90's American Horror Part Sixty (The Sometimes They Come Back Series)

SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK

(1991)

Dir - Tom McLoughlin

Overall: MEH

 

A movie about inescapable high school bullies sounds like torture and plenty of overplayed cliches do indeed run rampant in director Tom McLoughlin's Sometimes They Come Back; a television adaptation of Stephen King's 1974 short story of the same name.  Produced by Dino De Laurentiis for the small screen, this means that there is no gore, no profanity, and no nudity, but such exploitative elements are hardly necessary for a simple vengeful scumbag ghost story where a few pushing-thirty "teenagers" come back from the grave and terrorize the now grown kid that they blame for their untimely death years ago.  There are no surprises anywhere to be found here, with characters behaving in familiar patters that have been played out in an untold number of stories where a family moves into the boonies from the city, high school jocks think they run the school, ineffective law enforcement and school officials write-off a series of kid murders as suicides, the undead bad guys cackle obnoxiously and sometimes cannot be seen by anyone except who they terrorize while at other times can be seen by everyone, and the main protagonist is plagued by nightmares, flashbacks, hallucinations, and has a spouse that he fails to communicate with until things go too far.  There is also the usual simple-minded plot device of the main character having to "stop running away" and face his fears, and even though some of these professional folks turn in fine performances and we even get some decent zombie make-up, it is still forgettable tripe.

SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK...AGAIN

(1996)

Dir - Adam Grossman

Overall: MEH

 

How a short story got turned into a franchise, (let alone a short story that was initially only going be a a mere segment in Lewis Teague's Cat's Eye anthology movie), just shows the extents that production companies were willing to go in milking Stephen King properties for anything that they were worth.  Sometimes They Come Back...Again is an overall improvement over its made-for-TV predecessor, going straight-to-video and featuring more nastiness and special effects.  It is also still full of its own tired-out tropes, such as a desperate and ominous old guy who speaks cryptically instead of directly, characters witnessing inexplicable things and shrugging them off, cops rolling their eyes at clearly not important things like a pet's mutilation and a family's concern over it, and arbitrary supernatural powers that are granted to the evil greaser bad guys that bide their time for no reason than to get the movie to feature-length.  At least Alexis Arquette, (still Robert Arquette, pre-transition), is a charismatic if still dilly-dallying villain and not just a forgettable one-note scumbag who does bully things on the fly.  His agenda is purely demonic here, and we get some creative and brutal kill scenes, creature-summoning rituals, freaky sex nightmares, and body mutilation.  Molly Hagan, Michael Gross, and even Hilary Swank flesh-out the cast, and even if this is still just a schlocky cash-grab sequel, Arquette's scenery-chewing and the hard R-rating is appreciated.

SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK...FOR MORE

(1998)

Dir - Daniel Zelik Berk

Overall: MEH

The Sometimes They Come Back franchise finally ran out of 50s greaser bullies to use as bad guys, switching gears completely with the final installment Sometimes They Come Back...for More.  Set at an illegal mining operation in Antarctica, two military police arrive to investigate one of the workers who apparently went violently AWOL.  Then some Latin-chanting Satan worshiping stuff and Clayton Rohner's evil brother get thrown into the mix, furthering removing this from Stephen King's source material to the point where why it was included in such a series in the first place is anyone's guess.  The minimal amount of brand recognition was apparently enough.  Besides Rohner, we have Chase Masterson and Damian Chapa joining the familiar players, and they all give the B-grade material their professional best.  First time director Daniel Zelik Berk competently stages this as a snowbound genre offering, throwing in some psychological torment amongst the demonic bad guy stuff and obvious setting comparisons to The Thing.  There is nothing remarkable or egregious here, plus the intense performances are probably enough to keep one invested, but it is still the type of schlocky stuff that is all to easy to forget mere seconds after finishing.