Horror Movie Primer: Sequels

By Rhea Dee
October is a wonderful month. Why? Because it’s the best month to veg out and enjoy horror cinema! Unfortunately, basic cable has little variation in their horror movie rotation–I dunno about you, but I can only watch Halloween 4 so many times before I want to gouge out my eyeballs Fulci style.

So I decided to create a horror film primer: an introduction into some of my favorite horror films, and horror niches. And I can guarantee that Halloween and none of its sequels show up on my lists. Not that I have anything against Halloween, but come on. So effing predictable.

Sequels

Sequels are a fact of life for most financially successful horror films. Unfortunately, most all of them suck.

But there are the rare few that manage to impress. And while they don’t outshine the original (after all, their whole existence is based on a previous film) these films managed to at least step out of the shadow of their predecessor to become respected films on their own.

1. Evil Dead II

Evil Dead II is actually quite an oddball, as far as sequels are concerned. Sam Raimi, the director of both films, couldn’t get the rights to the footage of the first film. So Evil Dead II is part sequel…and part remake. So instead of jumping right into what happened after the first film, Raimi had to dedicate 15-20 minutes telling a truncated version of how Ash (Bruce Campbell) got to the cabin in the woods, before he could jump into the sequel part of the film.

Luckily, the remake aspect of Evil Dead II didn’t drag the film down. And once the sequel stuff gets going, the movie really takes off–Raimi manages to make the scares still scary even though the movie is in the exact same setting as the first.

Raimi also gave himself more comedic freedom with this film. While the first film is funny, it’s more of a dark, nihilistic funny that makes people give me weird looks when I laugh at it. The humor in this film is way more slapstick, with obvious sight gags and hilarious one liners (“Groovy”, anybody?). Come, bask in the glory of the days when Raimi was good at filmmaking (and also relevant).

2. Hostel II

Poor Eli Roth. He gets such a bad rap for these supposed “torture porn” films (a phrase I detest, by the way–anybody who uses this phrase to describe a “trend” in modern horror cinema probably needs to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre again) that everybody just assumes that his Hostel films are nothing more than glorified gore fests.

Well, okay, they are gore fests. But really, Eli Roth is just a director who makes exploitation films that critique exploitation. And contrary to the whole “torture porn trend” that he supposedly started–this kind of cinema is nothing new (Roth frequently cites Cannibal Holocaust as an influence, and that is like the messiah of exploitation films about exploitation).

But I’m not being totally honest here: I didn’t like Hostel all that much when I first saw it. In fact, I was bored to tears. I think I actually said to one of my friends that there was “too much boob, not enough death.” He of course, had no problem with the boob/death ratio.

Because of my blah feelings towards Hostel , I didn’t have any interest in watching Hostel II. When I finally rented it on DVD about a year ago, I realized how dumb of a decision that was.

Hostel II just might actually surpass the first film in quality. Eli Roth admitted in interviews that there were a lot of questions about the Elite Hunting torture agency in the first film, and he wanted to explore that better in this film. Also this time around, the hostel guests were girls instead of guys. With that shift, I think Roth was able to make an effective critique on the buying and selling of women’s bodies, which was fascinating.

In fact, the scariest part of the film for me had no gore in it. When the girls first arrive at the hostel, there is a series of overlapping scenes that show the girls laughing and talking as the head up to their room, while also showing the rich bastards bidding on the girls for the possibility to kill them later. The cold exchange of people bidding to take other people’s lives is chilling.

3. Return of the Living Dead II

Return of the Living Dead scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. Even though it was a horror comedy, I couldn’t see past the scary elements. I remember watching it with my Dad, frozen in fear, while he howled with laughter. I much preferred the overtly funny Return of the Living Dead II to the former, because the funny bits made it much less scary.

Over time, I began to appreciate the original’s sense of humor, but I still prefer Return of the Living Dead II. I told one of my friends this once, and he told me that the reason he didn’t like it was that he thought it was too silly.

Okay, yes, the second one is more silly (at one point, an old lady zombie crawls out of the grave and has to put on her glasses because she can’t see) but that doesn’t mean that’s it’s totally devoid of the caustic humor that made the first film such a hit. My favorite bit in the second film is when the lead girl brings her boyfriend (who is slowly turning into a zombie) to the doctor. After a quick (and hilarious) examination, the girl asks the Doctor: “Oh, God, is it cancer?”

To which the Doctor replies: “If we’re lucky.”

4. Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Uh, what was that I said about no Halloween’s showing up on my list? Although, this could almost technically not count as a Halloween: this was the only sequel that did not feature Michael Myers. It was also the best sequel Halloween ever had.

The Michael Myers mystery/storyline was perfected in the first film, directed by the wonderful John Carpenter. In that film, Myers was just a boogeyman. It didn’t matter who he was. He was the boogeyman. Done deal. The expansion of the character’s mythology in the subsequent movies effectively killed any sort of cool that Myers had.

Halloween III tried to break out of the Myers mold, partly because of Carpenter’s wish that the Myers plot be laid to rest. The movie focuses on a cult’s determination to kill the world’s children through their Silver Shamrock Halloween masks. When the kid puts it on and watches a super special Silver Shamrock commercial on October 31st, they die. Happy Halloween!

Despite providing a chilling apocalyptic storyline, Halloween III bombed at the box office, leading execs to go back to where the money was at for the next sequel: Michael Myers. What’s left is a film without Michael Myers, yes, but also one of the most original sequels ever made. Also, once you watch it that stupid Silver Shamrock jingle will be stuck in your head forever. Now that’s impressive.

Rhea Dee spends her time collecting vintage junk, daydreaming about Eli Roth, and pondering the genius of John Carpenter soundtracks.  She really likes horror films.

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