The Next Ten Worst Sequels in Movie History

Okay, recapping 25-15

25. Godfather III
24. Jaws 2
23. Nighmare on Elm Street 2
22. Amityville II
21. Hello Mary Lou, Prom Night II
20. Star Trek V
19. Terminator 3
18. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
17. The Karate Kid III
16. The Exorcist II: The Heretic
15. The Cave Dwellers

Now to continue:

14. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Okay, the Ewan McGregor scenes were okay, and everyone loves to see Christopher Lee; but long term exposure to the Anakin/Amidala "I love you yet I cannot love you plot" has been known to kill housecats and small dogs. Check out the scene where Amidala's top gets ripped in half so that she can sport a Britney Spears-like look. That is the second worst skin-exposure-during-battle moment in film history. The worst? When the bad guy punches the hero of Future War in the face, and KNOCKS OFF HIS SHIRT!

13. Batman Forever. The sequel to this one is coming. Trust me. But this film hurt me. Susan Sontag defined camp as failed seriousness. What do you call failed camp? A film directed by Joel Schumacher. Taking the terminally, tragically divided Harvey Dent/Two-Face and transforming him into a generic psychotic thug is a deep and terrible crime against Batman. Further, the movie does nothing worthwhile with Chris O'Donnell. It's loud and garish, but dull. I ended up turning it off before I could get through it, finally catching the end several months later on cable. A big letdown.

12. Jurassic Park 2. I've never made it all the way to the end of this one. I recall a lot of pseudoscientific rigamarole between Jeff Goldblum and Julianne Moore, and a googleplex of stock disaster movie characters parading by; but after a while I turned away from the movie and looked outside because at least outside things, however mundane, were happening. I saw a man dragging his garbage to the trash and I ENVIED HIM. Piece of Crap.

11. The Mangler 2 This one I haven't seen, but when the director of the movie sinks to writing poorly edited third person defenses of the film in the imdb comments section, you have to know you're in for far more shit than shinola. A little tip, Mr. Wright: when Michael Bay defends his crap on imdb comments, he employs an alias. It doesn't stop people from making fun of him, but it gives people slightly less to make fun of.

10. Bad Boys 2. Some of my memories of this film get mixed in with the original Bad Boys, which contained similar footage of Will Smith running around with his shirt open or off while bathed in saturated yellow hues. (I suppose Michael Bay used the same lighting in a milk commercial or something and just kind of stuck with the style.) Most hateful scenes: the one where the two Bad Boys intimiate the prom date of one of their daughters (they pull guns on him); the gratuitious speedboat chase; and the Hummer crushing the shanty-town scene (people do live in those places, Mr. Bay). I'll say this for Michael Bay, the man can aim a camera. But his films seem to actively hate human beings so much that I really don't give a shit.

9. Under Seige 2. Yes, I know, the originial Under Seige was nothing special either. But Tommy Lee Jones gave a wonderful over-the-top performance as the villain in that one, and Erika Eleniak was easy on the eyes. Its success, sadly, made the sequel inevitable, so we got this piece of crap. Eric Bogosian is the baddie in this movie, and while I really like Eric Bogosian, I ended up feeling sorry for him. Was he thinking, as he read his crummy dialog, that given ten minutes with a laptop he could spin something much richer and more interesting. (Or maybe he was just thinking about the nice house this movie would buy, but we'll get to Michael Caine in Jaws the Revenge shortly.) Steven Seagal beats up a bunch of people on a train, then stops Eric Bogosian from using some satellites to do something mean to somebody. There's your fucking plot summary. Next film.

