It’s October and you know what that means. Your Curator of Schlock will transform into the Curator of Shock. And what better way to start than with a super scary chiller from Stephen King! That’s right. We’re starting with 1991’s Sometimes They Come Back from director Tom McLoughlin. This was a made-for-tv movie though the DVD release was in widescreen which causes me to wonder if this thing got released in theaters over in Europe like The Ewok Adventure. Still, at least this is a decent Stephen King adaptation featuring evil greasers from hell. 

Tim Matheson plays Jim Norman, a high school teacher from Chicago who got fired from his last job for beating up a student or something to that effect. He gets a teaching job in his home town of Liberty, Missouri. Jim’s wife, Sally (Brooke Adams), and young son, Scott (Robert Hy Gorman), go with him, but family tragedy weighs heavy in the air. You see, Jim’s older brother, Wayne (Chris Demetral), was killed when he was very young, the details of which unfurl as the movie moves along. 

Jim is a history teacher and gets saddled with a class that makes the Sweathogs from Welcome Back, Kotter look like honors students. The class is made up of undisciplined jocks led by Chip Conway (Chadd Nyerges) and Jim gets so riled up that he snaps his pointer in half. Some of the students are more receptive to his teaching such as Billy (Matt Nolan) and Kate (Tasia Valenza). Jim’s disposition isn’t improved by the nightmares about his brother’s death. 

In the vivid dreams, young Jim and Wayne are walking through an ideal 1950s neighborhood on the way to the public library to pay some book fines. While crossing through a train tunnel, a hot rod complete with painted flames flies past them and blocks their path. Out pops four greasers named Richard (Robert Russell), Vinnie (Nicholas Sadler), David (Bentley Mitchum), and Mueller (Don Ruffin). They’ve got the slicked back hair, the white t-shirts, the leather jackets, the works. 

They want the kids to pay the toll, but Wayne refuses as settling library fines are more important than getting beaten up. Things escalate. Wayne gets stabbed by Richard with a switchblade. They try grabbing young Jim, but rush to get in the hotrod when they hear an upcoming train. Unfortunately, they dropped the keys while assaulting Wayne. Mueller scrambles out of there, making him and Jim the only ones to escape a fiery death. 

So now we know the horrible story of Wayne’s death, but the horror is just beginning. The greasers have somehow come back from hell and are bent on revenge against Jim. First, the hotrod appears and chases after Billy who can barely keep ahead of it on his bike. Jim chases after the hotrod while honking his horn, but can’t stop it from running poor Billy head first into a ravine. The next day at school, Billy’s seat is filled by a new student named Richard who just transferred up from Milford. He bears an uncanny resemblance to Richard, the evil greaser that stabbed his brother before getting run over by that train. 

More students end up dead and each one is replaced by another evil greaser from Jim’s childhood, each one of them transfers from Milford. And guess what? Milford is a cemetery! I guess one could argue that Sometimes They Come Backis a typical Stephen King movie, but typical in the most marvelous way. It’s streaming on Prime right now if you have access. It has evil greasers from hell. What more can you ask for?

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443,episode 444, episode 450,episode 477, episode 491, episode 492,episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, episode 645, episode 670, episode 686, episode 687,  688,  689, and 726) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.