Sometimes They Come Back

Year of Release:  1991
Director:  Tom McLoughlin
Screenplay:  Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, based on the short story Sometimes They Come Back by Stephen King
Starring:  Tim Matheson, Brooke Adams, Robert Hy Gorman, Chris Demetral, Robert Rusler, Nicholas Sadler, Bentley Mitchum, William Sanderson
Running Time:  98 minutes
Genre:  Horror

In 1990, high school history teacher Jim Norman (Matheson) returns to his childhood home town for the first time in 27 years, with his wife Sally (Adams) and young son Scott (Gorman).
In 1963, nine year old Jim (Zachary Ball) and his fifteen year old brother Wayne (Demetral) are walking through a railway tunnel on the way to the library when they are set upon by a gang of teenage greasers who kill Wayne, but are themselves almost immediately killed by a train.
Despite still being haunted by nightmares of his brother's death, Jim and his family settle in, and he starts teaching at the local high school, bonding with some students and making enemies of others.  However, the students who Jim gets close to start dying in apparent suicides, and are replaced in class by students who look suspiciously like the gang who murdered Wayne.
Jim realises that the spirits of the dead gang members have returned and are set on revenge.

This film was originally made for TV and was first broadcast in 1991.  Based on a 1974 short story by Stephen King, it's a pretty by the numbers horror film, that features plenty of King tropes.  Made on a low budget without particular style or flair, with a cast of solid performers, including veteran William Sanderson, who all try their best with stodgy material (pity Brooke Adams, who really has nothing to do here at all except be alternately supportive and scared).  The story is not one of Stephen King's best and the screenwriters have trouble punching it up to feature length.  The film is at it's best when the focus is on the ghoulish greasers who (as played by Robert Rusler, Bentley Mitchum and Nicholas Sadler) are ominous and threatening, although we never find out enough about them, they have no backgrounds or personalities, and are portrayed as pack animals (they growl, bray and howl like wolves).
Probably due to the limits of television in 1991, the film is light on blood and gore.  At times it seems more like a supernatural drama about coming to terms with grief, than it is about shocks and scares, and the two sides don't gel together.  The biggest problem that the film has is that it offers nothing new.  Really, if you're interested at all in horror, than you've seen it all before.
Followed by two direct-to-video sequels: Sometimes They Come Back... Again (1996) and Sometimes They Come Back... for More (1998) .

Robert Rusler, Bentley Mitchum, Nicholas Sadler and Don Ruffin in Sometimes They Come Back