8. Halloween 5. Or was it 4? They run together after a while. The original Halloween was a touchstone in horror film history, like The Exorcist, Psycho, The Shining, or the first Hammer Horror Dracula. Done fast, cheap, and scary as hell, the Carpenter redefined the genre for the next twenty years. Unfortunately, it also provided commerical justification for this piece of crap. Michael Meyers escapes again and goes off on yet another rampage while Donald Pleasance (between this movie and L'uomo Puma, I'm gussing Pleasance had many, many college educations to pay for) fights to protect a girl with psychic powers who can see into Mike Meyers's mind, or something like that. In the end, Michael Meyers is trapped and once again defeated. Or is he?

7. The Final Conflict. Hey, I'm a big Sam Neill fan. From Reilly: Ace of Spies to The Piano, the guy really is superb, and he should be much more famous than he actually is. James Mason must have spotted the talent in him, because he recommended that Neill play Damien Thorn in the final (uh-huh) chapter of the Omen Trilogy. Neill is okay in the flick, but, oh, Roger Ebert says it best: "In addition to its opening sequence, THE FINAL CONFLICT has one other great scene involving a fox hunt and a plot by the priests of the Italian monastery to lure Damien away from the hunt and kill him. This scene is wonderfully staged and edited. But the movie is otherwise a growing disappointment, as we realize that the apocalyptic confrontation between the forces of good and evil is being reduced to a bunch of guys with Italian accents running around trying to stab Damien in the back." As with most other religious expressions, this film is probably best admired for its music. Everything else about it is pure bullflop.

6. Return to the Blue Lagoon. Okay, remember the original couple from The Blue Lagoon? Apparently, they died on their way back to civilization, but their child lived to be picked up by a passing ship. Sadly, this ship later starts to suffer from the plague, so to save the child, this woman gets on a lifeboat with her adopted child and her natural son and floats back to, BOING, the same island. This is a stroke of luck, because the previous tenants left their infrastructure behind. (I'd have broken it down to build a better raft, but that's why I'm alive and they're dead, I guess.) The mother then drops dead so that the way is clear for the two children to develop into adolesence, discover "bumps" (sorry, I flashed to that Dr. Who parody where the Master, played by the marvelous Jonathan Pryce, explains that his new breasts are, in fact, Dallek bumps, which can detect energy transmissions and...everything.), and otherwise follow the plot of the original film. A line from the MSTified version of Cave Dwellers comes to mind when I think of how they cast this film: "If you can look bored and speak haltingly, you're in."

5. Jaws the Revenge. Yes, this time it was personal, but not in the way the blurb writer meant. I hated this movie, and if I ever get my hands on the sonofabitch who greenlighted it, I'll... Okay, trip this. Remember the shark that Sheriff Brodie blew up in the first Jaws picture? Well, aparently that shark, or a relative of that shark, or a clone of that shark, or a shark who went to middle school with that shark, took offense and decided to hunt down the entire Brodie family. (Not that this involves a lot of hunting. There are only two sons and they both live on coasts. Now, if this fucking shark wanted to impress me, he'd have munched on Sheriff Brodie's shitball fundamentalist cousin in Nebraska.) Killing the first son is easy. He's local, and works on a boat. After that, though, the shark has to get the other son and Mrs. Brodie. How does the shark know where the other Brodie son lives? Bet you'll never guess. Go ahead. Try. Give up? Mrs. Brodie gets on a plane after her son's funeral and flies down to the Carribean, and the shark follows her! Evidently this shark, though bloodthirsty and bent on revenge, remains capable of exploiting his many connections with the upper echelons of the airline industry. Anyway, the shark starts harassing Mrs. Brodie's son, which makes it slightly harder for a local pilot (Michael Caine) to put the moves on her. Eventually, to prevent further death, Mrs. Brodie goes out to sea to sacrifice herself while having flashbacks to events in Jaws that she wasn't around to see. Caine and Brodie's kid fly out to rescue her, crash, but end up getting into the boat, shark notwithstanding. Then some random things happen that end with the shark impaling himself on the prow of the boat, roaring his death agony(!) At the end, the Michael Caine character threatens to tell another story, and everyone moves, leaving no forwarding address.