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Holy cow! Gotta wonder why every single member of the original "Peyton Place" declined to appear in the sequel...where is Hope Lange, Dianne Varsi, David Nelson, and especially Lana Turner? Word was they all got fat heads from the success of this film and producer Jerry Wald would not offer enough money to entice most of the cast back...especially Lana Turner..word was Turner was "available" for the sequel at a very high price and Wald said "no go"..... Anyhow what kind of time frame was the sequel? The original Peyton Place was set during world war II, Ted Carter was inducted remember? Return to Peyton Place it is suddenly 1961....what? Watch closely when Allison is running down the street at the beginning of the film and you will see a 1959 chevy impala parked......twenty years later!!! Looks like Allison didn't age too much! Movie seems to be divided into two parts: Allison McKenzie and her story of Peyton Place and the selling of her book and part two, hell hath no fury like a disenchanted mother played to the hilt by Mary Astor who tries to ruin the lives of anyone who gets in her way, especially Selena Cross (Tuesday Weld) and her daughter in law, played by Luciana Paluzzi (a few years before being a Bond girl). Talk about the mother from hell....if you saw "A Summer Place" remember the mother from hell in that one with Constance Ford? Mary Astor is her equal in this film. Seems like the entire town of Peyton Place in the sequel is fixated on keeping Astor out of their hair......Eleanor Parker is the new Constance McKenzie and does not have the acting power of Lana Turner as the original McKenzie mom. She tries hard to overact ala Turner in the original but it just does not work. Tuesday Weld as Selena handles her role a bit better but just does not connect as well as Dianne Varsi....a tidbit about Weld, she was also filming "Wild in the country" with Elvis at the same time Return to Peyton Place was being filmed...story had it that she just commuted from sound stage to sound stage on a daily basis to make both films at the same time. As soon as filming for the day was done on Wild in the Country she hurried over to the Peyton Place set. Anyhow this film isn't too bad...just gotta love the execution squad of Astor and the local townspeople who threaten to fire Mike Rossi for placing Allison's book in the school library. A love twist develops between Selena (Weld) and a Swedish ski instructor (Gunnar Helstrom) who prods Selena to tell her story about being raped. Allison (Carol Lynley) falls in love with a married book publisher (Jeff chandler) as the movie bounces back and forth between the goings on in the town and Allison's love tryst with Chandler in New York. Mary Astor, as the mother from hell and the Polly Harrington of the town pretty much steals the film. By the end you will detest the sight of her. Ending leaves a little bit to be desired....a town meeting that ends with Astor being more bitter and everyone else trying to explain their personal beliefs. Allison decides not to keep her romance with Chandler at the end of the film and return to peyton place (no pun intended!). Not bad for a sequel, but the original is much better.

Not as sensational as the great Metalious' novel based upon a small New England town with all it's small talk, and nasty inuendos, but it holds it's own with fine performances of Mary Astor, who really steals the show as the embittered mean old lady who spoils things for others. Cast includes Carol Lynley as Allison Mackenzie who writes her book; Jaff Chandler, as the publicist; Eleanor Parker as Connie; and Tuesday Weld as Selena Cross. I give it 6/10

On the big, wide CinemaScope screen of the Fox Village Theater in Westwood, in West Los Angeles, California, where I saw this one first-run, I settled in with some rather high expectations as the lovely theme song was beautifully sung by Rosemary Clooney, while stunning vistas of New England beauty followed one another over the opening credits.

Alas, my hopes were quickly dashed and, as other IMDb comments attest, this followup to the very successful "Peyton Place" was a severe disappointment in most respects. The handsome cast was strangely set adrift amidst some rather drab production values and only Mary Astor was given enough to do and was allowed to do it well as the town's tyrannical matriarch. Her final scene is an example of an actress still in full command of her powers convincing an unwilling cinema audience (though not her fellow townspeople on screen) that being a prude and a social snob is a desirable way to live one's life!

Jose Ferrer as a director was never much of a visual stylist so the VHS tape of this CinemaScope production, most probably not letterboxed, might satisfy the curious who want to see an example of studio product that was mired in a soon to be abandoned estimation of what audiences of that day really wanted to see.

1. You get to see Robert Crane of Hogan's Heroes in an "Ed McMahon" type role to somebody else doing a "Johnny Carson". Actually he's acting more like Jack Paar.

2. The first 45 minutes of the movie take place on what seems to be two days before thanksgiving. Then on thanksgiving morning, they show a scene of New York at dawn - and the streets are totally deserted!!!!

3. You get to see this 1960 era turkey as a prop and boy, were turkeys skinny back before corporate farming took over.

4. Everything was so wholesome back then. Except when a woman (the Italian actress) has an unwanted pregnancy. Then she tries to lose it by having a skiing accident because abortions were illegal back then, silly.

5. I've been to Camden, Maine, several times, and the locals told me that they shot none of this movie up there (they filmed the original peyton place there in 1956).

6. Peyton Place was set in 1941-43; this movie never sets a year but if you figure by the fact that the young lawyer just got through law school and that takes 7 years from the start of college, and he was in the war until 1945, that would make this about 1952 I guess. Or maybe its supposed to be current with the release date and be 1961; they never explain this.

7. There is nothing said about several of the characters of the earlier movie that had prominent roles (such as the town doctor and Allison's boyfriend). Why are two such good looking girls still unmarried during that era anyway? Obvious plot loopholes.

8. This movie has an old fashioned look and feel to it even for 1960-61 standards. Within 3-4 years clothing, hairstyles, speech, and mannerisms were significantly different. It's like a time capsule movie of a small town America just before all the crappy changes that took place in the 1960s.

9. It has a really good ending. I found myself actually siding with the old biddy who is singlehandedly trying to enforce the old Puritan moral code of her era against the will of apparently the entire rest of the town, who want to change with the times and let everybody do their own thing. She walks out of the town hall meeting in silence and totally defeated; terrific symbolism, and almost supernaturally prophetic in what actually happened across the country over the rest of the decade.

10. Last but not least, the man who plays the character "Dexter" (he has about 1 line; he is a school board member who is a weak character and the old biddy uses him as a supporter)...this guy was on a lot of the old three stooges shorts. He always played a bad guy, and I've never seen him on any other serious movie.

The sequel to the fifties blockbuster ,it's much more modest in scope and in ambition and its ending is so predictable it does not equal the first episode.Constance McKenzie (Lana Turner is replaced by Eleanor Parker) is no longer the central character but one must say there is no more central character.There are about three plots which could be depicted as "the book Alison wrote" "Ted and his over possessive mom" and "Will Selena be an outcast for all her life?" .All these plots meet in the end as Alison's stepfather stands in great danger of being discharged ,cause he put his stepdaughter's more or less autobiographical "work" in his high school library.Lucianna Paluzzi ,who plays the unfortunate daughter-in-law ,is a future James Bond Girl ( one of the best villains ,Fiona Volpe, in "Thunderball")

"Peyton Place" fans might be interested but the others had better choose the 1957 original work .