When Cybill Shepherd was a small girl, she saw a UFO fly over a hick New Mexico town. Cybil grows up to be a scientist, and while she’s on the road researching extraterrestrial phenomenon, she winds up in the same little town twenty-five years later. With the help of a drunk deputy (Jan-Michael Vincent), who just so happened to see the same UFO way back when, they try to get to the bottom of some cattle mutilations that’s spooking the local residents. Eventually, they realize they’ve been brought together for a reason.
Directed by Greydon (Final Justice) Clark and co-written by Ken and Jim Wheat (who would later go on to write Pitch Black), The Return was riding on the coattails of the UFO craze of the late ‘70s as it touches on everything from alien abduction to cattle mutilation. It also blatantly rips off other, better movies from the era. The spaceship looks a lot like the one in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and one character brandishes a sawed-off version of a lightsaber.
Because the Good Ol’ Boy genre was still in effect, there’s also a gratuitous car chase in the early going to pad out the running time and cater to the rednecks in the audience. It’s not a terrible scene, but Clark uses way too much slow motion throughout the rest of the picture. I guess he was trying to disguise how little action there really was. Either that, or he was trying to draw things out until he got the movie to ninety minutes.
The Return starts off well enough, but it gets downright laborious in the middle section. That wouldn’t have really mattered if Clark rallied the troops together for a big finale. Instead, he delivers a damned Irritating non-ending that’s just downright insulting. I mean the aliens wait twenty-five year to collect Vincent and Shepherd only to… drop them back off again? What the hell?
Shepherd was only four years removed from Taxi Driver and she was already slumming in a Greydon Clark movie. Vincent looks like he’s going the Method acting route during the scenes where he’s drinking six packs. It’s nice when you can stay in character by staying drunk. I guess he was trying to make up for the fact he had zero chemistry with Shepherd.
The two leads aren’t much to write home about, but the supporting cast is kind of fun. Martin Landau (who was also in Clark’s Without Warning) is kind of funny as the sheriff who tries to dunk his donut in his beer. You can also have a ball watching Raymond Burr sleepwalking through his role as Cybill’s dad (and boss) as he apparently used a teleprompter to deliver his lines (and it shows). Although I can’t recommend it by a longshot as it is dreadfully dull and mostly stupid, I insist that if you ever wanted to see Vincent Schiavelli stab Neville Brand through the face with a lightsaber, then you came to the right place.
Clark also has a cameo as one of Schiavelli’s victims.
AKA: The Alien’s Return.
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