When Stephen King’s book Carrie received the big screen treatment, becoming both a critical and box office success, studios were keen to cash in and buy up the rights to any other King material regardless of their quality. For every The Shining there was a Graveyard Shift or a Dreamcatcher to sully the reputation of the master horror author. Producer Dino De Laurentiis enlisted director David Cronenberg to work his magic on King’s The Dead Zone turning in a hugely enjoyable and gripping celluloid experience but elsewhere De Laurentiis’ variable judgement saw a horribly mixed bag of adaptations including this made-for-TV effort Sometimes They Come Back.
Originally King’s short story was intended to be one of the few featured in the big screen anthology Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye until producer De Laurentiis considered it strong enough to be a movie in its own right. He was wrong. Sometimes They Come Back was a slim thirty page short, from the Night Shift collection, hardly apt to fill more than half an hour of screen time. This would explain why after just twenty minutes Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal’s adaptation becomes functionary and routine and lacking King’s knack for writing decent scares and believable well-rounded characters, here portrayed as no more than thin caricatures.
The every reliable Tim Matheson stars as Jim Norman a family man returning reluctantly to his home town, with his wife Sally (Brooke Adams) and son Scott (Robert Hy Gorman), after being offered a position there as a high school history teacher – his temper having got him into some undisclosed trouble back in Chicago.
Back when Jim was nine-years-old his elder brother Wayne (Chris Demetral) was stabbed in front of him by a gang of punks as they took a short cut through a spooky train tunnel to return some books to the library. As Jim looked on horrified, a train entered the tunnel killing the fleeing hoods along with his brother. The dead punks somehow pick up on Jim’s return to town and take to killing his favoured students and then taking their place in his classroom appearing as transfer students. Their plan is to murder Jim as they did his brother as their ticket to keep themselves out of Hell. In order to replay events perfectly they intend to kidnap Jim’s sole child Scott and have the sole living member of their gang Carl Mueller (William Sanderson) in attendance.
As always in the movies a new teacher has to be faced with an element in their class that warm to them and another that take none too kindly to their presence. Hunky quarterback Chip (Chadd Nyerges) makes clear from the start that Jim is not going to have a smooth ride teaching him. When the first of the undead arrives in class to replace poor Billy Sterns (Matt Nolan), whom they drove off the road, Jim recognises Richard Lawson (Robert Rusler of Vamp and A Nightmare on Elm Street Part II: Freddy’s Revenge) as one of the punks that killed his brother but never says so. He just stares at him a lot instead but then it would sound kind of weird to turn round and say ‘didn’t you die twenty seven years ago when a train hit your car as it was parked on the rails in a train tunnel?’
Director Tom McLoughlin’s movie starts well but once the dead come back and start offing people in Jim Norman’s class Sometimes They Come Back becomes routine and mundane especially when Norman becomes the key suspect for his uncanny knack for either being present at a student’s death or knowing where the deceased’s body can be found. Being threatened by ghouls with too much eye make-up hardly constitutes for full blooded screams and why does no one in Norman’s class notice that the new students dress like members of Travolta’s T-Birds in Grease. And how did they manage to arrange to get round Principal Simmons (William Kuhlke) and convince him that they were transfer students rather than vengeful entities in limbo? Do they have an agency in the afterlife to do this for ghouls desperately looking for a second chance not to be sent to Hell?
The gang of punks’ giggling and sneering becoming increasingly annoying and even the casting of Brooke Adams, so much better in The Dead Zone, as Jim’s wife Wendy is given a merely functionary role. There are shades of Stand By Me – also based on a Stephen King short story, The Body – with a gang of youths adorning flick knives and threatening to inflict damage on kids that cross their path.
Given McLouglin was previously responsible for the risible Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives it’s no wonder Sometimes They Come Back flatlines. Stephen King adaptations generally work best when there’s someone credible calling the shots – Rob Reiner for Stand By Me and Misery, Cronenberg for The Dead Zone, De Palma for Carrie, Kubrick for The Shining and of course Frank Darabont for The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and the underrated The Mist.
Sometimes catching up with a flick some twenty years after first viewing can often lead to a reappraisal that shows it in a more favourable light. Unfortunately Sometimes They Come Back remains as flaccid and mediocre as you remember it being and will only be worth seeking out if you’re a Stephen King adaptation completist.