The original Salem's Lot with David Soul and James Mason was a staple of my childhood. It still scares me senseless and although a little dated is a masterpiece as far as TV Movies go. The depiction of The Master borrows heavily from Nosferatu and is terrifying. To put this laughable sequel into context, The Master in A Return To Salem's Lot borrows heavily from The Muppet Show.Everything about this sequel is cheap and nasty. The acting is diabolical, it's not even Hallmark quality. The story is mildly interesting but proceeds at such a ridiculously fast pace it's bewildering. For example, an old Nazi Hunter (yes, really) turns up in town, has one conversation about the town with the hero of the movie and suddenly turns into Van Helsing, believing without question that vampires exist even though he has zero experience of any or hasn't even seen any and goes about destroying as many as he can with a bunch of homemade stakes.This is the biggest flaw of the movie, there's no investment in characterisation, everything happens at lightning speed because the story demands it and to hell with any rhyme or reason. The characters are so one dimensional they may as well be cardboard cut outs. Even The Master is so poorly written and realised he's basically just an elderly gent in a black suit with absolutely no menace, and when he finally reveals his true face at the movies climax it's hilarious, because he just becomes an elderly gent in a black suit with a Sesame Street mask on.I rated it 3 stars because to be fair in some parts it's downright hilarious, but sadly for all the wrong reasons.

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.

I knew it was going to be bad but i had no idea. I tried to keep an open mind and view it without comparing it to Salem's Lot but it was still sh't.The main character kept making some stupid stupid decisions that just didn't make sense. He had such a hard on to write a history/bible for this community of vampires that he just about lets them vampirize his son? I know its implied that he has experience with different cultures but who stumbles across a town of vampires and then lets their teenage son talk him out of leaving?I'm trying to think of something nice to say about it and all i can come up with is that there was a pretty decent pair of vampire bewbs (not Tara Reid) that were shown on two occasions and the Nazi hunter guy was partially interesting.In conclusion, i believe that if RTSL was a dinosaur it would be a lameasaurus Rex.3/10

Oh jeez.I sat down one night and watched this on the Friday fright-mare and what a cheesy movie from the freaky 80s.The acting is just fake that you wonder what on earth they were doing in the 80s wasting money on cheap looking scenes. I personally sat down and watched the last 45 minutes of this terrible wasted space. I can't remember what I was doing that I missed the beginning but I was doing something. In the town people with the right intelligence would lock trespassers up but we don't see that here. Michael Moriarity must have gotten laughed at when he played in this. I can't believe he put up with this. People should know better. The vampires in this movie are unrealistic that you just want to turn away from this bad script of a horror night. Never watch anything like this unless you know it is good. I will never watch this ever again due to I will never get back the time they took from me. Start making better remakes people you just have to put your brain to it.