Reviews

"Attack of the Killer Tomatoes", "Plan 9", "This Island Earth", step aside make way for "Return to Salem's Lot"

This film was obviously going for more than a competition with "Salem's Lot, the Movie". I was watching it about halfway through when I realized how bad this film really was, so bad in fact that I was angry at not having taped it. This after lines like when head vampire Andrew Duggan is showing non vampire Michael Moriarty a vampire owned dairy farm, explaining;

"We raise them {cattle}for blood not meat or milk, even though human blood is still the best, we have to be careful today, with all the drugs and that aides virus and all......" The gratuitous violence was fake.

The further the film progresses the better (or Worse) it gets, the best scenes are with 76 year old Fuller. As he quietly rides into this film in a worn out '51 Chey he pretends to be a semi senile old man poking around small NE towns searching for antiques, instead he carries a gun and is hunting a Nazi war criminal who he has learned is in Salem's Lot. You get to see Fuller practically jumping in and out of windows and after having his foot caught in a bear trap walking with the fakest limp you have ever seen in your life.

A sad note is that this film was not advertised as camp, and as such has found it's way onto the record of fine actors such: Sam Fuller, Andrew Duggan, Evelyn Keyes, June Havoc and Michael Moriarty.

"Exodus" & "Cast a Giant Shadow" are the only films I know which focus on Israel's War for Independence. "Exodus" was too talky, "Cast a Giant Shadow" should have been a great film, up there with CB DeMille's 1959 version of "The Buccaneer", or the 1932 version of "All Quiet on the Western Front". Yet "Cast a Giant Shadow" was virtually ignored when released.

I remember in 1969 the director was on Johnny Carson and "Cast a Giant Shadow" came up, the director began explaining the plot and that the film had Yul Brenner, Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Senta Berger, Angie Dickersen. Seated next to the director was an earlier guest, and he thought the "Cast a Giant Shadow" was a great idea, he wanted to know when the film woulded be released. Then was told it had been released two years earlier. The director then explained why he believed the film was panned. He answered; it was because it contained an important scene were Frank Sinatra gets killed.

Several years later my father told me a story that when the outside shots of the film Marty were being filmed in the Bronx, around Gunhill and White Plaines Roads, Ernest Borgnine was frequently heckled by bystanders who yelled, "Get lost, you're the guy who killed Frank Sinatra" (Here to Eternity)