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Sometimes They Come Back (1991) (TV) More at IMDbPro »

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32 reviews in total

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7 out of 9 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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4 out of 4 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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3 out of 3 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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5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Freaky Film, 25 July 2002

Author: Kevin (kevinwcasey) from Canada

I first saw this film at the age of 8 it scared the crap out of me and even though this was the first horror film i ever saw i was hooked in Stephen King ever since then. The story now seems a bit far fetched and the scarry scenes that i witness then, as i look back on them now they were pretty lame by todays horror standards.

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4 out of 6 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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1 out of 1 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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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
A Wonderful Movie, 26 June 2006

Author: beck-61 from Greece

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This movie is quite good, even if it's not very known, or an expensive production. Tim Matheson is very suitable on the role of the afraid teacher, worried from his students, and the guys (Rusler, Sandler & Mitchum) are full of energy, and style. You love to watch them making Norman's life difficult! Chris Demetral as little Wayne also did a fantastic job, playing his role with a special, beautiful way. So, the cast is well-made. But what about the plot? Based on a Stephen King short story, from the book "Night Shift", it's here with many little differences (for example the names:Chip Osway>Chip Conway, Kathy Slavin>Kate Flanchet, David Garcia>David North, Vincent "Vinnie" Corey> Vinnie Vincent, and more)and too add more information, and a different, much better end. Something good is that there is not much violence, and also not blood, or language that may be annoying. There were some exciting action scenes, like the one where Billy, riding his bike, is trying to get away from Lawson's Gang who are chasing him with their car. Or of course, the disturbing memory of the adult Jim: the punks stabbing his older brother in the tunnel, many years ago. Terry Plumeri has added a suspenseful music in the beginning, but the final piano music is, at least, touching, matching the very beautiful scenes.(like, in the end, when ''Wayne'' hugs Jim and asks him if they will be together again). It's a good film, and people must not ignore this, just because it's not that famous. People are often looking for very known actors before watching a movie, and this is wrong.

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1 out of 1 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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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
More touching than the short story, 2 August 2000
Author: machine-13

The short story this movie is based on is pretty good, and the movie adaption was also worthy of Stephen King. There were many spots in the short story that were left unexplored. The movie goes deeper into the story and pokes around those unexplored areas, for example the one man who survived the train wreck. The story is about Jim Norman, a man who witnessed his brother's murder by four teenage punks. The killers were hit by an oncoming train, but one escaped before it hit. Now Jim Norman takes up a job as a school teacher, having to move back to his hometown where the murder occured. When one of his students dies, a new one transfers in from another school, and he looks a little familiar... This movie isn't great, but I think it is worth checking out, especially if you've read Stephen King's short story. The three villains are cool and sometimes funny (the way they laugh and hoot is amusing) The ending is very touching and emotional and is one of my favorite movie endings. There are some differences from the original story, one notable one is in King's version, there is a bit which involves a ritual of raising demons where you must cut off two fingers. This element is missing in the movie adaption, but is added in the sequel, Sometimes They Come Back...Again.

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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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