The Twenty-Five Worst Sequels In Movie History (Well, Ten of them anyway)

Entertainment Weekly put up their list, which to the best of my knowledge is not available on-line (sigh). Here's mine:

25. The Godfather Part III. Who'd have thought the Corleone family could be so dull? I tried three times to make it through this movie before I gave up.

24. Jaws 2. The other Jawses will be along shortly, and this one is as low on the list as it is only because it's hard to remember any of the characters in it. (Spoiler: The shark eats a lot of them.)

23. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2. This movie I remember mainly because they showed it at Tracy Empey's birthday party in 1986--the first birthday party I was ever invited to. (I also had a bit of a crush on Ms. Empey. She looked great in that Tzeitel costume in Fiddler.) This movie was an okay bit of amusement at the party, largely because we were encouraged to mock the proceedings as they unfolded on-screen. We formed sort of an impromptu MST3K, saying things like "When she said 'slip me your pickle, she didn't mean that.'" (Those who've seen the movie know which shot I'm talking about.) Fundamentally, the movie is just more cheesy than it is scary.

22. Amityville II: The Possession. No one has ever hated anything as much as I hated this movie. The only reason it's not higher on the list is that a higher position might encourage people to watch this miserable, steaming pile of offal. I usually step off when I see the opening credits, but sometimes I make it all the way to the casual incest scene. (The older brother asks his younger sister to take her clothes off so that he can snap photos of her and SHE JUST DOES IT?!? This family was diseased before it was possessed.) The movie manages the amazing trick of being both offensive and dull.

21. Hello, Mary Lou. Prom Night II. Less offensive than Amityville, but just as boring. I only saw it because they were running it before The Shining on a Halloween night some years back. It's basically a warmed over Exorcist plot (a trait it shares with Amityville II, come to think of it) where lots of thirty-year old teenagers get naked and die in the most boring ways.

20. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. While it is true that Generations, Insurrection, and Nemesis were all pretty mediocre films (note to Paramount: forget the whole even/odd thing. One word titles just aren't lucky for this franchise), this one is the bad one everyone remembers and the reason why Dennis Miller's "Star Trek VI: The Apology" joke spread so far and wide. Nimoy says he warned Shatner during pre-production that the story was bad, but Shatner, in perhaps the world's first George W. Bush imitation, ploughed ahead, assuring everyone that it was going to work. Well it didn't. And the lousy special effects, forced by the rushed production schedule, failed to make the story look better than it was. Ugly.

19. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. A great moment in The Princess Bride is when the kid, hearing that the hero is dead and that the evil Prince is going to live, cries, "Jesus, Grandpa, what did you read me this thing for?" I felt the same way at the end of Terminator 3. This movie did not seem to appreciate that in Terminator 2 the stakes changed. We were no longer interested so much in whether John Connor died. We were interested in whether we were going to die. Once this movie tells me that John Connor and his girlfriend get to live while my future involves being launched into the stratosphere and spread over a wide area, I'm sorry but I really can't express glee. And the future's not even so great for John Connor. He and the rest of humanity get to fight an endless war against an implacable computerized enemy. If that's what survival is all about, who needs it? I don't mind depressing cinema. We're all headed for a pretty ugly end some way or other and it's worth some thinking about. But movie romances don't lend themselves to those kinds of thoughts. It's like ending a fairy tale by saying, "And then the black knight killed Galahad, raped the virtuous Maid Enyde, and drove her into a life of degradation, alcoholism and prostitution. She died, naked and filthy, in hovel, rotten with syphillis and choking on her own vomit. Sweet dreams." Yeah, thanks Arnold.

18. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Nothing of any importance really happens in this movie. None of the characters arouse more than a flicker of interest, and every time one theatens to do so, Jar Jar Binks jumps into upstage them. Now I'd have tolerated Jar Jar's presence if he'd been either narratively important or remotely competent. He was neither, so I wanted him to die in a messy accident.

17. The Karate Kid III. During the first Karate Kid movie, I'm sure all Mr. Miyagi figured was that he'd teach this dumb Jersey kid a few moves and get some household chores done in exchange. Okay, maybe a friendship would develop. Then the kid would go out into the world, maybe dropping Miyagi a postcard or e-mail now and then. A wedding invitation or godfathership was not out of the question. A life sentence of rescuing Daniel Laruso from a never-ending series of contrived problems with bullies probably never occurred to Miyagi. Or us. And they don't get more contrived than they do here. See, the guy who ran the evil dojo whose students lost in the tournament to Daniel in the first movie goes to a friend who promises to help him get revenge and his business back. This involves bringing in a karate ringer and then convincing Daniel to re-enter the tournament and defend his title. Then, the reasoning goes, the ringer can beat up Daniel in the middle of the ring for all to see, and in this way, Mr. Evil Dojo gets more students. (Why this would work, I don't know; but I'm not really in a position to speculate on the psychopathology of karate tournament spectators.) Since Daniel won't sign, however, the ringer has to threaten him, Mr. Miyagi, and Daniel's friend until Daniel signs. It's called extortion, and you can go to prison for it; but does anyone call the police, or have security cameras installed, or anything? Of course not. Instead it all comes down to Daniel learning an even more unanswerable karate move from Miyagi so that he can win the tournament again.

16. The Exorcist II: The Heretic. John Boorman has made some wonderful films, as had Richard Burton. This is not one of them. The movie wants to contemplate the nature of evil and the power of good, but ultimately it's more about seeing Linda Blair's nipples and Richard Burton's sweat. And the less said about James Earl Jones dressed as a grasshopper the better.

15. The Cave Dwellers. Like Satan, this film is known by many names--The Blade Master and Ator L'invincibile 2 among them. It's the story of a really boring old man who shows his hot valley girl daughter his invention, which is everything and nothing. Everything and Nothing must be defended lest a man with a bird shaped hat use it to do something evil. So the valley girl must go to Ator, who gained his fame in the first movie by fighting the worlds largest velour spider puppet. Mr. Bird Hat attacks the boring old guy's castle, but even though the old man makes no attempt to hide Everything and Nothing, Bird Hat can't seem to locate it. Valley Girl runs to the Ends of the Earth to find Ator, and well, the rest of the movie is about them coming back. Along the way, they fight mimes and guys in wicker armor, encounter invisible villains, duel heart eating cannibals, and battle the best looking man in the middle ages. Eventually, Ator hang glides over the castle, carpet bombing it to clear it of guards, then fights the climactic battle with Mr. Bird Hat. A fun movie if you have a bunch of friends or the MST3K boys to watch it with.

I'd go on, but these memories are all painful to one degree or other. The next ten at a later date. Cheerio!