The Savage Stack: A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987)
There’s always going to be – for lack of a better term – a stack of films we’ve been meaning to get to. Whether it’s a pile of DVDs and Blu-rays haphazardly amassed atop our television stands, or a seemingly endless digital queue on our respective streaming accounts, there’s simply more movies than time to watch them. This column is here to make that problem worse. Ostensibly an extension of Everybody’s Into Weirdness (may that series rest in peace), The Savage Stack is a compilation of the odd and magnificent motion pictures you probably should be watching instead of popping in The Avengers for the 2,000th time. Not that there’s anything wrong with filmic “comfort food” (God knows we all have titles we frequently return to when we crave that warm and fuzzy feeling), but if you love movies, you should never stop searching for the next title that’s going to make your “To Watch” list that much more insurmountable. Some will be favorites, others oddities, with esoteric eccentricities thrown in for good measure. All in all, a mountain of movies to conquer.
The third entry into this unbroken backlog is Larry Cohen’s pseudo-sequel to Stephen King’s New England vampire nightmare, A Return to Salem’s Lot…
Italian exploitation cinema perfected the art of hucksterism. Producers would often adopt a title from a popular motion picture in order to sell their utterly unrelated product to an unsuspecting public. The Demons and Italian Evil Dead movies (which were rebranded La Casa) are a textbook example – perversions of their original creators’ intentions meant to cash in on name recognition alone. It’s with that ethically dubious style of salesmanship in mind that we must approach Larry Cohen’s A Return to Salem’s Lot. A “sequel” really in name only, Cohen is using a storytelling construct created by King (a sleepy Maine town that harbors vampires) in order to craft a pure “Larry Cohen picture”. It’s a movie completely unconcerned with connecting to the source material it credits and steals a moniker (not to mention VHS box art) from, opting instead to utilize the basic premise as a jumping off point for Cohen’s usual social commentary. Like The Stuff (consumerism) or Q: The Winged Serpent (opportunism), the writer/director is utilizing genre as a means to dissect a particular human characteristic – in this case the need for sectionalism. Vampires are standing in for the Amish, Mormons or any other community that segregates itself from the mainstream populous in order to cultivate a specific way of life.
A Return to Salem’s Lot wouldn’t be a classic Larry Cohen picture if Michael Moriarty weren’t involved. Thankfully, the lanky weirdo Method lifer is again front and center as Joe Weber, a sort of Mondo documentarian who we first meet filming the fertility rites of a lost tribe. His cameraman (Rick Garia) is aghast at the grisly scene, but Weber refuses to stop rolling, as nobody has caught this antiquated ritual on film before. However, Joe’s trip is rudely interrupted thanks to messengers sent by his wife (Ronee Blakley). Their son, Jeremy (Ricky Addison Reed), is too much for her to handle any longer, and requires his father’s guidance. Joe reluctantly returns home to NYC and takes the boy out of the city on a trek up to the titular town. There’s an old house that’s been bequeathed to him by his Aunt Clara (June Havoc), and maybe it’d be good for the estranged duo to bond while putting some elbow grease into the fixer-upper.
Turns out Aunt Clara’s old home is an utter shithole and Salem’s Lot is overrun by vampires looking for an outsider to draft their Bible. Led by Judge Axel (Andrew Duggan), the community is older than the Pilgrims, yet has been able to shield themselves from prying human eyes via a series of meticulous procedures. They do not murder often (except in matters of self-preservation), as they cannot afford the attention of outsiders. Instead, they breed cattle to feed off of and full-blooded humans (whom they’ve labeled “drones”, despite their agents’ distaste for the label) so that their interests are represented in the daylight. Joe cannot believe his eyes, while Jeremy is seduced by a young vampire (child actress Tara Reid, of future American Pie fame) into considering spending forever with her in the foggy oasis. Judge Axel thinks Joe’s background as a non-fiction filmmaker makes him the perfect candidate to document their existence for the first time and (in the film’s most unsettling development) presents the man with the perfectly preserved seventeen-year-old crush (Jill Gatsby) who took his virginity decades ago.
