Behold!! The 15 Worst Horror Sequels of All Time!!Jun 13 '06 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Be afraid. Be very afraid. Because when you are stuck alone in a dark basement watching one of these films...no one will hear you scream.
I have compiled for you a list of "The 15 Worst Horror Sequels of All Time." There's something about a bad horror sequel. I don't know what it is, but I always felt that bad horror sequels reached a level of a true badness that they almost get underlooked by the mainstream movie media who only assume that they are bad without having seen them. Oh, but they're missing quite the experience of awful cinema with having viewed some of these titles within. "Entertainment Weekly" recently did a list of the 25 Worst Sequels Ever Made. "Staying Alive" is #1. I know they don't believe that. I know that if they actually saw something along the lines of "The Amityville Curse," then in their heart they would know that if you dug down deep in the dirt you could find a bad sequel truly worth ranting about. Sidenote: Movies you won't find on my list, but probably expect to. "Halloween III." In my opinion, the best "Halloween" sequel. It's the most original of the sequels and the most fun. As absurdly weird as that movie is, I would love to know what the hell else they could have come up with if they continued to go the anthology route with the series. I also won't put "Elm Street 2" on the list. The most homoerotic horror film of the 80's holds a special place in my heart, one for it's pure 1980's style, and it's where Freddy was still a pretty scary dude, and not a one-liner spewing jokester. I'd love to hear what some of you think about the list! Please, leave me some comments, share your bad horror sequels stories. #1 Exorcist II: The Heretic Here's something that I struggled with. Trying to not only name what I feel is the worst horror sequel of all time, but also defining what makes the particular choice rise to that high of a standard. The worst horror sequel of all time cannot be forgettable. Indeed it cannot also be boring. It's badness has to have a toxic fume that not only surrounds the film itself, but also create a nationwide controversy for not only polluting up the theaters, and asking people to pay to see it's badness. Causing it to be not only humiliatingly lambasted, but also becoming a hazard to our health. "Exorcist II: The Heretic" is that choice for me. Watch this film. Embrace in its undeniable awfulness. Watching this film is like seeing a straight-A student coming home, not only with an F on the final exam, but with the teacher's severed head in his other hand. This kid is going away for a while. A kind of movie this bad can only have been made by someone with enough talent to get us to watch it. John Boorman directed one of my favorite film's of all time, "Zardoz," and he also directs this film. It stars the great Richard Burton, arguable one of the greatest actors who ever lived, and co-stars Louise Fletcher (2 years off of winning an Oscar for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") and Linda Blair, someone I've always felt was very underrated as an actress. Not only does it have all of this going on for it, but it is the sequel to the scariest film of all time: the movie that had people passing out during it's screening from an initial state of shock. This is not a sequel to some flavor of the month slasher film, this is a sequel to "The Exorcist." The name alone gives people chills. But how is it followed up? It's followed up with a film that is probably more laugh out load funny than any of the actual comedies that were released in the same year, 1977. The film attempts to ask weather or not Regan (Linda Blair) can remember the possession that happened to her 4 years prior. Is the demon Pazuzu still inside of her, or will it come back to control her once more? The movie spends its entire running length trying to find out, and I still don't know if the thing actually answered any damn questions. Most of it is spent with mind machines hooked up to Blair's head, and the investigative priest's (Burton) head. Just picture elements from "Brainscan" and having them be used in "The Exorcist" world. And when you have these fine actors saying the name "Pazuzu" in a serious tone of voice...you're really not asking me to take them very seriously. During the movie's premiere, the audience literally laughed the film off the screen, and after the initial release, John Boorman recalled all of the prints (not once, but twice) to bring it back to the editing room and try to salvage what he had filmed. None doing. To his defense, he attempted to walk away from directing this flick, but was threatened by a lawsuit if he did so. As I've said earlier. This is not a forgettable bad film. It's like watching the bloodiest and most gruesome car accident ever caught on someone's home video camera, only it's worse because the car accident only contained orphaned children. If I saw this movie at a retail store for about $5, I would get it. I would not hesitate to own the absolute worst horror sequel of all time. It's hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. "The Worst" in any category cannot be some random movie. It can't be something that is so bad it just makes you