HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1978)

Los Angeles, California 1978. Due to a Heavenly boner, professional football player Warren Beatty’s soul is mistakenly removed from his body nearly 50 years before he is supposed to die. By the time the blunder is discovered Beatty’s body has been cremated. A representative from Heaven, James Mason, tells Beatty that his soul can be placed into the body of somebody that is about to die. Mason and Beatty, now invisible, journey back to Los Angeles where a wealthy industrialist has been drugged and left to drown in his bathtub by his cheating wife, Dyan Cannon, and his evil secretary Charles Grodin. So, while the millionaires soul leaves the body (to be tortured forever in the fiery pits of Hell, I assume), Beatty’s soul slithers in (via the butt?) and takes over. Anybody with an I.Q. over 17 would naturally get rid of the people who literally just murdered the former resident of this body, but nope, not Beatty. Instead, he befriends Grodin and spends his time reading business reports while the dastardly duo continue trying to kill him!

The older (and more attractive) I get, the more I find myself absolutely fascinated with 1970's Cinema.  I don't know exactly what it is, but there's just something so unique about the films of that era.  For example, HEAVEN CANNOT WAIT is not particularly good.  In fact, the story is dumb, the direction is average and it's not even an attractive movie to look at (example: Heaven is just an empty soundstage filled with fog), but yet...it was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture!  It even won for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration.  Which doesn't even make sense, cause it was hard for me to even take screenshots for this review due to the fact that the entire film was so drab looking.  There were zero visually standout moments.  (And don't even get me started on the fact HEAVEN CAN WAIT beat out Woody Allen's gorgeous INTERIORS in that category.)

Anyway, even though HEAVEN CAN WAIT is not a great movie and the story is just a series of plot holes and it probably didn't deserve even one Oscar nomination let alone nine...I still enjoyed it.  Warren Beatty is charming, the comedy is so unfunny that it's kinda amusing, impressive cast, completely illogical romance story.  Worth checking out, but it could definitely be remade into something better.

SALEM'S LOT (1979)

Can evil dwell in a house and even call other evil-minded individuals to come live in it and do naughty things? Well, the townsfolk of Jerusalem's Lot are about to find out because the creepy old Marsten House has some new occupants. The house has been abandoned for years, but the last owner was a mass-murdering asshole who eventually killed his own wife and then hung himself.  The new owner is even worse: he's a goddamn shit-sucking vampire...wait til mom finds out!  (Yes, that was a LOST BOYS reference.)

At the same time, a writer, who grew up in 'Salem's Lot and even had a bad experience at the Marsten House as a child, has returned to write a book about the house. He meets an old teacher and starts romancing a young lady, but his courtin' days are cut short when numerous locals start turning up dead and their corpses disappearing.

Enjoyable (for a 1970's TV movie) adaptation of Stephen King's excellent novel, but it's not all that great. The biggest problem is the main vampire dude just doesn't have enough screen time and I could never get over the made-for-TV feel of the movie. The whole thing came off as cheap and watered-down. Still this version is definitely watchable with a truly impressive cast, but the ending is pretty lame...especially that tacked on horseshit in Mexico.

It was really cool seeing Elisha Cook Jr and Marie Windsor in the same movie again. I just wish they had more scenes together.

Part 2 - A Return to Salem's Lot (1987)

Miniseries based on same source material - Salem's Lot (2004)