The unemployed high school teacher Jim Norman (Tim Matheson) finds a job in his hometown and moves with his wife Sally Norman (Brooke Adams) and their son Scott (Robert Hy Gorman) back in town. Twenty-seven years ago, his family left the town when Jim and his older brother Wayne (Chris Demetral) were bullied and Wayne murdered by a four-teenager gang in a lonely train tunnel. However, the gangster's car was hit by a train and exploded, killing Billy (Matt Nolan),North (Bentley Mitchum) and Vinnie (Nicholas Sadler); only Mueller (William Sanderson) survived. Soon Jim's best students mysteriously dies and are replaced by Billy, North and Vinnie that claim they are from Milford and harasses Jim and his family. What will Jim do to get rid of these demons?

"Sometimes They Come Back" is a creepy horror movie based on a short story by Stephen King even almost thirty years after its release. The tension is increased while the new students from Milford arrive in the high school where Jim is the history teacher. The screenplay entwines present with flashbacks and is scary and well-resolved. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Às Vezes Eles Voltam" ("Sometimes They Come Back")

A very below average adaptation of a Stephen King short story, hindered by being a TV movie. Unfortunately, after an interesting first hour, the film begins to fall apart in the second half. The best moments in the film are when the gang begins to appear in Matheson's class and he can't believe it. The thugs aren't really very scary and don't do much, apart from killing some extras.

The 'exciting' ending occurs when Norman is forced to re-live that fateful night which occurred 27 years earlier. The acting is nothing to write home about and there are hardly any special effects. The trouble is that it's very, very mundane and we've seen it all before, this film offers nothing new. Some parts of it are silly, very silly indeed. Now I like a laugh as much as the next person...but not at the expense of this boring, stupid movie!

Returning to his home-town, a teacher and his family find that the traumatic incident involving his big brother while he was growing up has caused the greaser-gang also included in the event to come back and torment them forcing a final showdown to right the wrong.

This one here wasn't all that bad even though it does have some issues. One of the film's biggest positives is the fact that this one really manages to get the fear of being involved in a traumatic incident from the past in a small-town. The fact that the initial accident itself feels like the kind of accident that really could happen in such a location, with the greaser gang tormenting them and then getting caught up in the train coming through the tunnel does come off like a rather enjoyable setup for later, and with the way this holds up the different incidents later on that trigger the incidents later on. From the dropped set of car-keys to the shoes and the kids coming one-by-one into the classroom, the set-up from these incidents plays a great part in how this one manages to come off when it starts to reveal what their actual purpose is for returning. Those are quite fun as the different variations of them appearing as students in his classroom while taunting him in the town, the ways in which they manage to fool everyone in class as well as the town who constantly think he's having mental breakdowns based on his past history which comes into play quite nicely and overall manages to give this one a great build-up for the story to play out in the later half. With the group out and tormenting him and his family with some rather impressive stalking scenes of the family at the house and the later scene in the church where they get taken away leading into the final confrontation in the tunnel once again as this makes for a rather thrilling and engaging finish that plays out the fateful accident that came through in the rest of the film. With these action-packed scenes that come together into giving this a lot to like alongside the few fine make-up effects on the ghouls who look quite creepy and chilling, there's enough to like here that really manages to hold off the few minor flaws present. The film's biggest issue is the fact that we're not given a reason to care about why the greaser club is seeking revenge, as the film makes the point of them coming back for him killing them only they deserved their fate so it's really troubling to get into the story. The gang is a total joke that simply act like tough-guy greasers but are just so over-the-top in their silly threats that it makes for a pretty hard time to find fear in them for the whole film as they're return doesn't make any sense. The other big issue here does manage to carry on about that with there not being any real reason stated about why they come back to begin with as there's just nothing explained about why they come back to life here at that point in time. By simply showing up saying they want revenge but never explaining how they manage to do so when they clearly never deserved to do so in the first place makes them so simply non-threatening that as a whole the film really stumbles with the main villains. That it also gets a little too schmaltzy with the fantasy-driven finale that looks quite goofy and silly against the more realistic elements, these here do hold it down somewhat.

Rated R: Language and Violence.