A Return to Salem's Lot Review

A Return to Salem's Lot is a 1987 American vampire film co-written and directed by Larry Cohen and starring Michael Moriarty, Andrew Duggan, Samuel Fuller, Evelyn Keyes, and June Havoc. A theatrical sequel to the 1979 miniseries Salem's Lot, the film follows an anthropologist and his son who encounter supernatural incidents and vampirism in the small town of Salem's Lot.

Cohen had previously written a screenplay for the 1979 Salem's Lot miniseries that had been rejected by Warner Bros. at the time. Years later, the studio approached Cohen to write and direct a low-budget feature for them; he proposed a sequel to Salem's Lot. While writing the screenplay, Cohen was inspired by Thornton Wilder's play Our Town, and sought to rework familiar tropes of the vampire film, presenting the vampires as typical Americans descended from Europe, having fled their native country to establish a colony in America in the 1600s.

Filmed in Vermont in late 1986, A Return to Salem's Lot was screened at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival before receiving a limited theatrical release from Warner Bros. in the fall of that year.