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Sometimes They Come Back (TV) More at IMDbPro »

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8 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Poignant and eerie, 24 November 2002

Author: Matt..377 from United States

Effectively eerie and surprisingly poignant Stephen King tale about a married-with-child teacher who is unable to cope with his older brother's tragic death as a child, which occurred 27 years before. He is then haunted by three vengeful teenager demons from his past which only accentuate his nightmares.

Psychologically eerie, emotionally compelling, extraordinarily well-acted made-for-TV tale stands as one of the best Stephen King adaptations for film.

*** out of ****

Rated R for some violent content.

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11 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
They've just come up from Milford, 9 November 2004

Author: EDWARD BAGGALEY (EJBaggaley@yahoo.co.uk) from uk

This film is a classic 'Stephen King' film. The scenes from this film I mostly enjoyed was Jimmy Normans flashbacks from his childhood memories 27 years before as well as very cool and brutal Nick Sadler (Vinnie Vincent) and Richard Lawson(Robert Rusler) while slaying Jimmys students one by one until they got they're own personal revenge on Jimmy for when they were killed 27 years before. A performance well done! What I liked about this film was the grimness/ darkness of the movie, which brings a shiver in my skin every time I watch it. This feeling brings upon me a sense of realism, as though what happened to Jimmy Norman as a child when his brother was murdered by the 4 gangsters and when they came back to haunt him years later has actually happened in real life; Which is amazing because all this would never happen in real life, other than the part when Jimmys brother was murdered.

I found this film both scary and humorous (in one) for there were scenes that I didn't know whether to laugh at or scream at (ie. when the 3 gangsters turned into burnt corpses in their car just before they killed Chip Conway/ and the way Billy Sterns body was positioned and the way his face looked when he fell off his bike and landed in the ditch under the bridge. If you haven't seen this film, I suggest you should, as you'll be laughing and screaming all the way through it.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Transferred From Milford, The Hoods From Hell, 24 April 2009

Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

The film Sometimes They Come Back explores the proposition that if you got a big enough grudge against someone, especially if they helped aid your leaving this mortal coil rather abruptly, you can come back for payback. Doesn't matter if you've been good or if you've been bad and these three were definitely bad.

Tim Matheson comes back to his hometown with wife Brooke Adams and their son Robert Hy Gorman for a teaching job at the local high school. Tim's got some anger management issues which is why he left the last school he taught at in Chicago. He's got no great attachments to his hometown with his parents gone and his older brother killed back in 1963.

That's what this story is all about. He and his brother were stopped by some hoods in a train tunnel and the brother killed, but so were three of the hoods when young Matheson played by Zachary Ball stole their car keys as he ran. It's these three who kill three of Matheson's students with him having some peripheral involvement even if its premonitions and take their place. The three hoods from hell are malevolently played by Robert Rusler, Bentley Mitchum, and Nicholas Sadler. All transfered from Milford, Milford Cemetery that is.

Tim Matheson and the rest of the cast give good performances in this film adapted from a Stephen King short story. Fans of Stephen King and the horror genre should really like this one.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Watchable Stephen King adaptation., 9 May 2006

Author: Paul Andrews (poolandrews@hotmail.com) from UK

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Sometimes They Come Back starts with Jim Norman (Tim Matheson) returning to the town where he grew up after 27 years along with his wife Sally (Brooke Adams) & their young son Scott (Robert Hy Gorman) having had to take a teaching job there at the local high school. The town holds painful memories for Jim which come flooding back, all those years ago Jim's Brother Wayne (Chris Demetral) was killed in a train tunnel along with three teenage bullies who were trying to steal money off them, Jim was the only survivor. One of Jim's new students Billy Sterns (Matt Nolan) is killed when his bike is forced of the side of a bridge by a car, then a new student named Richard Lawson (Robert Rusler) takes Billy's place in Jim's class but Jim is shocked to recognise him as one of the bullies from the day his Brother died. Another student named Kate (Tasia Valenza) is then found hanged in an apparent suicide, her place in class is taken by Vinnie Vincent (Nicholas Sadler) who again Jim recognises from all those years ago. Have the spirits of those killed come back to haunt Jim? Is he imagining it? Watch it to find out...

Directed by Tom McLoughlin this was the first of a trilogy of supernatural horror films which have little to do with each other bar the titles. The script by Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal was based on the short story by Stephen King which I have not read but is apparently quite different especially the ending which would not come as a surprise considering the ending that made it to the final finished film is pretty poor with far too much awful sentimentality which comes off as embarrassing & cringe inducing. A bit of a shame really as the rest of Sometimes They Come Back is decent & fairly watchable, the first twenty odd minutes plays out like a drama as Jim recalls the events of all those years ago in various flashbacks but then the story becomes more interesting when Lawson turns up out of the blue followed by his ghostly friends soon after. No real explanation is given as to why they return from the grave apart from the fact they want revenge, well all I can say is I don't think they have any right to demand any kind of revenge as it was their fault they were hit by a speeding train & it's Wayne & his Brother who should be looking for revenge. Sometimes They Come Back also tries to portray a moral message, you know the sort of thing like the way the past can come back to haunt you, don't brood over the past, don't try to change things & not to run away from a bad situation but to stand up & face them otherwise they'll never leave you alone, yep pretty much everything is here you would expect from a film dealing with horrible events from ones childhood. The film takes itself very seriously & it can drag a little in places but I found it a decent way to spend 100 odd minutes.