On top of the morally grey quandary Joe and Jeremy are faced with, Cohen wallows in the world of the vampires, taking his time to establish their municipality in great detail. The creatures have even established their own schools, complete with alternate text books that teach a parallel history of America, tracing a timeline back to John Smith and Pocahontas. Along with his wife (Evelyn Keyes), Judge Axel stresses that they’re simply maintaining their way of life without infringing upon the values of traditional American society. The metaphor Cohen’s stabbing at is clear, and one can only imagine how he could have expounded upon the notion with a beefier budget (though, to be fair, $12M was the largest sum he was ever granted). However, it’s also apparent that Cohen doesn’t give a whit about ever connecting his work to King’s; to the point that the author was obviously only credited in order for the production to swipe the title and have their way with it. Anybody familiar with Tobe Hooper’s ultra-eerie ‘79 mini-series will instantly recognize that this Salem’s Lot looks nothing like the Texas Chain Saw director’s vision of the town outside of geography and architecture. Cohen is completely doing his own thing, and that’s not only fine, but totally welcome if you approach his picture with an open mind.
The not so secret weapon of A Return to Salem’s Lot is Samuel Fuller – yes, the cigar-chomping man’s man filmmaker behind classics Shock Corridor (1963) and The Big Red One (1980). Here, he plays diminutive Nazi killer (not “hunter”, he makes that much clear) Dr. Van Meer, who has run out of goose steppers and subsequently set his sights on staking bloodsuckers. Thankfully, Judge Axel somehow fits into both of these categories, and Van Meer rolls into town riding on a red hot hard on for the communal leader. Fuller is an absolute maniac in the role, injecting a madcap energy the movie was sorely missing up until his entrance. The wild-haired Old Hollywood legend knows exactly what type of movie he’s in, and just how colorful Van Meer should be. Watching him bounce off of Moriarty is an utter delight. Cohen has always been incredible with actors, and here he lets two fish jump out of their respective bowls and into the shark tank of Salem’s lot, clashing with everything they see. Only Fuller feels like he stepped out of one of his own movies and into a completely foreign landscape, motivated by nothing more than a desire to burn it all down as he fires his Luger into the air. He’s an absolute riot.
Like all of Cohen’s films, A Return to Salem’s Lot is jangly and unpolished, reflecting the rough world of '70s exploitation he artistically came of age within. Jarring ADR adds further Italian flavor to the proceedings, as it seems every line of expository dialogue delivered by the vampires (especially the women) was recorded in some overseas post production facility with alternate players. Nevertheless, the father/son duo at the heart of this utterly bizarre emblematic movie fills each frame with Cohen’s distinguishing New Yawk dialect. A synth-peppered, Claudio Simonetti-sounding score from Michael Minard (Perfect Strangers, Special Effects) is driving yet bright. Lush photography from Daniel Pearl (who shot It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive immediately before this) establishes an alternating sunny/spooky atmosphere that brings real texture to the town. Together, these inharmonious elements congeal into a rather hypnotic amalgam, resulting in one of the more aesthetically jagged entries in an already unusual body of work.
The film’s finale descends into utter anarchy, as Joe and Dr. Van Meer rain down literal fire on the vamps’ way of life. One of the most striking moments in A Return to Salem’s Lot comes during the last ten minutes, as an American flag’s pole is plunged through a bloodsucker’s heart. The beast disintegrates before our eyes, and Cohen’s message becomes clear as his trademark cynicism rears its ugly head. Though we no doubt know that vampires are evil, and take the life of other creatures in order to sustain their own, Joe and Van Meer become representations of the xenophobia that lives in a great subsection of American hearts. The man and his son were offered a chance to live in peace amongst a tribe that was not their own. All they had to do was assimilate to their ways and document these rituals so that they may be comprehended by outsiders. But America does not bend to the wishes of their outsider communities. America demands that sectionalists submit to the norms of their nationalist mindset, or face extinction. It’s a tongue in cheek critique on the poison of overzealous pride in one’s homeland, and Cohen rewrites the text of a separate author in order to deliver yet another biting genre criticism of the United States.
A Return to Salem’s Lot is available now DVD from Warner Archive and to stream.
