinner. The other performances, with the exception of Andrew Duggan's Judge Axel, range from workmanlike to just plain laughable (Joe's girlfriend is so vacant of emotion that you wonder if becoming a vampire removes one's ability to emote all together.) The editing is jerky, the effects are amateurish, and the whole thing is so bizarrely bad that you might have to watch it two or three times like I did because you don't believe it the first time. The premise of the story could have been the basis for a very good movie. Unfortunately, that's not what happened here.