Return to Peyton Place (1961)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Well Deserved Praise

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

It certainly isn't the old fuddy duddys of Peyton Place, the Vermont town where scandal is still rocking them years after a young girl killed the stepfather who raped her. Like Miss Gulch of "The Wizard of Oz", society seems to be run by the domineering Mrs. Carter (Mary Astor), a vindictive widow who not only despises her son Ted's (Brett Halsey) new wife (Luciana Paluzzi) but uses Selena Cross (Tuesday Weld), the subject of that scandal to try and drive a quick wedge between them all the while going out of her way to prevent a reunion between the girl from the wrong side of the tracks and her spoiled son. Sitting back and watching is Constance McKenzie Rossi (Eleanor Parker) whose daughter Allison (Carol Lynley) has gone off to New York to prepare to have her book published. Influenced by the publisher (Jeff Chandler) to re-write and add more truth to the fictionalized tale of what happened years ago, Allison creates a new scandal and eventually her step-father, principal Mike Rossi (Robert Sterling) is fired for adding the book to the school library and balking at the board's demands that it be removed.The veteran Mary Astor dominates the film with her strong performance as the nasty Roberta, a woman so hard that she has no qualms about destroying her own son rather than see him happy with a woman other than herself. This is an ironic role for Astor who in real life had her own share of scandals which she wrote about in a scandalous diary. The role of Constance has been turned into a supporting one for the veteran Parker (who has recently passed away as of this writing) and is not nearly as flashy as what Lana Turner played in the original. She has one scene with Lynley that is practically identical to one between Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth in "Mildred Pierce". Director Jose Ferrer may not physically appear but his voice is very apparent as one of the minor characters.A beautiful song by Rosemary Clooney brings out the lushness of the landscape (set between Thanksgiving and Christmas) and appropriately sets up the melodrama. There's one truly strange scene which is never resolved between Selena and the ski instructor (Gunnar Hellström) where Selena all of a sudden flashes back to the rape and reacts as strongly as if she had been taken back in time. The movie is far from perfect, and while equally as much of a guilty pleasure as the original, it is missing the strong story detail of the original. A fascinating visual of Allison arriving in New York by train is followed by a detailed view of a New York publishing house that leads to many telling facts of that industry that may seem laughable now that there are too few publishing houses for every ambitious writer, and far too few actual books being released.

Anyone who hasn't seen the original film Peyton Place will not be able to comprehend what's happening in Return to Peyton Place. And the journey is hardly worth it.Aspiring writer Carol Lynley writes a steamy novel about the goings on in her prim and proper New England town of Peyton Place. When Jeff Chandler publishes it, tongues start to wag. Carol's stepfather Robert Sterling who is the high school principal puts it in the school library and the local pharisees want his head.It's all been done before and since and better. Interesting that none of the original cast repeated any of their roles from the first film. I think they were asked, read the script and turned it down.If Return to Peyton Place has any value it's because Mary Astor plays a deliciously evil woman, the kind of mother that Danny DeVito wanted to throw from a moving train. Astor overwhelms everyone else the cast.I think they all knew it as well.

The only spark of life left in RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE is MARY ASTOR as Roberta Carter, ironically, a character who had no screen time in the original film five years previously. Her sassy, confrontational arguments with the denizens of Peyton Place provide the only juicy and convincing moments in the whole film.In every other respect, this is about as poor a sequel as could be expected from the original PEYTON PLACE which had several Oscar nominations to its credit, including Best Picture.Why Jerry Wald gave the green light to this production is something that has always baffled me. The script is a complete mess and the casting is only adequate without a shred of inspiration as to any of the players. Even such wonderful people as ELEANOR PARKER and ROBERT STERLING have to cope with the weakest sort of material, while CAROL LYNLEY and TUESDAY WELD fail to make any deep impression in their mainline roles.The only holdover from the original seems to be Franz Waxman's lovely score with his main theme giving the audience hope that something approaching the original is about to happen. No such luck.Sequels get their bad names from films like this. The extensive fire sequence was filmed, then scrapped, but turns up only in the DVD trailers for the film. The story ends now with Astor getting her comeuppance from the townspeople who turn a cold shoulder to her after she's exposed as the harridan she is. Too bad Astor's performance is wasted in a bad film.

This sequel to the sturdy and beautifully made "Peyton Place" is not very good. The chief problem is the curious time warp. It appears to take place in 1961, the year the film was made, but the original took place during the Second World War. There is roughly a 15 year time gap, but no one has appeared to age much. Whats going here? The usually reliable Carol Lynley is rather miscast as Allison MacKenzie in an awkward transition role from her previous strong performances in films like "The Light In the Forest", "Blue Denim" and "Holiday For Lovers". Here she plays her first truly adult role, but comes off looking rather frumpy with that awful hairstyle hiding her stunning good looks. Tuesday Weld as Selena Cross suffers much the same fate. Everything appears drab and lethargic. Franz Waxman's score and Mary Astor's mother-in-law from Hell are the prime reasons to watch this disappointment.