My point is he gets actively and emotionally involved with the vampires, whereas he coolly surveys the tribe.
He has a personal reason to become involved with the vampires. He has an emotional, historical, almost blood connection to the town and its people. And, of course, he also has his son with him, too. As an anthropologist, he cannot help but be captivated with this society. It’s so unique, he feels compelled to become this tool of theirs. He becomes deeply involved with the vampires and they are also greatly invested in him. The concept of an anthropologist visiting a vampire society came to me because I thought this character seemed like the perfect guy to be caught up in this situation. It would be the one opportunity for him to observe the behaviour of such an exotic species — vampires! It makes sense that he’d be seduced into remaining in this town and writing about such a bizarre sect that has existed for so long. The vampire society has evolved to a point where they don’t perform acts of violence on human beings except on special occasions. They are civilised creatures. See, the idea was to kind of affectionately satirize American values. I mean, these vampires are not entirely disagreeable. They aren’t bloodthirsty killers right off the bat. They are pleasant and congenial and don’t feed on human beings unless they absolutely have to.
The legendary director Sam Fuller plays Dr. Van Meer, the half-Dutch, half-Romanian vampire-hunter and Nazi-killer. How did he become involved?
Sam was a very good friend of mine. In fact, the house I have here in Coldwater Canyon, Beverly Hills, used to be Sam’s house. He lived here during his most successful days as a director, when he was making movies like The Steel Helmet. I only found this out by coincidence, when John Ireland came here to read for the part of the villain in Black Caesar. We didn’t use John in that film because we ended up shooting it in New York, but when we met he told me, “I’ve been in this house before, back when Sam Fuller owned it.” I was amazed and had no idea about this as I had bought the house from Clint Walker. [2] When I eventually met Sam at a party, I said, “I own the house you used to live in.” Sam was all excited about this as he had lost the house in a divorce. He then wanted to bring his new wife, Christa, up here and show it to her. After that, Sam and I got to be great friends and started seeing a lot of each other. He lived in France and we would spend some time in Paris with him. Actually, when my daughter was living in Paris, he helped look after her for a while. I enjoyed being with Sam because he was such a unique character. I wanted to spend even more time with him, so I wrote the part of the Nazi-hunter especially for him. I figured that all the previous directors who had given him cameos in their movies, where he was in and out in a single day, wasn’t quite good enough. [3] I wanted to give him a role where he was around for four weeks and that’s exactly what I did. He would also be receiving $40,000 for all his efforts which was good for him.
Did Fuller appreciate the fact that you had given him a meatier role to play?
I think Sam was expecting another small part. When I sent him the script, the first thing he said was, “Boy, there’s an awful lot of dialogue for me to learn!” I said, “Don’t worry, Sam, you’ll have plenty of time do it. If you don’t remember what you have to say, I’ll tell you.” We then brought Sam over to New England, and he did have some trouble remembering his lines. Of course, he was an old man by this time, but he was a real trooper. He never once complained about the hours or the conditions, and we had a lot of fun together. I remember Sam would slip away from the set unnoticed and go back to the hotel where he was staying nearby. He would take a shower, have a shave, and then quietly arrive back. He would suddenly look and feel tremendously refreshed and would be ready to work again. Everybody would say, “Hey, this guy is as cool as a cucumber. He looks great!” The crew would all be working for twelve hours straight and would be looking a little weary, but Sam always looked fabulous. Of course, they didn’t know that he was sneaking off to smarten himself up. [Laughs] But Sam’s work ethic kind of forced everybody else on the show to all jump in and follow suit. I mean, here was this old man who was clearly capable of handling the long shooting hours, so why couldn’t anybody else? Nobody could have any excuses. Sam was a tremendous example to us all.
I very much enjoyed Fuller’s rather quirky performance.
Oh, Sam stole every scene he was in! He just had a charm to him that always shined through. I remember Sam had this cigar that he wanted to be smoking all the time, but that caused me some continuity problems. In one take, the cigar would be long and in the other take the cigar had been smoked halfway down; then in the next take it was long again and in the take after that it was down again. When that happens you are now editing a movie based on the length of a cigar rather than the quality of a performance. But I think we really created Sam’s performance in editing. We carefully cut his lines together, putting some of his dialogue over shots of other actors and giving it more rhythm and fluidity. Whatever I had to do to get a performance out of Sam, it was well worth it, but what I found most surprising of all was Sam had a complete ignorance of direction on the set. This was a man who had directed twenty-something movies — some of them outright classics — but when it came time for me to say, “Cheat camera left” or “Cheat camera right,” he didn’t know what I was talking about. At one point he had to get out of a car and move to his left, but he didn’t know which direction he had to go in. I said, “Sam, cheat a little bit to the left because you’re putting a shadow on the other actor’s face.” He’d then step out of the car and freeze because he wouldn’t be able to do it. After a couple of takes, he still couldn’t do it, so I finally decided to help him out. I literally got down on the ground below the level of the camera and as Sam got out of the car, I grabbed his legs and physically turned his body so that he would move in the direction I wanted him to go.
