Sometimes They Come Back (1991) as a telefilm didn't dare pay off on its gore-film premise, & attempts to be more about character. This is potentially an improvement over how cheap horror films are usually made, but in this case, it's very nearly an empty package.

Recovering from a nervous breakdown & deciding it's a swell idea to return to his haunted home town, a school teacher husband father (Tim Matheson) must confront the evil ghostly teenage greasers who killed his brother just before they were themselves wiped out by a train.

Based on a Stephen King short story, the "suburban family is always good, boys with cool cars are always bad" theme is no longer funny. If you don't personally believe greasers are inherently evil for no reason beyond being greasers, you may find it just a little bit unconvincing that they'd be evil whether alive or dead.

It's a serious, severe tale with enough pointless irrational twists & turns to keep the brain trying to make sense of it all. But it's not possible to make sense of it, as it's ultimately nonsensical. Even so, I did enjoy the damned thing for a couple moody images it drummed up & the okay acting.


Sometimes They Come Back...Again (1996) is a chance to see a maniacal Alexis Arquette before he became a she, & a lovely terribly young Hilary Swank before she became a star.

It's otherwise a more-of-same re-do to a film that hadn't been all that great first time around. It's not a sequel but a differing take on more or less the same story idea.

Jon (Michael Gross) returns to his home town for his mother's funeral, & is soon being haunted by demonic teenagers chief among whom is ultra-evil Tony Reno (Arquette). These bad-ass bullies had been associated with Jon's sister's death thirty years earlier, & are back from the dead targetting Jon's teenage daughter (Swank).

The cinematography is slick enough that a viewer almost expects a good story, so it's a big disappointment. But re-adjust your expectations to pure schlock & it gets by as good of kind.


You'd think twice would be enough but even the crummiest franchise likes to be a trilogy, so here we are with Sometimes they Come Back...For More (1999).

It's hard to see quite how this one is related to the first two installments. In other countries it was distributed as its own feature & not part of a series, called Frozen or Ice Station Erebus.

Since the first two films weren't all that good, it's no big loss that the third one tosses out everything at all connected to the others. But even going in a whole new direction, the result is the worst film of three.

It views like a quicky-exploitation-copy of John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). Some guys & a gal in Antarctica are threatened by a demonic young man who kills people then turns them into zombies.

Apparently nobody could think of an ending so they brought in somebody's baby sister to see if she could think one up, therefore the lovers win.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl