tonaluv If the only reason (or the no.1 reason) you give a wonderful film sequel a bad review, is because none of the original cast returned - aren't you totally missing the point? This is a great film with with a great cast and a good message against bigotry, racism, censorship, hypocrisy and small town insular small mindedness. I enjoyed it immensely and recommend you watch it!

brchthethird I wasn't exactly expecting great things from the sequel to a shamelessly melodramatic film, but the least it could have done was do some things different...and well. In this followup to PEYTON PLACE (which I actually quite liked), Allison has now gotten a book deal for her first novel, "Samuel's Castle," which is based on her life and the people she knows in Peyton Place. However, after the book gets published (and that, after a long rewriting session), the townspeople don't find it flattering at all. That's basically because everything in the book was covered in the previous film. Despite the soapy and silly nature of the story, it still manages to say a few interesting, if unoriginal, things about small town life, censorship, and progressive values (at least for the time period in which it's set). However, most of this was relegated to a final scene which plays out in much the same way as the courtroom finale of its predecessor. Other positive things to say include that the cinematography, production design and sets were just as good this time around. However, too often this film decides to ride the coattails of what came before instead of exploring new intrigues and problems. Basically, it's dependent on the previous film to a fault. Of course, it doesn't help that none of the original cast is back, for whatever reason. The replacements simply didn't have the talent or charm that the previous cast did. Granted, there are a couple of decent performances, but only a couple. Those are Mary Astor (as Ted Carter's mother), and Tuesday Weld (as Selena Cross). Everyone else gave lifeless performances and amateurish-sounding line readings, living down to the soapy source material. Overall, RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE falls into the trap that many sequels find themselves in: it's content to rehash the previous film without much charm, no originality and, worst of all, a sub-par cast. The only reason I'm giving this as high of a rating as I am is because it was at least visually appealing, but otherwise there's not too much to recommend here. Only see this if soap operas really do it for you.

preppy-3 Alison (Carol Lynley) from the first movie has her book being picked up to be published. She goes to NY to talk to publisher Lewis Jackman (Jeff Chandler). Even though he's older she falls in love much to the alarm of her mother Connie (Eleanor Parker). Roberta Carter (Mary Astor) is thrilled when her son (Brett Halsey) comes home from college...but is upset that he has a wife (Luciana Paluzzi). Selena Cross (Tuesday Weld) meets "cute" with Swedish ski instructor Nils (Gunnar Hellstrom) but her past comes back to haunt her.Just dreadful sequel. The book was bad too but this movie is even worse! It makes bewildering changes, some characters are left out completely and it ends with plenty of loose ends dangling. It starts out great with Rosemary Clooney singing but quickly falls apart. Bad acting doesn't help. Lynley (who was a wonderful actress) gives a lousy performance as Alison (although the terrible script doesn't help). Chandler is (to be nice) totally bland as her love interest. The scenes between them working on her book are boring and drag. Halsey is handsome and Paluzzi is beautiful but both give bad performances. Hellstrom is good but disappears and reappears with alarming infrequency. Also the story has a strange jokey attitude that's totally at odds with the material. Badly directed by Jose Ferrer too.So why am I giving it two stars? There are three reasons--Eleanor Parker (a VERY underrated actress) is great as Connie; Tuesday Weld (another underrated actress) is affecting as Selena; Astor is just incredible as Roberta. She single handedly brings this movie to life. There are a handful of OK sequences and there is a great town meeting at the end. But, all in all, this is badly cast, deadly dull and not worth seeing at all.

Harold_Robbins I was pleasantly surprised that RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE wasn't as bad as I'd remembered it to be - it's a well-mounted film, again produced by Jerry Wald (who produced, among other classics, MILDRED PIERCE), but neither as glossy-slick nor as compelling as its predecessor. It suffers from the same fate most sequels do, no matter how well-done or well-intended: the magic that sparked the original is simply gone and cannot be recaptured.RETURN, of course, is a thinly-veiled account of some of what happened to author Grace Metalious after PEYTON PLACE became the publishing phenomenon of the 1950s (no indeed, the townsfolk were not too fond of their "Pandora in Blue Jeans," as she was called, and, if memory serves, did indeed fire her schoolteacher husband). But it's kind of inconceivable that Metalious's novel would have been published at all if she'd been the snotty bitch portrayed by Carol Lynley - no publisher would have put up with such an attitude from an unknown, first-time novelist.CLEOPATRA's budget was straining the coffers at Fox, so the cast is not as big as PEYTON PLACE, nor, with three exceptions, as notable. Three Hollywood veterans - Eleanor Parker, Mary Astor, and Jeff Chandler, show the young folks how it's done, and Astor, selfish and manipulative as were two other characters she played (Brigid O'Shaughnessy in THE MALTESE FALCON, and Sandra Kovack in THE GREAT LIE, for which she won an Oscar) simply walks off with the film. We don't like Roberta Carter, or the censorship she tries to impose, but we understand her resistance to change, to losing the values and things she holds dear (including her son). And, unfortunately, Astor/Carter's advisory to the people of Peyton Place that they will live to regret their willingness to encourage such changes in morals as Allison's book seems to exemplify, was a sad prediction of the painful price we would pay in the 1980s for the sexual freedom of the 1960s.