want to forget all about it. You have to remember it every bit as much as you would remember "The Best" of a category. The first time I saw this movie, I thought someone had played a joke on me. Surely this laugh-fest could not be the sequel to the scariest movie ever made. It is. And it's comedy still holds up to this day. The other sequels are indeed better. But they're not as entertaining as this one. They don't have a locust storm. Or that bizaroo funkified ethnic Ennio Morricone score. #2 The Stepfather 3: Father's Day Now lets get on to...the rest. The forgettable movies. The movies that just cause me to role my eyes and spit in disgust about the mere mention of them. "Exorcist II" deserves to exist in this world. It has its place in the history of bad cinema. The rest of these movies I could care less about. And I'm not going to pour as much heart and soul into explaining their badness as I did with the #1 choice. They don't deserve it. Least deserving of all of them? This crap. "Stepfather 3." Now, "The Stepfather" is intense as all hell. The movie could have been something on par with a made-for-tv movie, but star Terry O'Quinn took it above that. He became one of the 80's best and scariest horror movie villains. He wasn't just murderous, manipulative, and downright sadistic. He was believable. He returned for the 2nd movie, which wasn't great, but worth watching for his performance. But what happens in this third installment? No Terry O'Quinn. And, wait for it, it actually is a made-for-tv movie. It's what "The Stepfather" would have been like if it fell into the hands of a tv network executive. Nevermind that star Robert Wightman can't even kiss the altar of Terry O'Quinn's stunt double, let alone the great Terry himself, but how is this cast change explained? The Stepfather gets plastic surgery. And also reverses his acting training to make the performance suck. We know the rest. He marries into another family and kills anyone who suspects that this is a sequel to a fantastic 80's movie. #3 Jaws: The Revenge One of my favorite stories is how Michael Caine missed out on giving his Oscar acceptance speech for "Hannah and Her Sisters" because he was too busy filming his role as Hoagie in...this movie. Wow. Now when an actor can't make the Oscars, and they actually win an award, and their absence is a legit reason, or they're filming something worthwhile, it's brushed under the rug. When you choose something like this on the other hand...It's provided comedy fodder for the ages. This film actually has the audacity to proclaim that the events within the movie act as if everything that happened in "Jaws 3-D" didn't exist. One problem. Now, I'm not denying the badness of "Jaws 3-D." And this here movie shouldn't deny it either. But they're the pot calling the kettle black here. If anything there should be a Director's Cut for "Jaws 3-D" where they ask "which would you prefer?" I prefer the 3rd one, but I'd rather watch neither. There's just something preposterously awful about this movie. It's about how the shark has come to stalk the remaining family members of Sherrif Brody because of his killing of their fellow sharks. I'm not going to get anymore into it than that. I'll let that stand on its own. Maybe it could work in "Deep Blue Sea" world. But not "Jaws" world. I guess it should have been in 3-D #4 The Amityville Curse I don't think I've ever been so bored in a horror movie than I was in "The Amityville Curse." This movie almost didn't make the list, simply because I forgot I had seen it. When I was searching through all of the layers upon layers of horror sequels, I came across this, and the worst thing happened to me. I remembered it. And I remembered watching it. I remember begging the gods above to let the film be over with so I could go to sleep. The movie is 91 minutes long, and it feels like 3 hours. That was one of the worst movie watching nights of my life. The plot has 5 people renovating the Amityville house, after 2 have them have purchased it. Though I remember the house looking a little bit different this time, after it's subsequent demolish in "Amityville 3-D." Hang on a second. I'm starting to get the sensation that maybe movies should stop following up 3-D entries. Na, I liked the 4th "Friday the 13th." Anyway, Kim Coates (an actor I like actually) is the one who goes insane in this movie, but the film is so dreary and boring to look at, that by the point where something does happen...I simply didn't notice it. I'm only guessing something happened. I could be wrong. #5 King Kong Lives Yes, King Kong may have lived. But it killed any chances of there being another sequel to the 1976 "King Kong." The 76 Kong wasn't bad. I kind of liked it, but that has a lot to do with my finding a lot of enjoyment out of it when I was a kid. This movie, I also saw at a young age. It begged me to want to hate monkeys. No movie should make anyone want to have ill thoughts about monkeys. There is no place on this earth for "King Kong Lives." In this way too complicated plot, Kong survives his fall from the World Trade Center and needs another heart. Well, luckily a female Kong has been found, but once Kong gets struck by the love arrow of cupid, it's up to a couple of humans (one being Linda Hamilton) to get the Kongs