Director McLoughlin does an OK job, it's hardly going to win any awards for style but I have sat through worse. There's a really bad special effect of a toy train crashing into a toy car which looks very fake, there's not much in the way of blood or gore I'm afraid. A few rotting zombies which to be fair look pretty good, a few severed body parts thrown out of a car window & a bit of blood is as gory as it gets.

Sometimes They Come Back was made-for-TV & to be honest you can tell, it's competent & well made although somewhat flat & a bit dull to look at. The acting was OK.

Sometimes They Come Back is yet another Stephen King adaptation in a list that is seemingly endless, it's not the best but it's by no means the worst. It's certainly worth a watch if you've nothing better to do. Followed by two unconnected sequels, Sometimes They Come Back... Again (1996) & Sometimes They Come Back... for More (1999) both of which I have seen & also thought were decent enough.

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5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Pretty chilling., 4 December 2002

Author: HumanoidOfFlesh from Chyby, Poland

"Sometimes They Come Back" by Tom McLoughlin("Friday the 13th Part 6-Jason Lives","One Dark Night")is an adaptation of the short story written by Stephen King.The plot is simple:a school teacher(Tim Matheson)is chased by the dead punks who killed his brother when he was a kid.The film is well-made and has some creepy moments.The direction is solid,the acting is pretty good,unfortunately I found climax to be the weakest part of the film.Still if you like horror movies give this one a look.Followed by two sequels!

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3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
underrated quality horror flick, 18 November 2007

Author: (tottenhamtillidie@gmail.com) from sacramento, ca

90's character actor tim matheson stars in a surprisingly scary adaptation of a stephen king short story about a guy returning to the town he lived in when he was a child which brought back nightmares of the incident that led to the deaths of his brother and the three hoodlums who tried to mug them. It takes a lot to spook me but the 3 main villains in this really played their part and played their bad guys role to the extreme. I was surprised to see this was merely a TV movie, there's always a diamond in the rough and this is one of them. While there are some glaring plot holes and some questions that are not answered, it doesn't detract from being a chillingly entertaining tale about past indisgressions in small town America.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Worth watching, 26 May 2010

Author: atinder from United Kingdom

Young Jim Norman fled his home town in terror when his brother Wayne was killed by delinquents. He returns to teach high school thirty years later and finds the same ghouls who killed his brother are in his class.

I think this is is a least watching, it not total waste of time, i have have yet to read the book.

This movie dose have really odd scenes that work really well with the pacing of the movie and those are the only two scenes that stand out from the whole and acting is really good for a TV movie.

The ending was disappointing for me, it didn't work as they went with emotional ending.

This movie more of Drama then a Horror movie,so don't expect anything Creepy,Gory or Scary at all.

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Great Title - Lousy Film, 7 February 2010

Author: Rathko from Los Angeles

The best thing about 'Sometimes They Come Back' is the title, and we have Stephen King to thank for that. Little else of the original short story remains. What we have is a very tame, family-friendly TV Movie that despite having been made in 1991 could quite easily be ten years older. It isn't without its moments – Robert Rusler is pretty good as the gang leader and William Sanderson is always fun to watch doing his weird jittery thing – but the whole thing is painfully formulaic without an ounce of horror or even suspense. The two writers gave the world the 'Beverly Hillbillies' movie and single handedly destroyed the Superman franchise with 'Superman IV: The Quest for Peace'. Need I say more? They possess a unique gift for being consistently hired to write garbage. Not even the special effects can save it. Compared to the previous year's 'Night of the Living Dead' remake, they're laughable. I guess 'Sometimes The Come Back' is exactly what you'd expect from a 'horror' movie made for TV by CBS – pretty poor.

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Sometimes They Come Back....& I Hope They Back Again..., 16 March 2012

Author: supreme_mamu from Malaysia

STCM is surely an underrated masterpiece written by Stephen King (SK)and excellently directed to become one of the most greatest horror film within SK movies. Most of SK movies is exceptional, they were great ( STCM, FIRESTARTER, SHINING, CARRIE, MISERY, ....) but some is definitely bad, i mean it's bad but it's so good to watch (MANGLER, STCM2, STCM3, ..) But i am disagree with the rating given, for i think this movie should be a given a higher rating at least 7.0. This is because the movie is so good, the plot line, climax and also the acting performances showed by Tim Matheson are really convincing.

Overall i rate this movie 10 out of 10 (Excellent)

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Enjoyable enough, 5 February 2012

Author: movieman_kev from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Tim Matheson stars as Jim Norman, a high school teacher who's having recurring nightmares about a boyhood trauma involving the neighborhood bullies that left most of the gang of hoodlums, as well as his brother dead. It doesn't help that the aforementioned deceased gang members are coming back one by one putting the lives of him and his loved ones in danger.

This is one of the better Made-for-TV films based on Stephen King's short stories. Matheson does a pretty good job, as do most of the others in the cast (with the only exception being the kid who played Jim as a young boy) and the film managed to keep me interested throughout. Its somewhat hampered with a sappy ending though. ever really cared for that myself, but it doesn't ruin the film, so I don't mind much. Followed by two sequels, of which the less said of the better.

My Grade: B-

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