1988: The Year When Sequels Came Out to Shine!

wow this is a list full of garbage except for The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years.

voted cocoon 2, obviously, and just learned that the movie poster featured the iconic "this holiday season" structure:

https://i.imgur.com/1mmWH3j.jpg

cocoon: the return my ass, it's cocoon 2

Critters 2 i think

I will rep for Nightmare 4, which is my personal favorite of the franchise. I cannot in good conscience rep for a single other one of these I've seen. A couple are...okay but as praise goes it's both faint and damning.

Surely you can understand why I felt it important to give everyone a month to hash this one out. I expect it to be a very popular topic of conversation.

Is Nightmare 4 the one with the pizza killing and the one scene that loops over and over? If so, I'll give it to that for sheer novelty. Most of these were late-80s cable-filler of the lowest grade, though; Caddyshack 2, in particular, has to be one of the most joyless sequels ever produced.

No, that's Nightmare 5, which has a couple of decent scenes/ideas but is overall hot garbage.

Nightmare 4 is the one where Freddy is brought back to life via a stream of flaming dog piss.

Cocoon: The Return for Knee Replacement

only saw Metal Years out of these ... and not until a few years ago in Chicago, with gr8080!

Nightmare 4 IS the one with the pizza scene and the Sherlock Jr. reference and the roach motel and the flaming dog piss and invisible kung-fu Freddy and the scene that keeps looping over and over. I'm with OL in that one being my personal favorite of the franchise.

Critters 2 and Return of the Killer Tomatoes both better than they have any right being.

Okay, I clearly need to revisit Nightmare 4.

5 is just straight-up bad, then.

If you can forgive the author's inelegant prose (and the 90s-grade web design), this series of write-ups on the Nightmare films has some thoughtful insights into the movies (his take on The Dream Child is especially interesting): https://web.archive.org/web/20090204002638/http://cc.usu.edu/~alexjack/viddiedreviews/nightmare1.html

I will check that out!

As I feel the need to repeat anytime the topic is broached (however elliptically): 1-4 = good to great, 5-7 = bad to wretched. Don't recall thinking much of his tussle with Vorhees, either, but it's been a minute.

Absolutely essential supplementary viewing re: Nightmare 4: https://www.timidfutures.com/2019/10/fred-old-boy-mtv-freddy-krueger-special-1988/

I clearly should've just started a thread for that movie since that's all I'm going to talk about.

But I thought, hey, let's give those Arthur 2 fans a chance to make their case.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/7172a4c95d59a6a89d69538747a5f1cf/9082c21c6b52f3a4-25/s400x600/768d3ca31983b7682cdc6178e0f7ac4ed7594117.gifv

LOOOOOL, how on earth did I already forget that.

Andy Breckman, a very funny fellow (creator of "Monk"), wrote Arthur 2, and Dudley Moore insisted it would've been good if they had filmed the script.

I am familiar with Mr. Breckman and his work but let's all be real for the moment about the prospects of Arthur 2 ever being good.

I voted for Short Circuit 2 because all I remembered was “lol that’s where gold-painted johnny 5 got US citizenship” and then looked it up on wikipedia to remember the test of the plot and oh right the lead character was in brownface *puts head into both hands*

Kinda wondering how johnny 5 voted in 2016 though

Christ, I remembered the brownface, but forgot how they changed his last name from the original to the sequel. Just all sorts of awfulness.

I've never seen it but am curious about Big Top Pee-Wee.

Hellraiser II is actually good.

I don't like Decline...the Metal Years because I feel like Spheeris doesn't respect the bands as much as she did in the first one, and that comes through (IME people who don't like metal enjoy it a lot more than people who do).

Like there was enough awareness to change the character's last name to be less offensive, but not enough to feel ashamed about the brownface? Just.. wow.

Oh yeah, sorry: Hellraiser II actually is good. So that's another I'll give a thumbs up.

Big Top Pee-wee...I don't remember liking it much as a kid, so I have a hard time believing I'd feel otherwise now. A big step down from Big Adventure (and yes, pedants, I know it probably isn't technically a sequel but (gestures) look what I had to work with here).