How did Fuller respond to you literally manipulating his body in that manner?
Sam put up with it because it made things simpler for him, but he wasn’t going to accomplish the action any other way. Sam just couldn’t compute the information in his head. You would have thought that he’d never set foot on a movie set in his entire life, but this man had more experience than anybody on that movie. It was very strange. Again, I must say that Sam was very good in the film, so it didn’t matter whether or not his performance was technically perfect. Yes, I would occasionally have to be there moving him around like a puppet, but that was half the fun! Sam enjoyed himself and it was the best acting part he ever had. Here he was playing a memorable character that had a serious involvement in the whole body of the picture. He may not have known how to cheat left or right, but he did everything I asked him to do. What’s also interesting is despite the fact he was a great director, he never once tried to direct my picture himself. He only made one small suggestion when we were shooting, and I happily took it. It was during the scene when his character shoots himself and then falls to the floor. It was Sam’s idea to have the low camera angle on the floor when he falls into the frame. That suggestion was very much appreciated.
The film satirizes the vampire myth in some interesting ways: Evelyn Keyes acknowledging her “drinking problem”; vampires pledging the Oath of Allegiance; the wedding of the two undead children.
The intention was always to bring a sense of humour to the picture in playing with the established elements of vampire movies. Audiences recognize aspects of the mythology and know what they mean, but I don’t like vampire movies particularly. In fact, I find them very tedious. With A Return to Salem’s Lot, I tried to revamp the legend by making vampires the most persecuted race in Europe. The idea was they were like immigrants who had fled to America to seek freedom just like many other races, sects and religions once did. The vampires had travelled in their own boat, the Speedwell, which was a ship that was similar to the Mayflower which carried the pilgrims. They eventually settled in New England and prospered on the pretence that if you are going to live for 300 years you could become incredibly wealthy and successful simply
by buying real estate as, over time, your investments would really pay off. All of this was my attempt at taking the mythology and fashioning it into something different than what it was. I thought that idea was fresh. Besides, the picture wasn’t meant to be taken entirely seriously. All the characters are a little bit bigger than life and I thought the actors did a good job for me in realizing that.
Do you think your focus on the background details of the vampire town, its practices and people, came at the cost of the film’s structure, plot, and pacing?
No, because only by fully realizing the minutia of the vampire milieu, their traditions and history, can you fashion a rich and interesting story. The little things are what it’s all about, really. They allow you to bring this environment and its people to life. So I don’t think the periphery details negate the pacing and structure. It’s all good stuff.
You dismiss some components of the vampire myth such as bloodsuckers turning into bats and casting reflections in mirrors, but retain others such as the destructive power of sunlight and stakes. Why use some and not others?
My reasoning was that every society and generation has rules and beliefs and fallacies that get built up over time. There are some things you believe and other things that you don’t believe. There are all kinds of lies that are passed-off as truths in every race and religion. It then becomes a question of selecting or discovering what you accept as the truth and what you dismiss as fictitious. So, when things become legend over a long period of time, they can change and a lot of falsehoods take hold. I was simply trying to say, “Hey, here is the real story of vampires. This is not the old Bela Lugosi vampires you think you know. These are the true facts of their existence.”
Where did you shoot A Return to Salem’s Lot? It looks a pleasant location.
We shot at this small town called Peacham in Vermont. It was a nice town and, naturally, since this was a story about vampires we were often shooting at night. We would begin work late in the afternoon and shoot all through the hours of darkness until dawn. I remember that we had half of the town staying awake all night with us, because all the local people played the residents of the vampires’ town. Of course, we also needed children, and so all the local kids played the little vampires. That meant we had these kids up all night long and we didn’t know exactly when we would be calling them onto the set. We had to have them all there, so we took over an empty church and put sleeping bags in there. All these children would be sleeping on the floor until we were ready for them. Then, at about four o’clock in the morning, we would wake the kids up, drag them into a car, take them to the school, and shoot the scenes. Their parents allowed them to be basically carted off and stored away all night long until it was time to shoot. These kids would wake up, pale-faced and bleary-eyed, and come shuffling into the classroom. They kind of looked like little vampires anyway, so it worked out fine. I do remember the people in the town said to me, “You know, we were really glad when you came and we’ll be really glad when you leave!” [Chuckles] The experience turned out to be a little too much for them as we really took control of that entire town. We had our lighting equipment everywhere — lights in their homes and in their backyards. Occasionally, there would be rain or a thunderstorm and the lightning would come crashing down. Everybody was terrified that lightning was going to strike one of the tall electrical towers we had erected to illuminate the streets, so there was a little tension there.
