Once Paramount Pictures resurrected Jason Voorhees with lightning in Jason Lives, the franchise was running out of options for subsequent sequels. But increasingly ridiculous sequel setups weren’t the biggest problem for Friday the 13th. Audiences were losing interest and, as a result, Jason Takes Manhattan saw declining box office receipts. By 1993, New Line Cinema […]
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If Silent Night, Deadly Night is something of a Grindhouse cult classic, its sequel inexplicably became a belated meme classic. What you may not know is that the sequels kept coming. Like other B-level horror franchises, Silent Night, Deadly Night lived on with a handful of straight-to-video sequels. Bill Moseley (The Devil’s Rejects) turned up […]
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Following V/H/S: Viral, the found-footage anthology series took an extended break until last Halloween season. Horror-streaming platform Shudder released V/H/S/94 to a strong critical response and record-setting viewership. Not surprisingly, Shudder promptly announced yet another sequel also set in the 1990s – V/H/S/99. And it makes sense – how could the horror anthology series miss […]
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No, the Child’s Play franchise isn’t as successful as Friday the 13th, Halloween, or A Nightmare on Elm Street. Yet its history might be more interesting. And Don Mancini’s creation has shown remarkable longevity. Following a ‘so so’ remake, Mancini got a new series off the ground last year that’s actually pretty damn good. With […]
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Though the Alien franchise started nearly a decade earlier, the Predator series has followed a similar trajectory. Thirty-five years later, the original Predator remains one of the best sci-fi/action movies of all time. Yet despite its best efforts, 20th Century Studios hasn’t been able to catch lightning in a bottle. Neither audiences nor critics bought […]
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A decade passed between what was supposed to be the end, Scream 3, and Wes Craven re-visiting his creation in 2011 with Scream 4. Plenty had changed in the horror genre and Craven found a new voice for his belated sequel. Yet despite better-than-expected results, audiences largely stayed away. Ultimately, Scream 4 was the lowest […]
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After over 40 years, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remains among the most influential horror movies ever made. Tobe Hooper’s classic is the rare example of a movie that has lost none of its ability to shock with time. Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street – each of these movies owes some debt […]
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As an individual movie, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remains among the greatest horror movies produced. Unfortunately, the legacy of its sequels, prequels, and remakes is checkered. In between Hooper’s misunderstood sequel and the crater-sized disaster that was Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, New Line Pictures took a more straightforward approach to the […]
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