to safety so they can make beautiful music together. This isn't King Kong. This is a prototype for another "Free Willy." #6 American Psycho 2 "American Psycho" is not a horror film. It should never ever be classified as a horror film. It's a brilliant satire that was everything involving vanity in the 1980's. The importance of dress, image, business cards, VCR's, stereos, tastes in music, and if you read the book, it's what was going on on "The Patty Winters Show" that day. All of which can make one go insane...on the inside. The makers of this second film have not read the book. They have not seen the movie. They've only read the plots of both, or atleast dear god I hope that's the case. Maybe they saw the box cover for the movie and assumed it was a well dressed slasher film. Mila Kunis stars as a woman who was Patrick Bateman's last attempted villain (which makes absolutely no sense) so she grows up to become a serial killer herself. This movie is nothing more than a straight to video slasher film that wants to make quick bucks off the title of something brilliant and something special. The Mighty Shatner makes an appearence in this, and I have never felt more sorry for him. #7 Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 I'm a fan of "The Blair Witch Project." It scared the hell out of me. It really did. Hardly an ending to any movie truly messed me up as much as the final moments of "Blair Witch." The movie left opened a lot of questions, yet it needed to. It would be a weird coincidence if their cameras captured every single answer to the forrest's mysteries. This sequel doesn't have that barrier. It could have been the guts to the original's exoskeleton. I've rarely ever seen a sequel fail its audience as much as this did. You learn absolutely nothing more from this movie that you didn't already know from the first one. So what was the point? None. There is no point, even with the movie's fairly decent plot (centering the action in the real world where the "Blair Witch" movie actually was released to theaters). And the ending to the movie? Some bad endings make you groan, some bad endings make you feel that it was completely necessary to the movie. This is the only ending I've seen where the screenwriter is only practicing pure sadism on its characters who do not deserve what happens to them. #8 The Hills Have Eyes, Part II Think they'll remake this one? The remake of the original "Hills" certainly has set it up so. Maybe it will be the decent "Hills" sequel that was teased to us by this hackneyed and ridiculous project (oddly enough, Wes Craven returned to direct this one). This movie is purely just 80's "Friday the 13th" rip off territory, with Michael Berryman returning as Pluto (I guess he survived The Beast) to stalk and kill off a bunch of dirtbikers in the dessert. Ruby returns from the first film as well, but don't expect some kind of showdown between her and her former family members. I guess they thought the blind psychic woman would be a better character for us to follow. A final note. While I was trying to think of a way to end this paragraph, I answered my own question. I went to imdb.com to check something. Slated for 2007, a "Hills Have Eyes II" is in the works. Couldn't be any worse. #9 Sorority House Massacre 2 Here is a movie that is so bad, that the makers of the film don't even know what it is a sequel to!! The opening of the movie has flashbacks supposedly from the original film. How characters thwarted off an attack from a vicious killer. Only the ending they're showing here is the ending for the original "SLUMBER Party Massacre." Slumber, Sorority, I guess there could be some confusion there. It's not like the sequels to either franchises were any good, but dear god. Try to show just a little bit of heart will you. 5 college girls buy an abandoned house to turn it into a sorority. One mistake. They play with a ouija board (home made) inside of it. This movie tries so hard to make us think that one man is really the killer (he all but rapes one of them) while all the time it's some other scumbag on the lot. The original movie wasn't really that good to begin with, but even it didn't deserve this! #10 The Birds II: Land's End Think "Psycho" had it bad when it was remade shot for shot? That's nothing. Does anyone remember this movie? It was made for Showtime in 1994, so you can probably guess that it didn't quite have the visual or intense punch that Hitchcock's classic did. No silent scenes of terror as birds gather and fly through the chimney. Nope, here we have Chelsea Field and family going to an island summer house when they are attacked by vicious killer made for tv birds. And it's got a soundtrack. It lost me at that point, and I even made it past the opening credits where it read "Directed by Alan Smithee." I'd rather watch "Zombie 5: Killing Birds." #11 Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 Granted I do have to admit that seeing Ken Foree in this movie made me smile. When he came onscreen it was like a sort of weight had been lifted after everything horrible I had just seen. But then it came to me that the great Ken Foree was being wasted in a movie that was so devoid of everything that was insanely disturbing about the original film that it just made me mad. And not