Did any other mishaps occur during shooting?
The only other thing I can remember was that all through the picture we were experiencing problems with the sound. Sam was wearing a radio microphone and we were constantly getting these crackling static noises on the soundtrack. I had the sound man replace the microphone, but we were still getting this loud crackling. I was getting fed up with this sound man’s faulty equipment and I eventually replaced him and brought somebody else up from New York. We then continued shooting only to discover that we still had the same problem, but only on Sam. We were trying to figure out what the hell was going on. All of this time, Sam had been sitting there listening to us debate the defective sound and had not uttered a single word about it. I walked over to him and said, “Sam, have you got anything in your pocket?” He said, “No, just my cigars.” He actually had two or three cigars in each inside pocket which were wrapped in cellophane and every time he moved, the cellophane would crackle, and that was the noise we were hearing! Sam had been quietly observing all of these problems that were going on, but never once did he think that maybe he was the cause of them. Remember, this wasn’t just anybody; this was Sam Fuller! This was the man who’d directed Shock Corridor, The Steel Helmet, and a lot of other great movies over the years, but it never once dawned on him to check his own pockets and that he may have been responsible! I had fired the sound man because of this, and now felt terrible about it. I quickly sent him a week’s pay and a sincere apology.
How did you get on with Hollywood legend, Evelyn Keyes, who plays Mrs. Axel?
Oh, Evelyn was a lovely woman. I had a wonderful time working with her. She was certainly one of the brightest people I’ve ever met. I’m sure that when she was a young woman, she must have been extremely alluring. Even though Evelyn was in her seventies when we were shooting A Return to Salem’s Lot, I could immediately see why she had attracted the attentions of men like John Huston, Mike Todd, and Artie Shaw. If you spent just an hour in her company, you’d understand why some of the most eligible bachelors in Hollywood fell under her thrall. Evelyn had also married Charles Vidor, who’d directed Gilda and a number of other good pictures, and I’m sure he was just as fascinated with her mind as her good looks. I mean, she truly was an intelligent and erudite woman. You could have extensive conversations with Evelyn about absolutely every subject. She actually wrote a screenplay and gave it to me to read. It was about Old Hollywood and although it never got produced the writing was excellent. Evelyn actually wrote a couple of books, as well as a very nice article about me which I reproduced in Variety. It was just wonderful. She basically said, “If you want to learn about making movies just follow Larry Cohen and you’ll make a movie.” Then she talked about her experiences with me and how much fun she’d had. I was incredibly flattered. This was an actress who had starred in some of the biggest movies ever made like Gone with the Wind, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, The Jolson Story, and so many other great films. She had done pictures with people like Clark Gable, Dick Powell, and Robert Montgomery. She had worked with everybody and hobnobbed with Hollywood royalty. Being married to the likes of John Huston, she was very friendly with Bogart and Bacall, and everybody else in that group. Evelyn had been part of the magical world of Old Hollywood. I was always fascinated with that period because those were the pictures I had grown up with as a kid when I was dreaming of someday making my own movies. So, I was thrilled to have her in A Return to Salem’s Lot and she was always very nice to me. I kept making up new dialogue for her, giving her new things to do, and she was always receptive to my suggestions. I promised Evelyn that I’d build-up her part and I did. I used her again in Wicked Stepmother just because I wanted to see her again. Obviously, if I had met her at a different time in a different place, I would have been very attracted to her and something may have come of it. She was just a fascinating woman.
June Havoc, who plays Moriarty’s elderly Aunt Clara, was another actress with an interesting history.
Yeah. June was actually the sister of the famous entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee and was the real-life basis for the character of “Baby June” in the famous musical, Gypsy. [4] She’d also appeared in a number of great movies, like Gentleman’s Agreement with Gregory Peck. She had a lot of experience on Broadway and had written several books, so again, this was another extremely intelligent woman. I had used June in The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover in which she had played Hoover’s mother. I really enjoyed working with her and thought she would be great for the part of Moriarty’s aunt. June was great to be around and I wanted to get
her back so I could spend more time with her. For me, a big part of making these pictures involves socialising with the cast. I particularly enjoy socialising with people who have been in the business a long time and have great résumés. I love being around actors and technicians who’ve done great pictures and worked with great people. I really just want to hear all their stories and memories. At the other end of the spectrum from June and Evelyn in terms of age and experience was Tara Reid [5] who played the little vampire girl. A Return to Salem’s Lot was the first film Tara ever did. I interviewed her along with a lot of other children but she was by far the cutest and read the best, so we put her in the picture. She became a big fan of mine and for years after we made the movie, her mother would bring her to New York City to occasionally have lunch with me. I don’t see her anymore, but I have run into her once or twice. She was always very friendly and polite, but the infatuation was certainly over! [Chuckles] But we did have a nice time together making the movie and she was good in it.
Larry Cohen Page 47