The only scehe I can remember from BTPW:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3K4VtyM3xg

Hellraiser II is good and truly horrifying, but also so gross and unpleasant that thinking about some of the stuff in it makes me physically ill.
Jason VII is pretty fun because it is basically just Carrie vs. Jason, but its weirdly bloodless for a 80s slasher (had to look up to confirm it wasn't rated PG-13, which it wasn't, but it seems like it could have been).
Ultimately, have to go with Nightmare 4 because it is my fave Freddy for all the reasons delineated upthread and also a key entry in Renny Harlin's glittering filmography.

Critters 2, otoh, is one about which I DO have fond childhood memories but having rewatched it recently...hoo boy.

i tend to go either way on nightmare 4 when i watch it. some of the dream setpieces are incredible. the way it dispatches the remaining dream warriors from the previous film... sucks. it was very obviously completed during a writers' strike. harlin still does some cool things with the camera

this is either phantasm ii or hellraiser ii for me

oh wait, sorry

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

missed my favorite movie of all time

Jason VII is pretty fun because it is basically just Carrie vs. Jason, but its weirdly bloodless for a 80s slasher (had to look up to confirm it wasn't rated PG-13, which it wasn't, but it seems like it could have been).

it was totally destroyed by the mpaa! i've seen the workprint footage!!!

fright night 2 and sleepaway camp 2 are also great horror sequels, wow this WAS a great year

LOL, leave it to Brad to turn it all around.

Glad you're back, btw!

Sleepaway Camp II also is the first and only leading role (apart from the sequels) for Pamela Springsteen, which is my favorite mismatched celebrity relative stunt casting this side of J.D. Salinger's son playing the lead in Albert Pyun's Captain America.

I have not knowingly omitted anything from this list, which aims to represent a full accounting of the film sequels released in 1988.

excuse fucking you

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0092/3025/4180/products/PoliceStory_front_800x.jpg?v=1571078247

KNOW-ING-LY

Many of us are cursed with brains like sieves, sic. Have pity.

Besides, it should be clear that nothing released by Criterion belongs on this list.

The Man From Snowy River II (released as Return To Snowy River in the US) fits better amongst this list, so I'll FP you for racism as well

I saw Ernest Saves Christmas and Caddyshack 2 in the theater. guess I really wanted to go to the movies....

Arright, since sic is just gonna keep giving me the business for omissions and oversights, I suppose it's time to dig deep and issue an errata, starting with the following:

Powaqquatsi
Biloxi Blues
Splash, Too
Outlaw of Gor
Karate Warrior II
Strike Commando 2
Bat*21
The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission
Two Moon Junction
'Gator Bait 2: Cajun Justice
The Seventh Sign
Woman in a Box II
18 Again!
L.A. Crackdown II
Eight Men Out
El Lute II: Tomorrow I'll Be Free
Track 29
Wrestlemania IV

Hope I got 'em all that time.

I only mentioned Police Story 2 because COME ON, but what about The Crazy Companies II and The Romancing Star II?

My god...how did I forget those beloved classics?

Mods, plz revoke my ability to poll shitty movies, for the good of the community, thank u

hey, The Romancing Star II made $17 milli in three weeks and got a theatrical sequel a year later, that's more belovedness than Return Of The Killer Tomatoes (5 mil total, DTV sequel two years later)

But did The Romancing Star franchise spawn a cartoon series or toy line? DIDN'T THINK SO.

anyway here's what I've seen of these, maybe:

Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach
- loved Police Academies earlier, probably took a cue from Guttenberg and dipped by now, but it's the sort of thing my dad might have rented due to assuming I still cared

Crocodile Dundee II
- pretty sure I didn't bother with this either, detecting that it was just the first one played in reverse, but could have been a family view

Short Circuit 2
- no recollection of anything about it but liked the first one thoroughly enough that I probably checked it out

Fright Night Part 2
- almost certain I saw projected outside at a boy scouts' jamboree, but it MAY have been the first. either way, probably the first horror film I ever saw, which I was not enthused about, but it turned out to mainly be a comedy just realised I was thinking of House 2

Rambo III
- saw on in-motel-room VHS rental, where you had to rent the machine as well, with c.10 other schoolboys who already had BIG ENTHUSIASM about Rambo. was absolutely repelled by the ethics, the narrative, and the cutting style, largely putting me off Stallone for life

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years
- fucking banger. Spheeris definitely doesn't respect the bands as much as in the first one, but one gets the feeling that she respected them just fine until she actually started interviewing the people in them. The interviews seem to support the message of the bands in the first one, so the two are more integrated. In II, the bands are meant to be ridiculous and funny, but the people turn out to be ridiculous and funny in a different tone; it's not beholden to Spheeris to not communicate that.

lol at Bat*21, Two Moon Junction, The Seventh Sign, 18 Again, Eight Men Out and Track 29 btw

Forgot Tanner 88 tbf (the equal of the eighty seven precious installments afaic).

it had ten sequels in 1988 alone, that's a win on belovedness

Besides, it should be clear that nothing released by Criterion belongs on this list.

