If you are the parent of a curious child whose reading level is well above their age, and, most importantly, seems to be seriously into horror, you’re going to want to introduce them to the literature of Stephen King earlier than might feel responsible. If they can handle mainstream screamfests like “Poltergeist,” “Alien,” and “The Omen” (1976), they are ready to begin their lifelong journey through King’s oeuvre. And he is so accessible as a storyteller in terms of vocabulary that much of what might seem beyond a burgeoning reader’s ken is surprisingly graspable. The content can be a bit much, but King’s edgiest works are unlikely to appeal to kids in the first place. They’re not going to get a whole lot out of “Gerald’s Game.” They will want to read “Pet Sematary.”
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Where should they start? That’s easy. “Night Shift.” Published in 1978, King’s collection of 20 short stories range from slow-burns to full-throttle terror to whatever the heck “The Lawnmower Man” is supposed to be. Most of the classics from this volume have been turned into not-so-classic movies (“The Boogeyman,” “The Mangler,” “Children of the Corn,” “Graveyard Shift,” and, of course, “Trucks,” which became “Maximum Overdrive”), but that’s because they’d all work best as half-hour “The Twilight Zone” episodes instead. “Cat’s Eye” got it right by incorporating “Quitters, Inc.” and “The Ledge” into an anthology feature, where the diabolically efficient tales rip the way King intended.
When I read “Night Shift” at the age of 12, the one story that stood out was “Sometimes They Come Back.” The tale of a high school teacher who’s horrified to find that the greaser delinquents who killed his brother 17 years ago are, one by one, enrolling in his school after the tragic deaths of other students, works as both a dread-inducing piece of small-town horror and a revenge yarn. It’s the only story in “Night Shift” that yearns for a feature-length treatment. It did not, however, scream franchise to me, but after it was successfully adapted as a made-for-TV movie in 1991, that’s exactly what it became!
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Sometimes They Come Back … to the video store
“Sometimes They Come Back” nearly found its way into “Cat’s Eye,” but producer Dino De Laurentiis pulled it and went with the Drew Barrymore-starring finale featuring that nasty little Carlo Rambaldi troll. De Laurentiis eventually returned to the story, and brought on the underrated screenwriting duo of Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal (“The Legend of Billie Jean,” “Desperate Hours,” and “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”) to adapt the story. De Laurentiis made another wise creative decision in hiring skilled horror director Tom McLoughlin (“One Dark Night,” “Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives”).
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This team did King’s story modest, satisfying justice. Though McLoughlin was limited in how much gore he could show, he leaned into the macabre mood of the tale like he did with the PG-rated “One Dark Night.” He also got a very good lead performance from Tim Matheson as the teacher, along with effective turns from reliable character actors like Brooke Adams, Robert Rusler, and William Sanderson. If you’re ever in the mood to watch a solidly crafted horror film that doesn’t feel like a TV movie of the era at all, “Sometimes They Come Back” will treat you right.
When the film was released to video soon after its broadcast, its brisk rental numbers convinced the rights holders to take a crack at a direct-to-video sequel with a very direct-to-video cast (and one future movie star). 1996’s “Sometimes They Come Back … Again” was directed by the less-skilled Adam Grossman (whose only other notable credit is the godawful 1998 remake of “Carnival of Souls”), but if you’re in a dumpster-diving mood you’ll at least get a game lead performance from Michael Gross, as well as a “Why couldn’t ‘The Next Karate Kid’ have been a hit” turn from Hillary Swank.
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This meh sequel evidently did decent enough business for distributor Trimark Pictures to merit another go-round, and the result is one of those horror sequels that is related to its predecessors in title only. “Sometimes They Come Back … for More” is basically a riff on John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” with Clayton Roehner, Faith Ford, and Max Perlich contending with demons at an illegal U.S. military mining operation. This would prove to be the end of the inexplicable franchise, and no one is clamoring for more — though a new take on King’s original story would be welcome.
