80s Sequels that DGAF
Nothing was sacred.
Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) d: Deborah Brock
Hello, Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) d: Bruce Pittman
Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985) d: Philippe More
Return of the Living Dead (1985) d: Dan O’Bannon
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986): Tobe Hooper
How do you follow up a terrifying horror classic? In the case of these sequels, you dial up the crazy and do whatever the hell you want. This list is in order of smallest to largest tone shift from the original.
Slumber Party Massacre the First is a classic slasher that wanted to be more ahead of its time, but ended up mostly conforming to strict genre tropes (it’s still a lot of fun, don’t get me wrong). If you haven’t seen it – an escaped inmate stalks and murders scantily clad teens using a power drill. Slumber Party Massacre II says…why don’t we make this a musical? And the drill is now part of a guitar! And the killer is a ghost? Or something! It’s silly nonsense and some of the musical numbers are actual bops. This movie skews much more toward satire (even borrowing rockabilly aesthetics from the satire of all high school satires, Grease), perhaps in an attempt to honor the original vision for the first film. Or maybe they just wanted a laugh.
When you think of Jamie Lee Curtis you obviously think of Halloween, but you don’t get to be queen of screams through just one franchise. Among her many delicious horror roles, she starred as Kim in Prom Night, a fun but conventional teen slasher. And then we get Hello, Mary Lou: Prom Night II. The main thing you’ll notice if you watch these films back to back is that other than occurring at the same high school, they have basically nothing to do with each other, and that’s by design. This movie was originally written as a standalone film (called The Haunting of Hamilton High), but they reworked the title to capitalize on Prom Night’s success. It trades out the knife-wielding stalker for a vengeful spirit and possessed prom dresses. There’s more than a dash of Carrie here, but is so unabashedly unserious that it develops its own unhinged identity.
It is common lycanthrope knowledge that 1981 was the best year of all time for werewolf movies. Both American Werewolf in London and The Howling were released, Rick Baker and Rob Bottin dueling it out for their special effects transformations (Rick Baker actually left production of The Howling to work on American Werewolf – drama!). The Howling certainly has dark comic beats, but nothing about it will prepare you for its incredible sequel, incredibly named, Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (also sometimes called Stirba – Werewolf Bitch yassssssss). I don’t mind going on the record to say this is the greatest werewolf movie of all time, complete with the greatest werewolf sex scene of all time. Because the hair kept falling off due to, ahem, friction, the (three) actors were told by the director: “Try to have sex and not touch each other.” Are you not intrigued??? If that’s not enough for you, the glam-punk werewolf fashion is also off the charts. And if that’s STILL not enough for you, Christopher Lee is in this movie, wearing these sunglasses.
Christopher Lee, literal Knight and WWII spy
Do I need to write a blurb about Night of the Living Dead? Of course I don’t. You know it, everyone knows it. What you might not know is that the copyright was accidentally deleted from early releases, leading to a complex sequel arrangement (check out the documentary Birth of the Living Dead for a full history). George A. Romero and John Russo wrote Night of the Living Dead together. They parted ways after that movie, with Russo keeping any rights to titles featuring the term “Living Dead.” Russo brought in Dan O’Bannon (yep, the guy that wrote Alien) to direct Return of the Living Dead, and he re-wrote the working script to make it even more distinct from Night of the Living Dead. And he certainly succeeded. Return is a hilarious, goofy, punk ride. It has characters named Trash and Scuz. Everything is slapstick and gooey and irreverent and paradoxically bursting with zany life. While not as important to seminal zombie lore as Night (I mean, what could be), it’s important contribution is brainsssssss (i.e. the concept that zombies specifically eat brains, and can talk about it). It’s hard to make a sequel more tonally different from its predecessor, though not impossible……
Which takes us to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. How do you follow up one of the most terrifying, harrowing film experiences of all time? You can’t. So director Tobe Hooper went allll the way wacky with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, spoofing his own movie. Look at that movie poster, it’s a goddamn parody of the Breakfast Club. Hooper claims that there’s some ironic humor in the original that he was trying to showcase in this sequel, which….ok, man, you’re the director. Even he seems a bit bewildered by the existence of this sequel, saying, “Looking back, it’s one of those strange films, where you wonder how it ever got made. You don’t know why it exists, like Showgirls, which I liked a lot. Taking chances is cool, but it may not be smart. Those were cool times. Life was cool. What can I say?” As someone who adores the original, I had a lot of mixed feelings watching this oddity. It made me sort of angry and disappointed that it essentially defanged what was psychologically terrifying. At the same time, you can’t help but admire the batshit ballsiness of Tobe Hooper to make this at all.