Decades of grumbling about how Hong Kong gets no love from Criterion because its cinema is unabashedly trashy and joyful and now poor Jackie doesn't get to go out to play with Ernest Saves Christmas anymore because he's got Criterion cooties :(

oh yeah decline ii is fucking amazing, sic otm

Phantasm II towers above this pile of shite

i wrote a still-incomplete essay about friday the 13th part vii for a reading that a few ilxors were at, one of whom even watched the movie afterward and didn't enjoy it (lol). but it's my favorite friday the 13th movie; i used to find it boring because i only watched the friday the 13th movies in long marathons and part vii really suffers coming after the unbridled comic book energy of part vi, it's moody and dour and a little boring and in the series it's the most cynical about being a friday the 13th movie this side of part v: a new beginning, jason weaving a totally nonsensical path around crystal lake (to the point where you suspect he's capable of teleportation), just mowing through people who barely have any relation to the plot

the thing is tina is great. i love tina. she's the reason the new blood is the friday the 13th movie with the greatest depth, whether intentional or not. she's obviously modeled after carrie but is so her own character that i never make the association on purpose. still feeling residual guilt over (accidentally, psychically) murdering her father when she was a kid, relentlessly gaslit and emotionally abused by her psychiatrist, her feelings ignored/feared by her mother, she awakens jason and he becomes an agent of her unconscious, the part of her mind that is always screaming and wishing that everyone would just die. tina's brief psychic flashes of people being murdered are among the most horrifying shots in the series, especially when she's driving down a dirt road and sees jason skewering her mother in the center of it, a total nightmare invading reality. that these visions of death don't actually match up visually with the deaths in the movie actually makes it better and sadder; tina knows what's going to happen but is powerless to stop it because she'll never know when or how it'll happen. also there's a dreamy late-'80s softness to the look of the movie, like crystal lake is wrapped up in a big wool sweater. there are things about it that i'd change, mostly to do with the ending (which there's actually a better version of but it only exists as grainy workprint footage) and the mpaa's butchering of the kills (even though they actually improved the famous sleeping bag kill by requesting cuts until it was down to one shot; jason whips the body against the tree so many times in the original edit that it gets goofy). but my love for tina overcomes them all!!!!

Sleepaway Camp 2

wait no, Hellraiser 2

i watched sleepaway camp 2 the other night and it's the best

pamela springsteen is incredible in both sequels, so much contagious glee in the murder scenes

Little known trivia: Wilfred Brimley was only 34 during the filming of Cocoon: The Return.

he was also 7'4

sequels released in 1988. Banner year. Banner year.

I see what you did there.

http://aflcionc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/I-voted-sticker.jpg

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wow

decline 2 is amazing i can't deny it

Decline II is streaming free on Pluto TV f y'all's i

sorry i missed this thread, wow what a lineup.

is short circuit 2 the one where Johnny 5 falls under bad influences and joins an urban gang called "Los Locos" ? ugh

amazingly, SC2 may be the only one of these i actually saw as a VHS rental. and somehow the only other ones i've seen are Outlaw of Gor (thanks to MST3K - it's dreck) and Return of the Killer Tomatoes (which isn't as good as the first, but at least has some goofy charm, and George Clooney).

also lol at The Dirty Dozen getting a sequel called "The Fatal Mission." spoilers for the original film but that seems a bit redundant.

i've heard good things about Eight Men Out, kind of impressed they kept the franchise going that long, though obviously eight movies in the cast is looking a little bit ragged around the edges.

is short circuit 2 the one where Johnny 5 falls under bad influences and joins an urban gang called "Los Locos" ? ugh

― Doctor Casino, Thursday, September 17, 2020 7:55 AM bookmarkflaglink

it's also the second movie where Fisher Stevens played an Indian man whose last name inexplicably changed between films

I'm tempted to poll the Los Locos cheer, but who am I kidding, of course "kick your balls into ou-ter space" would win.