even Viggo Mortensen as one of the crazed/cooky family members could give me any sort of entertainment. It was bad enough when Leatherface ran around in caves with a chainsaw sticking through his chest in the 2nd movie, but this one actually has him swinging a saw that reads "The Saw Is Family," and the teaser trailer had the saw coming out of a lake like it was Excalibur. This is not "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." This is what happens when they ask themselves how they can make a film worse than part 2. #12 Poltergeist 3 This movie is a real sore spot for me. Everyone has their stories about how the original "Poltergeist" scared the hell out of them as a child. I don't have one of those stories. I didn't see the original until I was in high school. But this piece of garbage, I saw in grade school when I should have been watching something that I could share scare stories about! This was on one of the pay cable channels one night, so I figured I should watch it, there was nothing else on. I did, and I hated the living hell out of it. Watching Heather O'Rourke run through a skyscraper for 90 minutes it not fun! It bored me to tears, and I actually felt like watching a static screen in the hope that maybe something better would be on that channel! And that's why I waited so long to see the original. I was a stupid kid who just didn't really take interest in the very cool original only because this detoured me from it. It made me hate an already awful sequel even more. The funny thing is, I've never actually seen the 2nd one, come to think of it. #13 Slumber Party Massacre 2 Damn, how do I decide if this one is actually worse than the "Sorority House" sequel? Well, atleast this movie knows that it's a sequel to "Slumber Party Massacre" (a flawed as hell but still an okay movie). The problem is that it also thinks that it's a sequel to "A Nightmare on Elm Street"!! It has the killer running around with a power drill to kill scantily clad women, but it's not the same killer as before. No, this killer dresses like a rock star and the drill is located on the end of his guitar. And he only exists in the nightmares of one of the original film's survivors. Naturally the killer comes out of the dream world, and into the real world for no other reason than to kill off the college girls before they get another chance to do a striptease on a conveniently located living room pole. You'd think a dreamland psycho could withstand falling from a house while on flames. He's the black sheep of the Kreuger family. #14 Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Theatrical Version) Anything past Part III was bad. For the most part they were just the standard typical slasher films we were used to seeing, but they didn't have any of the humor, shocks, or entertainment value of most great slashers, bad or good. There was nothing fun about them. They took themselves way too seriously, but instead of going for the scares that the original had, they lined of Jason-style babes to watch Michael kill them. Only the Jason movies knew they were having fun. But installment is different. It's worse because it tries to do something different and fails even worse at doing so. A lot of that isn't the fault of the script or the ideas behind it. I could picture a decent movie being made around a theory that Michael's origins come from a pack of druids (there could be some good camp value in that). Due to Donald Pleasence's death, and a clash between the director and producer, scenes went back to be re-edited until we were left with an ending that made absolutely no sense and seemed to make us think there had actually been a reel of the film missing. Well, we were close. A Producer's Cut of the movie exists (which is only slightly better) that puts back in a lot of the ideas that were put forth in the original intent of the movie, and not this butchered version that exists only to show Michael coming back to kill more people that I don't give a damn about. #15 Friday the 13th, Part V: A New Beginning This movie gets it all wrong from even the box cover. What is with that hockey mask on the cover? Never in the history of a Jason movie has that style of mask been shown. Someone will find this box someday and accidentally assume it's one of those damn "Bloody Murder" movies. But if that was this movie's only problem, then it wouldn't be on the list. I have no quarrels with the fact that Part 4 was called "The Final Chapter." There had to be another one. With the opening set up at the end of Part 4, it made sense for there to be a continuance. But not this one. Not this Fake Jason movie. That's what it is, a Fake Jason movie. When the movie is over, one seriously questions what the point was of making it. When the killer is a mortal, and he clearly dies at the end, how is this a "New Beginning"? This guy is not Jason. He will never be back! He only exists here to waste time before the real deal comes back again, and a what a waste of time it is. It doesn't help that the characters here aren't the fun Jason movie victims we're used to. They're delinquents from a Crystal Lake halfway house. They should have moved their location somewhere else so I wouldn't have to see a movie about them.  |
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