Category Archives: 13 Days of Sequels

13 Days of Sequels

13 Days of Sequels: MANIAC COP 2

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With 13 Days of Sequels I’ll be reviewing horror sequels every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.

Also, full disclosure: this is a reprint of a piece I’d already written about Maniac Cop 2, for Shit Movie Fest’s Shitmas 2015. The original can be found on Shit Movie Fest’s site here. I highly recommend popping over and checking out their great site.

Sequels — especially ones of the action or horror ilk — seem to follow an unofficial yet unanimously agreed upon belief that they need to be bigger and badder than their predecessor in every conceivable aspect. If the first film had a car chase, the sequel should have three. Was there an explosion in the first one? Well now the follow up has no less than ten. The body count should triple, the nudity should double, and hell, why not introduce a completely arbitrary character if only to add to the insanity? Logic usually falls by the wayside in order to accommodate these new cranked-to-11 rules, but we the viewers are usually too awestruck to notice. Continue reading 13 Days of Sequels: MANIAC COP 2 →

13 Days of Sequels

13 Days of Sequels: PET SEMATARY II

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With 13 Days of Sequels I’ll be reviewing horror sequels every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.

Also, full disclosure: this is a reprint of a piece I’d already written about Pet Sematary II, which can be found in its original format here.

It can’t be easy making a sequel.

There are so many things you have to consider when crafting a follow-up: does it continue following the ‘rules’ set forth in the original film? Does it follow those rules yet subvert expectations? Will it appease the original film’s rabid fanbase while still offering something for people new to the series? Is it bigger and better than the first, but not so much so as to make a (inevitable) third entry a moot point? There are so many things to consider, one would think to skip the sequel route altogether. But then if we did that, we’d have no Jason X, Seed of Chucky, or Jaws: The Revenge, and the world would be a lot less fun. Continue reading 13 Days of Sequels: PET SEMATARY II →

13 Days of Sequels

13 Days of Sequels: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2

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With 13 Days of Sequels I’ll be reviewing horror sequels every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.

It’s funny how you can watch a movie ten or twenty times – blindly enjoying it more and more with each viewing – before you start picking up on certain stuff. When I re-watched A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge this past weekend, I came to realize two pretty big things.

Firstly, the whole movie is really bizarre, to the point where I almost think it’s intended to play as a legit horror-comedy, like Student Bodies or Evil Dead II – not “so bad it’s funny”, but a horror movie with an intentional comedic streak. And no, I’m not talking about the whole gay subtext thing – while that does illicit a few chuckles, I actually really like it as a running theme, even in its not-so-subtle read between the (very obvious) lines approach. It gives the movie layers.

No, the oddness I’m talking about is much more consciously goofy. Continue reading 13 Days of Sequels: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2 →

13 Days of Sequels

13 Days of Sequels: FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2

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With 13 Days of Sequels I’ll be reviewing horror sequels every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.

Believe it or not, Friday the 13th Part 2, like many a sequel, was borne of financial motivations. That is to say, the version of Friday the 13th Part 2 as we know it.

Originally, producers had intended for the Friday the 13th franchise to continue, but in an anthology-style format where each successive movie follows a different storyline, the only constant being that they all take place on that unlucky day. (If this sounds a lot like John Carpenter’s approach to the Halloween franchise, it’s because, well, it is. You’ll notice a lot of parallels before this is over.)

In fact, the infamous ending of Friday the 13th wherein Jason pops up out of the water wasn’t even in the original script – it was suggested last minute by make-up effects maestro Tom Savini who was working on the picture. He had just seen Carrie and thought Friday could benefit from a similar last minute jolt. Victor Miller, who wrote Friday the 13th, was against the idea – he wanted only to focus on Pamela Voorhees, the mother who would do anything for her child – even kill. According to Miller, “Jason was dead from the very beginning. He was a victim, not a villain.” Continue reading 13 Days of Sequels: FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 →

13 Days of Sequels

13 Days of Sequels: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2

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With 13 Days of Sequels I’ll be reviewing horror sequels every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that innocent, wide-eyed naïveté of which all outside stimuli is consumed and filtered through when you’re a child. The uncritical, accepting fondness for something, simply from not having the knowledge or reference point of anything else.

I enjoy being a somewhat jaded, somewhat snobbish free-thinking adult who is able to analyze and interpret the art and media he consumes – but man, I do look back on those early days of watching movies without judgment fondly. That sort-of unrealized thought process of, y’know, “just throw whatever at me now and let me figure it out in 15 or 20 years when I’m all grown up”. And it’s clear to me now that my open-minded opinion on certain films exists only because I devoured them on an empty head – for which I’m incredibly grateful. Continue reading 13 Days of Sequels: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 →

13 Days of Sequels

13 Days of Sequels: SCREAM 2

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With 13 Days of Sequels I’ll be reviewing horror sequels every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.

“There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to create a successful sequel.”

This is what Scream 2‘s resident horror nerd (and proxy survival-anecdotalist), Randy (Jamie Kennedy), utters when it comes to light that a copycat Ghostface killer is murdering the residents of Woodsboro once again. And with the utterance of this line, the already-meta Scream franchise instantly protects its sequel from any trope or pitfall sequels usually fall victim to. In fact, it’s so smart and savvy of a movie, that it’s almost more fun to watch for the playful, self-referential material than it is the murder mystery at the core of the picture. Continue reading 13 Days of Sequels: SCREAM 2 →