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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To date, The Howling remains one of the best werewolf movies ever made. What you may know is that The Howling was followed be several sequels. Like The Puppet Master or Children of the Corn, The Howling spawned a seemingly never-ending series of straight-to-video sequels. Unlike those B-level franchises, The Howling sequels have absolutely no […]
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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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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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Here we go, again. When Halloween found success going back to basics, it was only a matter of time before other horror franchises followed. Technically, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre already went this route. Before we were calling them legacy sequels or ‘re-quels’, the awful Texas Chainsaw 3D positioned itself as a direct follow-up to the […]
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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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Based on Clive Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart and made on a relatively small budget, Hellraiser surprised enough at the box office to earn an immediate sequel. Its follow-up, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, performed a little below its predecessor at the box office. In addition, critics were less impressed with the results this time around. Not […]
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