This Hated Horror Sequel is Now Streaming Free
I need to live my truth. One of my first pieces ever for Dread Central was a deep, deep dive into my favorite made-for-television horror movies. I spent an entire summer tracking down as many as I could, whether those were deep cuts or fan favorites. Once published, the piece was inundated with comments asking where Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot was. Reader, I’m not a particularly big fan of Salem’s Lot. There’s certainly some striking energy, but Hooper’s exhaustive Stephen King adaptation never, to use a pun, got its teeth into me. I am, incredulously, kind of a fan of Larry Cohen’s theatrical sequel, A Return to Salem’s Lot. And you can stream this forgotten sequel now on Max.
Per Max: When an anthropologist moves to a small New England town with his 12-year-old son, the two soon discover that it is populated by vampires.
A Return to Salem’s Lot was helmed by Larry Cohen (It’s Alive, The Stuff). Years before A Return to Salem’s Lot was released, Cohen had written a rejected screenplay for the original adaptation. When Warner Bros. approached him about making a horror movie, Cohen hit them with an Uno reverse—what about that Salem’s Lot movie he’d been tinkering with? So, A Return to Salem’s Lot was born.
Did we need A Return to Salem’s Lot? No, not really. Not only was the sequel unauthorized—that is, done without the involvement of source author Stephen King—it was, and remains, one of the most bizarre horror sequels of all time. There really wasn’t much story left to tell, and more importantly, fewer people who even wanted to see a cobbled-together retread of Hooper’s wildly successful miniseries.
Still, A Return to Salem’s Lot was born, and critics and audiences hated it. A lot. So much so, that the theatrical release was downsized considerably when it hit theaters in September 1987, and contemporaneous critical reactions were grim. I’m talking “worst of all time” type language. Par for the course, A Return to Salem’s Lot has had something of a reevaluation in the decades since its premiere. Scream! Factory released a Blu-ray in 2021, and bad movies that might actually be good are all the rage right now.
In a lot of ways—I need to be clear here—A Return to Salem’s Lot is not good. It’s bizarre, yes, but also inanely filmed and oddly lifeless. There’s little love, texture, or interest visible from anyone involved, and that reflects poorly on the final product. Some movies we love to hate, but for a lot of A Return to Salem’s Lot fans, it’s just hate. Nothing more.
Yet, I retain a soft spot for Cohen’s feature all the same. A huge part of that is nostalgia, of course, and some of it is just cool curiosity. It was, after all, a theatrical sequel to a television miniseries. That rarely happens, so it’s always cool to see the results when it does. Alongside the 2004 miniseries, the original, and now the remake, at least there will be no shortage of Salem’s Lot for bloodthirsty fans.
What do you think? Is A Return to Salem’s Lot fun or just bad? Now that it’s streaming on Max, any plans to check it out? Let me know over on Twitter @Chadiscollins.
Categorized:News
