Review of The Return

The Return (1980)
3/10
The most memorable things about this one is the weapon the one guy had
31 July 2009
This movie is one of those obscure films that most people in the world probably have never seen and probably should not bother trying to find unless they like to laugh at poor cinema. It is akin to the film Laserblast, only that one is more well known due to the fact it was played more back in the day and would later become riffed on the cult television show Mystery Science Theater 3000. This one, too, could have been on that show and made a rather good episode as it is just ripe for the riffing! Instead, it became a film most have never seen or heard of even though there are several decent actors in this one including Jean Michael Vincent, Raymond Burr, Martin Landeau and Cybil Shepard. However, they could not make up for the fact that this movie seems to almost have not discernible plot...

The story, what little there is, starts out with two kids and a prospector encountering strange lights in the sky and they are seemingly imbued with something or another. The little girl was just passing through, but the little boy lived in town. Years later, they are all grown up and in the town where the encounter took place strange occurrences have happened as cows have been mutilated. The boy is now a deputy and drinking beer while pursuing annoying young folk driving while the girl now works for her dad's vague institute that seems to be exploring space and possible aliens, but are not experts on cow mutilations. Well the prospector is now wielding a lightsaber and carving up cows for some purpose and soon the former kids will have to confront him!

The film seems like it was trying to do both Star Wars and Close Encounters with a touch of horror thrown into the mix. It could've worked, but it takes itself way too seriously. They needed more of the horror element as watching drunk deputy and pretty new girl in town interact throughout the movie got very tiresome. So instead of being entertaining like those two movies, it is only really entertaining as a film to be made fun of as you are watching it unfold.
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